One of my colleagues had left a note for the Sunday shift that a customer was coming in at 11.30am to collect nine bare root fruit trees, and that as there were quite a lot of them it might be a good idea to lift them and have them bagged up before the customer came. As there were only two of us on duty this seemed sensible, so we dug them up and put their roots in plastic bags. Some of the root systems were too large for the normal bags and we went and found old compost bags and used those and tied them at the mouth with string. We laid the trees down behind the shop where they wouldn't blow over or be trodden on. Then the customer telephoned to say that his site was saturated and he would appreciate my advice but he didn't want to plant the trees today. Which decoded meant that regardless of my advice he didn't want the trees today.
I asked how wet the site was and he told me that, put it this way, a couple of cars had to be towed out recently and that the water table was very high. I suggested that maybe it might not be suitable for an orchard as it was and he might need to think about land drains. He thought that as it was on a slope it should drain in a week or so. I don't know what he thinks his trees are going to do the next time there's heavy rain. It then transpired that the trees were going to be planted in grass, and he hadn't lifted any of the turf yet. I advised that the trees would need a clear 1m square around them. Lifting 9 square metres of turf takes a while and I don't think he'd have been tree planting this afternoon even if he had collected the trees at 11.30am. I asked if he could heel the trees in somewhere himself, but was told there was no room.
My colleague and I unbagged the nine trees and heeled them in again. The customer is always right, but some customers are fools.
After that it picked up. The retired long distance lorry driver from Clacton came in with Ruby the white terrier, who was looking very spruce after having a bath this morning.
I saw a flock of starlings on the way home, not so large as the ones of my childhood in east Devon, but still wonderful, in their mysterious fast-shifting cloud.
Showing posts with label bare root. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bare root. Show all posts
Sunday, 27 February 2011
Monday, 21 February 2011
another busy day at the plant centre
Today was a busy day. There are still odd bits of potting: this afternoon I potted up some rootballed lilacs and yew and a few bare-root crab apples. A couple of colleagues were on a roll creosoting (it is actually creosote substitute now that old fashioned creosote is banned. 'Creosoting' is like 'hoovering'. You can't say that you spent the day creosote substituting, any more than you would say that you had been dysoning).
Plants are moving around the plant centre in great swirls and eddies. The polytunnel on the far side of the car park ('the other side') is so full that the aisles are mostly reduced to half a trolley's width and the potting bench is jammed into the smallest possible space just inside the tunnel door, but bulbs that we potted last autumn, like tulips, daffodils and alliums, have started going out for sale. Some shrubs that were put under cover in the plant centre to protect them in the worst of the winter have also been put out again, which keeps us all on our toes when it comes to helping customers find things. Viburnums were in the tunnel with the climbers last time I was at work, but today they were back outside on the opposite side of the walled garden.
Customers sometimes find it confusing that shrubs like hollies, that they thought were hardy, have been put away in a tunnel for the winter, but there is a great difference from the plant's point of view between spending the winter outside in a black plastic pot, which may well freeze solid in cold weather, and having its roots safely in the ground. Even during periods of frost the ground is rarely frozen more than an inch or two deep (though I don't know how far the frost penetrated last December). Frozen roots can be particularly tricky for evergreens, because they can't take up water, while their leaves are still losing moisture through transpiration. Anyway, the hollies, viburnums, osmanthus and arbutus have all been turfed outside.
There will be a lot of deliveries in the next few days, and some of the plants will have customers waiting for them. Unfortunately the system for matching new stock to eager would-be purchasers is rather basic. We have a list of customer names and their desired plants. Plants arrive. The staff try to spot which of the arrivals are on the customers' wish-list, in between interruptions and distractions while we do lots of other things as well. Occasionally well-meaning customers who have obviously been conditioned by too much supermarket shopping wave their purchases at us at the till, enquiring 'don't you want to scan the bar code?'. Er, no thank you. We don't actually use bar codes.
Plants are moving around the plant centre in great swirls and eddies. The polytunnel on the far side of the car park ('the other side') is so full that the aisles are mostly reduced to half a trolley's width and the potting bench is jammed into the smallest possible space just inside the tunnel door, but bulbs that we potted last autumn, like tulips, daffodils and alliums, have started going out for sale. Some shrubs that were put under cover in the plant centre to protect them in the worst of the winter have also been put out again, which keeps us all on our toes when it comes to helping customers find things. Viburnums were in the tunnel with the climbers last time I was at work, but today they were back outside on the opposite side of the walled garden.
Customers sometimes find it confusing that shrubs like hollies, that they thought were hardy, have been put away in a tunnel for the winter, but there is a great difference from the plant's point of view between spending the winter outside in a black plastic pot, which may well freeze solid in cold weather, and having its roots safely in the ground. Even during periods of frost the ground is rarely frozen more than an inch or two deep (though I don't know how far the frost penetrated last December). Frozen roots can be particularly tricky for evergreens, because they can't take up water, while their leaves are still losing moisture through transpiration. Anyway, the hollies, viburnums, osmanthus and arbutus have all been turfed outside.
There will be a lot of deliveries in the next few days, and some of the plants will have customers waiting for them. Unfortunately the system for matching new stock to eager would-be purchasers is rather basic. We have a list of customer names and their desired plants. Plants arrive. The staff try to spot which of the arrivals are on the customers' wish-list, in between interruptions and distractions while we do lots of other things as well. Occasionally well-meaning customers who have obviously been conditioned by too much supermarket shopping wave their purchases at us at the till, enquiring 'don't you want to scan the bar code?'. Er, no thank you. We don't actually use bar codes.
Monday, 7 February 2011
potting
At work the financial year end has passed, the days are lengthening, and new stocks of herbaceous plants have started to arrive at the plant centre. This morning a ten tonne lorry arrived from Norfolk with six thousand plants for us, which was the entire lorry load. Some were already potted, on Dutch trollies (those multi-storey aluminium trolleys with wheels you may have noticed in garden centres) and some were bare root divisions in cardboard boxes for us to pot up. These are in addition to the roots needing potting that arrived last Friday, and are starting to get a bit etiolated and sweaty in their plastic bags.
I enjoy the occasional day potting. I wouldn't want to do it five days a week all year, as it would get repetitive, and standing all day at a potting bench is actually harder physical work than walking about, but it is interesting to see what has come in, and what the root systems of different species and varieties are like. There is a certain Goldilocks art to potting everything to the correct depth, not too deep and not too shallow, and a detective art to working out which way up some of them should go. Indeed there is an art to unloading the lorry when you have half a dozen people involved. The suppliers make one label do for all 20 or 30 of the same variety, stacking them on the same shelf on a trolley and relying on us to keep like with like when unloading. Once two different sets of dormant hostas have been mixed up you are completely sunk, until they come into growth and you can see which is which. We pot into a herbaceous compost which has an anti vine weevil chemical in it, and nothing is allowed out for sale to the public until we can see roots at the bottom of the pot. A few things like Incarvillea have the exasperating habit of flowering before they have rooted in properly, which is a nuisance.
The ready potted stuff just has to have labels stuck into every pot, but of course they are at ankle level while you do it.
Addendum regarding Fitzroy I got yesterday's biographical details from the Cambridge Biographical Encyclopedia, since the main thing I knew about him was that he founded the Met Office. In passing I had noted that the BBC (why does the BBC website have an entry on Robert Fitzroy?) said that he was the fourth great grandson of Charles II. At the time I thought little of it, but returning later in the evening to Jenny Uglow's splendid book about Charles, 'A Gambling Man' (a Christmas present) my brain belatedly tottered into gear. Charles II did not have any legitimate children, but there on page 199 is a little black and white reproduction of Lely's portrait of Charles' beautiful and temperamental mistress Barbara Castlemaine, with their son Charles Fitzroy. At school I was taught that the Norman name Fitz denoted son. My informant who read history at university and did include the medieval period (more than I did) tells me that Fitz specifically denotes illegitimate son. Fitzroy, Fitz Roi, bastard son of the king.
I enjoy the occasional day potting. I wouldn't want to do it five days a week all year, as it would get repetitive, and standing all day at a potting bench is actually harder physical work than walking about, but it is interesting to see what has come in, and what the root systems of different species and varieties are like. There is a certain Goldilocks art to potting everything to the correct depth, not too deep and not too shallow, and a detective art to working out which way up some of them should go. Indeed there is an art to unloading the lorry when you have half a dozen people involved. The suppliers make one label do for all 20 or 30 of the same variety, stacking them on the same shelf on a trolley and relying on us to keep like with like when unloading. Once two different sets of dormant hostas have been mixed up you are completely sunk, until they come into growth and you can see which is which. We pot into a herbaceous compost which has an anti vine weevil chemical in it, and nothing is allowed out for sale to the public until we can see roots at the bottom of the pot. A few things like Incarvillea have the exasperating habit of flowering before they have rooted in properly, which is a nuisance.
The ready potted stuff just has to have labels stuck into every pot, but of course they are at ankle level while you do it.
Addendum regarding Fitzroy I got yesterday's biographical details from the Cambridge Biographical Encyclopedia, since the main thing I knew about him was that he founded the Met Office. In passing I had noted that the BBC (why does the BBC website have an entry on Robert Fitzroy?) said that he was the fourth great grandson of Charles II. At the time I thought little of it, but returning later in the evening to Jenny Uglow's splendid book about Charles, 'A Gambling Man' (a Christmas present) my brain belatedly tottered into gear. Charles II did not have any legitimate children, but there on page 199 is a little black and white reproduction of Lely's portrait of Charles' beautiful and temperamental mistress Barbara Castlemaine, with their son Charles Fitzroy. At school I was taught that the Norman name Fitz denoted son. My informant who read history at university and did include the medieval period (more than I did) tells me that Fitz specifically denotes illegitimate son. Fitzroy, Fitz Roi, bastard son of the king.
Wednesday, 2 February 2011
grow your own fruit
Having said that I must get my skates on and order another cherry tree before it was too late I actually did so a few days ago, and this morning it arrived. That is the slight trouble with bare root stuff, once you've got it you have to get on and plant it. The arrival of the cherry forced me to get on with sorting out the mess in the fruit cage, which had got a bit weedy. Most of the weeds pulled out easily enough, but there is some couch grass running around. I extracted as much as possible by hand, but will probably end up treating the regrowth with glyphosate. I'm very sparing in my use of this weedkiller, but would find it hard to do without it entirely. The cherry is 'Summer Sun' which is a dessert variety generally described as doing well even in an indifferent English summer, so with any luck that will guarantee either cherries or a fantastic summer in a year or three. It's on Colt rootstock, which in theory will produce a larger tree than I would want for a fruit cage, but on our miserable light soil I've found it pays to go for more vigorous rootstocks than you would think you wanted. As I weeded around the fruit I was shocked at how sandy and mere the earth appeared, as if it had never received an application of organic material in its life. There is one bin of compost ready to use, so that will go on.
I ordered a plum at the same time, 'Marjorie's Seedling', which should bear dark purple dual purpose plums in late September. There's already a golden plum that's ready to pick in the first half of August, so the plan was to extend the season. This is on St Julien A, and again I'm not expecting it to grow as large as the RHS guidelines suggest it will. Unfortunately, having seen the plant, I'm not entirely expecting it to grow at all, as it doesn't appear to have any leaf buds. Normally buying mail order from reputable suppliers works well. I'm trying to contact the grower, and I expect it will all be sorted out one way or another, but it is a hassle.
While I was at it I went for some more raspberries, which are receiving mega doses of compost as I plant them, but half are still heeled in as the light ran out. The challenge this year will be to try and prevent raspberry beetle destroying a sizeable proportion of the crop. Last year I was throwing away half of what I picked, which is disheartening and makes picking a faff as you have to inspect each fruit. It also makes it difficult to enjoy eating them as you wonder at every mouthful if your inspection failed and this one will be off. The grubs live in the core of the raspberry, then move into the flesh, and the taste of fruit which has been attacked is vile. The RHS only offers chemical controls so goodness knows how organic raspberry growers manage.
My cheerful reflections the other week on how economical it is to grow your own fruit did overlook the cost of buying the plants, plus the fruit cage. Our fruit cage has suffered after two snowy winters. Gardening books always say to remove netting roof from fruit cage in case of snow, but how often do we have that much snow in Essex? After the first winter it was possible to bend the aluminium top bars back so that the cage was servicable, though wonky, but they wouldn't bend back a second time without breaking. Sourcing replacements and fitting them is another job for the spring. On a positive note, during the stock take at work I did discover we had a supply of angle irons for sale, and I shall get a few of those to make supports for the raspberries. First time round we used tree stakes, but these have rotted and I'd prefer not to replace them with more stakes that will rot again.
I ordered a plum at the same time, 'Marjorie's Seedling', which should bear dark purple dual purpose plums in late September. There's already a golden plum that's ready to pick in the first half of August, so the plan was to extend the season. This is on St Julien A, and again I'm not expecting it to grow as large as the RHS guidelines suggest it will. Unfortunately, having seen the plant, I'm not entirely expecting it to grow at all, as it doesn't appear to have any leaf buds. Normally buying mail order from reputable suppliers works well. I'm trying to contact the grower, and I expect it will all be sorted out one way or another, but it is a hassle.
While I was at it I went for some more raspberries, which are receiving mega doses of compost as I plant them, but half are still heeled in as the light ran out. The challenge this year will be to try and prevent raspberry beetle destroying a sizeable proportion of the crop. Last year I was throwing away half of what I picked, which is disheartening and makes picking a faff as you have to inspect each fruit. It also makes it difficult to enjoy eating them as you wonder at every mouthful if your inspection failed and this one will be off. The grubs live in the core of the raspberry, then move into the flesh, and the taste of fruit which has been attacked is vile. The RHS only offers chemical controls so goodness knows how organic raspberry growers manage.
My cheerful reflections the other week on how economical it is to grow your own fruit did overlook the cost of buying the plants, plus the fruit cage. Our fruit cage has suffered after two snowy winters. Gardening books always say to remove netting roof from fruit cage in case of snow, but how often do we have that much snow in Essex? After the first winter it was possible to bend the aluminium top bars back so that the cage was servicable, though wonky, but they wouldn't bend back a second time without breaking. Sourcing replacements and fitting them is another job for the spring. On a positive note, during the stock take at work I did discover we had a supply of angle irons for sale, and I shall get a few of those to make supports for the raspberries. First time round we used tree stakes, but these have rotted and I'd prefer not to replace them with more stakes that will rot again.
Friday, 28 January 2011
coppice work completed
Today the arboriculturalists came to coppice a few of the alder trees. They have made a very neat job of it, and stacked the fallen timber in piles. We'll have that out soon and saw it into bits small enough to go on the fire, and it can season over the summer. Unless you have a felling licence you can't cut more than five cubic metres per quarter. The rules are slightly different for coppice, which left the arboriculturalist and the wildlife trust officer scratching their heads on their previous visit over how you treat grown-out coppice. Two men came to do the work, and as I listened to the sound of two chain saws working simultaneously I thought it had odd musical possibilities. It's a dangerous career, tree work, especially climbing.
Yesterday I planted some hazel behind the hawthorn in the spinney, cursing slightly that I'd bought them bare root and was now commited to planting them when the wind was biting and I had a cold. I could have heeled them into the veg patch, but then they would sit there reproaching me, and it's getting late to plant bare root anyway so they really had to go into their final positions. They were bushy plants and I fixed a length of galvanised netting round each one. The previous hawthorn planting was still intact in its spiral guards, not yet eaten or dug up by rabbits. I found a couple of fresh shot gun cartridges in the spinney, which I removed. We give the local farm shoot effective carte blanche over the spinney and the wood, which is only fair when our land is acting as a rabbit reservoir for their field. They are under strict instructions not to shoot us, or the cats.
Yesterday I planted some hazel behind the hawthorn in the spinney, cursing slightly that I'd bought them bare root and was now commited to planting them when the wind was biting and I had a cold. I could have heeled them into the veg patch, but then they would sit there reproaching me, and it's getting late to plant bare root anyway so they really had to go into their final positions. They were bushy plants and I fixed a length of galvanised netting round each one. The previous hawthorn planting was still intact in its spiral guards, not yet eaten or dug up by rabbits. I found a couple of fresh shot gun cartridges in the spinney, which I removed. We give the local farm shoot effective carte blanche over the spinney and the wood, which is only fair when our land is acting as a rabbit reservoir for their field. They are under strict instructions not to shoot us, or the cats.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)