Before Xmas our non-willow seedlings will need transplanting ready for the BIG TREE PLANT in Autumn of 2010 (start planting 6000 trees over 8 acres).

We laid the hedge along the windy edge of the willow beds over the winter and it definitely seems to have had an impact on the amount of growth. But we’ll have to wait until harvest in January to see the actual effect.

So here’s to a good season for 2009/10!

More info at Living Willow Wales

Garlic – The garlic is coming up nicely in the “graves” we built up at the land. The music showed its head about a month ago and we’ve not got around to mulching yet, apart from some Lisa has done with some comfrey. We have a load of composted leaf mulch from last year’s willow that we could use instead of the grass cuttings we used from the graveyard last year – hmmm dead people compost ?-|. Again, the elephant is coming up a bit slower and is hardly coming up at all in the allotment. I don’t think the elephant likes the wetter bed we’ve put it into this year.

Living Willow Wales – We’ve got our first order for a willow structure for next year after last year’s success. So it’ll be good to get all of the organising out of the way before the season starts this year. Lisa is doing another (!) willow course in May, this time to learn how to do willow animals with Judy Macklin on life-long learning course through Aber university. She can then teach me and I love the idea of us then taking a herd of willow animals around the shows and festivals. Lisa got on really well with Judy, and she’s talking about using us for her willow next year.We’ve already had a couple of enquires about us doing workshops this summer which we’ve turned down as we’re not ready and have a lot to do this summer.

I’ve just been reading back through last years blog, and the sheep did eventually get into the pasture and eat a lot of our new basket willow. So although not much good for basketery it’ll was still good for cuttings.

Coed Bryn Helyg – As I’ve already mentioned we’ve got 500 hazel cuttings in which are coming on nicely. They are leafing but when I notice they not actually put any roots on yet. We’ve made a very impressive raised bed for the birch seeds, edged in woven willow. This is the kind of thing Lisa would like to do with all of the beds. After 4 months in the fridge the haws have still to germinate. They still look viable so I’ll probably bury them and try the slower stratification method. The oak seedlings have started to come into leaf so have survived the transplanting OK.

• first shoots of music garlic popping up;
• 40m of very sexy hedge laying completed which my dad very helpfully came and lent a hand with (phew! 5m a day);
• harvested bundled and sold the entire willow harvest (primary schools love em – doing some great tunnel/dome designs) of about 1500 usable rods;
• harvested basketery willow and replanted it all (120 black maul, 20 white, 20 curly, 20 black, 40 americana);
• Lisa completed a basketery course and made a very professional looking log basket – we’ve already got orders for woven willow sheep;
• started to plant the first trees for Coed Bryn Helyg (500 hazel cuttings, 200 oak cuttings, 150 elder cuttings, 1000 haws on ice in the fridge waiting to go out along with 2000 birch seeds).

Willow: The willow is coming on well; some shoots are up to two feet long now. The solar molar – or whatever – is still keeping the rabbits off the willow plots inside of the woodland garden (the field below the meadow). However it’s not helping the willow in plot D, all exposed as it is out in the field although right next to the solar molar. Some of the shoots have made it up to 2ft but now 50% have been stripped of leaves or chomped off. Looks like it’ll have to be rabbit wire, or moving up of the fence to protect this plot.

Thankfully the rabbits aren’t making it down to Plot E where the new babies are all doing very well; some up to a couple of feet long now. We’ve lost a couple of cuttings, but no more than one or two per type. The curly has recovered from the frost damage and is sending out new shoots. The purpurea (delicate basketry) looks amazing; it’s sending out very slender, dark purple shoots that are almost a couple of feet long now. It looks like it might almost inspire me to get into basketry!

Allotment: The potatoes I bought at the smallholders show are now in. As are some of the peas, runner beans, purple brocolli and cabbage. The bit of rain we have had has put a couple of inches of water into the pond. We have a few babies left over so we’ll take these up the land. The garlic is interesting. The early spurt that the year old garlic bulbs put on has faltered now and they are floundering about with only four or five leaves and these don’t look very healthy. The music is doing really well as is the highest new garlic plot. We’ve mulched all of the peas and brassicas with cut grass to try and distract the slugs. The slugs are escaping from the pond so I’m going to have to start crushing them like Lisa does!

Vegetables: We’ve made a small plot next on the land for the excess seedlings we had and planted a few potatoes, peas and beans. We’re planning to put in some carrots. The pumpkin plant has gone in by the camp willow dome, as we slowly fill in the bare soil I cleared of brambles down by the hedge with our first forest garden! Fruit trees, fruit bushes and a few veg underneath.

Misc: I’ve started selecting the wood from this years hedge trimmings to make a gate for the cottage.

I was up bright and early this morning and when I wondered down to the willow plots with my first cup of tea there were the rabbits, gamboling in the morning dew! Now where is my air-rifle. To be honest they weren’t in the willow but under the hedge in the far corner of the field scratching around in the buttercups and Ivy. They were about 20m away from the solar molar and hadn’t done any obvious damage to the willow, so I just blocked the holes they had been using under the fence.

Although I have wondered round the hill with the air-rifle, after a few pot shots I hadn’t got anything but then remembered that they could have young this time of year (the do qualify as a pest so there is no closed season). But they are free food – decisions, decisions. We did come put early in the year with a friends goshawk and bagged ourselves one for the pot.

Another gloriously sunny day – I remember May last year was very hot and dry, before summer was washed out. I cleared out the last couple of piles of brash in the nursery and Lisa got stuck into weeding the flower beds. A significant achievement for me was to get all of the willow bundled up and all of the harvest from three years ago pulled out of the grass. I didn’t get all of the willow away from the plots – 20 bundles was all I could face – but it is all stacked in one high pile now so it’s going to be easier to get at and it’ll keep most of it out of the grass.

Another job I finally got round to was mapping out exactly what kinds of willow we have where. Lisa never planted with the idea of selling the willow but more for burning in a bio-mass stove on site, so didn’t keep track of what was planted where. But I’m quite into the idea of building living willow sculptures. Her business partner in willow, Liz, had marked out the broad categories. We had four main types: Viminalis Gigantica, Q83 (a vim. triandra mix), a yellow one and a purple one, before we got in a load of fancy ones from West Wales Willow. Trouble is although the coloured ones are obvious you can’t really tell the difference between the Gigantica and the Q83 when they are mature. However, now they are younger the gigantica is very obviously darker at the tips and has a lot less shoots off the stool. So I’ve got the map on paper just got to get it electronic and Liz is going to be a happy bunny – we both appreciate this kind of thing!

Garlic: The garlic is coming on well. We’ve got between seven and eleven leaves. The nursery beds are still looking a bit patchy. Only about 10% of the pearls we planted have come up; just over half of the music garlic looks very healthy. The second bed has had most of the plants come up but they are all a bit stunted and brown. We can only put this down to the fact they were the last garlic planted and there is no shelter around the bed, whereas the next bed has one foot boards around it. We’d just just laid the hedge which had left the nursery quite exposed – maybe best to leave growing anything else in here until it’s grown up a bit.

Willow: The willow is coming on well in plots A and B. The picture is of the harvest in January of this year. The rabbits have been feasting on C and D with hardly any shoots left and a lot of stools nibbled – we need to do something about this! Initially I was worried about the indiscriminate nature of an ultra-sonic deterrent but I’ve capitulated as I don’t really want to have to install a load of rabbit fencing. So we’ve got ourselves a new “Solar Molar”, a solar powered beeper. And Lisa was right as usual, we’ve not seen any nibbling since.

Generally the willow is coming on well with about a foot of growth on some stools. We have left a couple of patches covered with mulch mat to see if it made any difference to the growth but there is nothing yet. However the growth does seem very patchy, although the Q83 is definitely the most prolific.

As another experiment, and to avoid leaving a large patch of bare soil for the grass to colonise we have planted it with red clover in the areas we have pulled back the mulch mats. There has been no real rain for a couple of weeks so the ground is very dry but the the clover is starting to come up now and put a green sheen on the soil. After we’d planted my dad informed us (retired agricultural lecturer – really ought to talk to him more) that red clover grows up and will only last a couple of years, and we should have used white clover which creeps and lasts longer. It’s all experience.

Coppice: The new chestnut and hazel trees were also getting a bit of a nibbling, so I’d surrounded them with brash a couple of weeks back that seems to have done the job and hidden them from the rabbits.

Misc: Lisa is very excited as she’s got herself a little weeder! Rose has discovered the delights of weeding (it’s difficult to get Lisa to do anything else ;0) And very intently she gets into it too, luckily she’s able to distinguish between the plants very well; she loves chomping on the fennel.