Last week we kicked off some winter works in our orchard at Corehead. We have a lot of basic maintenance tasks to do over the winter so under the theme of Apple Day we began to tackle them.
The first job was to finish off staking all the trees. By knocking a small stake in beside the tree and securing it with a rubber tie, we are helping to give the tree a bit of support in windy conditions. As the tree gets a bit older, bigger and stronger we can remove these. A second job to start was giving the current mulch mats a bit of TLC. There are a lot of dominant, thick grasses in the orchard which, under the surface, compete with the trees for water and nutrients.
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| Before...... |
The mulch mats help to suppress these grasses but they need regular maintenance. Initially most of them were secured with stones. However as we plan to undertake a proper grass management regime in the orchard (which over time will help to reduce the density) and stones and cutting blades don't match (!!), we need to remove theses, hand weed underneath and around the mulch mats and secure them again with pegs.
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| ......and after! |
With volunteer help we made a start on this yesterday but we have plenty to do.
If anyone would be interested in helping us out in the orchard or any other volunteer events we have planned at Corehead then please do get in touch
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| Volunteer recruitment at the recent Moffat volunteering event |
corehead@bordersforesttrust.org
Lynn
Site Officer
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