5thelement
-
Posts
1,454 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
2
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Classifieds
Tip Site Directory
Blogs
Articles
News
Arborist Reviews
Arbtalk Knot Guide
Gallery
Store
Freelancers directory
Everything posted by 5thelement
-
Joshua will retire after he gets beaten again by Usyk.
-
Won’t know the results for a while. I think the trick is to keep the soil moist but don’t overwater or fertilise as you just end up with masses of vegetive growth and no crop. I have mulched them with a 4” layer of well rotted wood chip.
-
Even though I was a bit late this year, starting from scratch in the new place, things are doing okay. First of the Cucumber (Devils food🤮) round Courgette for a change, Baby Sweetcorn as it is difficult to find here and I use it a lot. Tomatoes doing fine outside, first time growing Sweet Potatoes, hopefully they are doing as well underground as they are above. Pears/Apples/Peaches doing fine despite the late frost that lost us a lot of blossom and hammered my Kiwi Fruit right back to the main stem.
-
Download the current Assessment schedule from the NPTC website, it will tell you everything you will be asked to do practically and verbally.
-
There is a company in Brighton that collects all the spent coffee grounds from the masses of coffee shops in town. They compress the coffee into recycled card boxes and impregnate them with different fungi, you spray a slot in the box each morning until the mushrooms appear. I got given one for my birthday a while back. Put them in the kitchen windowsill, got a kilo of hot oyster mushrooms after a week or so.
- 29 replies
-
- 1
-
-
- mushrooms
- cultivating
- (and 1 more)
-
Wakehurst Place, who hold the millennium seed bank started a reintroduction programme for native Black Poplar a few years back. Females are the hardest to find, they where usually cut down around properties because they produce masses of candy floss type material when flowering. They are very localised in the UK, the Kent examples we took cuttings from turned out to be clones from Manchester stock. I only found out how rare they where when I moved down South, until then I had been felling one a week in and around Greater Manchester for ten years, feel a bit guilty now, although I did reveal the whereabouts of several unknown females, there is only one known on council owned land in Manchester, it’s right smack in the middle of the Trafford Centre car park entrance.
-
Morels also do fantastic in wood chip.
- 29 replies
-
- 1
-
-
- mushrooms
- cultivating
- (and 1 more)
-
I did a bit for a guy a few years back. Cut back some Oak in his woodland and created stacks for the doweling. I think he got 7 years from them before he needed to renew the timber, Oak lasts the longest, you can’t use Ash or pine.
- 29 replies
-
- 1
-
-
- mushrooms
- cultivating
- (and 1 more)
-
I’ve used the Supertack ‘Bio crap’ from Clark’s for at least 10 years in all my saws, 3 series, 5 series Husqvarna and my Stihl, never had any issues whatsoever. I often cut on SSSI’s and alongside watercourses where Bio oil is compulsory.
-
Do you get any concessions yourself Andy, being in the industry, or do you pay the same as us plebs?
-
And there you go guys. Every time you fill up you are giving trigger Andy a pay rise so he can spend more time at home and more time on Arbtalk belittling you for earning pittance. If ever there was a chance to unite under one banner, this is it. 😂
-
The 5 year refresher has always existed, albeit ‘Advisory’ from AFAG/HSE, meaning the majority really didn't do them. FISA just made it compulsory in Forestry so that they could make a fortune on training, you could only use FISA instructors initially, unfortunately they had next to none.
-
The CS41 will cover it technically, but if he spends most of his time doing aerial work and little felling, this will probably be the weak spot that needs to be refreshed, so a one day refresher might be appropriate for CPD/insurance etc. I would personally take a look at his felling and see if he is up to scratch, if so, crack on, if not book him in. NPTC now do a one day ‘Golden Badge’ certificate where you basically do the Assessment again to see if you are still deemed competent, with guidance on where to improve from the Assessor. The only thing I would say is does he fell large trees/stems over his CS31 limit, if so maybe put him in on the CS32 instead.
-
If you read the instruction manual and look at the diagram at the side of the start button on the saw, it tells you how to start hot and cold. Do it this way and it will be fine, don’t do it and guess what? 😉
-
The French government invests massively in the UK due to the shortsightedness of successive UK governments. A few years back I was crossing the Severn Bridge with an Italian guy, he asked me who received the toll payment, England or Wales? I didn’t know so I asked the guy in the pay booth, his reply, France? They footed the bill for its construction, take the revenue and pay peppercorn rent to England/Wales, and we haven’t even started on the foreign ownership of the UK train network operators!!!
-
The Green Energy frenzy, certainly wind power, is just as buoyant here in France. I haven’t looked too much into it but I would assume the turbines are produced and shipped using the same cheap workforces as the UK ones do. The main difference I see here are French men are doing the installation with French companies, French energy company logos on the finished turbines, putting energy into the French grid and sold to the masses at a capped and far lower rate per unit than in the UK.
-
No idea what this plant is in my garden, can anyone help?
5thelement replied to GT1's topic in Picture Forum
It usually looks a bit shabby at this time of year, especially after long periods of dry weather, it’s a consistent Winter flowering plant. Cut all the flower head stalks back to ground level before they set seed and it usually perks up a bit. -
Its down to simple economics. It is cheaper to design, manufacture, ship and install using foreign labour than invest in our own workforce and infrastructure, our government simply wants cheap with maximum profit, they have no interest in the long term benefit to the UK, just short term gain for their term in office, same shit whoever happens to be in power. We can’t keep buying cheap products made in the Far East and then complain about the loss of our own manufacturing industry.
-
2 rope climbing are we sticking to the rules
5thelement replied to Thesnarlingbadger's topic in Climbers talk
There are large Forestry operators out there, just like there is in Arb, but the vast majority of hand cutters don’t work for Tilhill etc, they work for or own small businesses and are largely self employed just like in the Arb sector. There is absolutely no reason why the proposals put forward by the FCA couldn’t be implemented in the Arb industry also. -
2 rope climbing are we sticking to the rules
5thelement replied to Thesnarlingbadger's topic in Climbers talk
This is exactly the problem. Employers demanding far too much from people who have been climbing for two minutes. When I finished my RFS I was still green as F**k and my employer recognised this straight away. He started me on the easier stuff and partnered me up with an experienced climber on the more technical stuff. I got lucky I suppose. -
2 rope climbing are we sticking to the rules
5thelement replied to Thesnarlingbadger's topic in Climbers talk
The Forestry Contracting Association proposed something similar to this to FISA/HSE last year. The proposal was that prospective candidates who wanted to work in Forestry could gain employment and be mentored by the experienced employees, the two tree safe working distance would be relaxed to facilitate this. A log book containing the number of hours a candidate had covered on different tasks, felling, snedding, winching, hung up trees etc would be completed by the person doing the mentoring. When completed the candidate would do their NPTC assessment. You would then have a hand cutter with possibly months on the saw before earning their tickets. I mentioned it in a post on here a while back and it was rubbished, so you can’t win really. -
My brother in law has two, I don’t think I have seen any dog if that size move quicker.
-
I did a few Winters clearing regen off the heathland on the Ashdown Forest in East Sussex. There where several of these man made warrens still present, they are larger than you might expect and must have taken a fair while to complete, attributed to 11th century Normans.
