Tim Burr

Friday 31st March 2017. It started to rain as I walked up through the wood this morning to inspect the hedge, stark contrast with the weather yesterday when there was bright warm sunshine all day and it reached 20^oC. I welcome the short downpour though. There isn’t a water supply in Pop’s wood so all the newly planted trees and hedgerow rely entirely on rainfall, may prove to be a bit of an issue if there is a long dry summer.

First job/distraction was to have a look at the coppiced hazel stools and check for any signs of regrowth. I have been very cautious in my first attempt  at hazel coppicing and restricted my efforts to tackling two large stools earlier in November/December last year. These two hazel plants hadn’t been coppiced for over 20 – 30 years at a guess and so had developed into reasonably sized trees with some of their numerous stems/trunks reaching 6″ – 8″ in diameter and an overall height of 20 feet plus. Hazel is a fairly short-lived tree with a life span of say 70 years and if left to its own devices would simply die away at the end of this period. Coppicing (cutting all the growth down to just leave a stump or stool and repeating the exercise every 7 years can prolong the life of the hazel virtually indefinitely as it encourages new roots to form on the stool. After 7 years each coppicing event yields a harvest of poles of various lengths and diameters for sale which can be used as bean poles or as binding rods in hedge laying or example. Wouldn’t it be a bit of a beggar if after 7 years careful tending scientists establish that hazel is the main cause of diarrhoea say and the market drops out of the bottom.

The picture at the top of the page shows the deer fencing placed around the coppiced hazels. This is necessary to stop the deer (and rabbits) simply browsing off all the fresh growth and preventing the stools from a healthy resurgence. Bit of a faff (and expense) to install but seems to have been successful to date. No signs of new growth on the stools themselves but the picture directly above shows a bud on one of the layered branches leading from one of the original stools. These layered branches are designed to take root and encourage a new stool to grow remote from the parent. In fact one of the pieces of hazel that I used to peg down the layered branch has also started to bud! Great news – the process has started.

I have also made use of the fenced off area to act as a hardwood cutting nursery and was thrilled today to notice that one of the dozen or so hornbeam cuttings that I planted about 4 weeks ago appears to have taken. Here is a picture of a new bud on the cutting. I am not a gardener and have never tried to take cuttings on anything before let alone a tree so this is very exciting.

I took twelve hornbeam cuttings from trees immediately adjacent to the “nursery” and it would appear that the cuttings of between 1/4″  and 1/2″ diameter have taken root first. Hopefully the others will get established and follow suit very soon. It would appear that size does matter.

More on processing the after math of the huge turkey oak brought down by Storm Doris in the next blog.

Pop’s Wood smelt nice yesterday. A huge drift of dark green leaves has emerged from the leaf litter over the last few weeks and is now dominating the area immediately next to the entrance. This is wild garlic and it appears to be thriving, its familiar savoury scent hit me as soon as I came in through the gate – what a lovely way to start the day.

My plan of work for the day was to check up on the hedging plants, check the hazel stools for regrowth and continue processing the huge turkey oak that fell victim to storm Doris.

Pops’s Wood is surrounded by open countryside and other pockets of woodland. This allows deer to freely roam from field to wood and nibble their way through whatever they fancy en route. Part of what they seem to fancy at the moment are the 1,000 or so recently planted hedgerow plants that went in as whips in between November last year and February this year with the help of some family and friends.

Each whip was planted through a slit cut into a weed suppressing mat and then covered with a clear plastic spiral tube which is held up with a bamboo cane. My usual approach is to walk the length of the hedgerow and straighten up any canes that have been disturbed, re-position any tubes that have become dislodged and are no longer protecting the plants and tuck in any of the matting that has worked loose.

Rather satisfyingly despite our amateur efforts as virgin hedge planters the plants are beginning to grow. There are three sorts of plants making up the hedge; hawthorn, field maple and hazel. The hawthorn is the first to show signs of growth with bright green buds and leaves forming within the tubes. The hazel and field maple seem to be a bit slower but they are also now showing some signs of budding.

My assumption was that it was the deer that were disturbing the canes in an effort to eat the sweet new buds but that may not be the case. The photograph at the top of this blog shows a section of the hedge and on the inside of the tubes there is a white smear rather as if someone has carelessly run past the canes with a large brush covered in cream emulsion. Seemed odd and then I remembered a neighbouring woodland owner telling me that he had a large badger sett on his plot. I walked through to where he had pointed and sure enough there was a newly dug sett in the bank of an old chalk pit. So I think that it is more likely that the culprits for disrupting the hedgerow are the local badgers who fresh from digging in the wet chalk are walking through the canes. They just carry on in a straight line despite there being a new hedgerow in the way. I guess that is what woodland management is about; coming to an accommodation between the desire to make changes and coping with the needs of those that have been in the wood far longer than me and have their own views. More on the progress of the hazel coppicing and log cutting next time.