Monday 4 May 2015

Seeding it up, slowing it down

Last week at Corehead our volunteers had a new challenge to tackle.

A few years ago a track was created up the side of the hill below Cocklaw Knowe. This was  to provide access for our contractors who were planting in Tweedhope, Whitehope and Lochan Burn. It is subsequently used by us and will continue to be for a while as we do important ongoing tree maintenance in these areas. 

One side of the track is still scarred in parts with bare earth exposed whilst in other areas it is healing over nicely with vegetation moving in. The aim of the first task was to sow seed on the bare patches to speed things up again and help stabilise and 'naturalise' the banks. We used a northern hay meadow mix  as upland hay meadows are a rare habitat these days. When this seed takes it will provide a nice mix of grasses and wildflowers, as well as help to stop further erosion.


John and Heather seed sowing. We used a rake to break the surface of the soil, scattered some seed, and then raked the loose soil back over it. 
In addition to that job we did some more track maintenance. One of the sides has been heavily eroded resulting in a rather deep, steep gully. 


We decided to build a series of dams in the worst affected area with the idea of slowing down the water flow and encouraging silt to build up behind. 




We hope that overtime the gully will start to fill back in. With all the rain forecast for this week, we should get a good idea as to how they will hold up.

Lynn
Site Officer

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