Ramial Chipped Wood

We’re using willow wood chip as a mulch for the nursery and orchard.
The willow is growing in a corner of the nursery, split into two sections and coppiced on a two year cycle.
This ensures we get fresh chip every year and there is also lots of flowers every spring as an early source of pollen for the bees.
Ramial chipped wood means branches under 2.5 inch diameter, chipped and used as mulch.
This serves many purposes such as reducing the need for weeding, holding in moisture, feeding the soil as the mulch breaks down.
It is also thought that the salicylic acid in the willow can help combat fungal infectious such as scab.
One other great function of this mulch is it feeds the fungal duff.
The photos clearly show a living fungal entity in the form of mushrooms and the mass of white mycelium.
These chips smell lovely and mushroomy and greatly aid that ever so important relationship trees have with the fungal world.

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Grafting

We’ve begun chip budding apples in the nursery

Bio fertiliser

Just made the first batch of bio fertiliser for spraying the trees in the nursery and orchard.

Sugar Plums

These sweet hedgerow plums were found growing near Oswestry and are known locally as sugar plums.
I will be grafting them onto plum rootstocks next week and trees will be ready for sale a year in November

Making rainbows…

Spraying the nursery trees with garlic oil and seaweed extract to help boost the trees immune system, increase photosynthesis levels and as a pest deterrent

I made this cleft chestnut gate for a friend recently. All the wood came from one log except for the oak used to wedge the pegs.

Roundwood pergola

I made this pergola for the wedding venue at Bromwich Park recently using Douglas fir from cynynion timber