There were tales of a gentleman who cycled round South East England planting slips of Black Poplars. These things grow like weeds, don't have much commercial value and tend to blow over in strong winds. Suddenly finding extra ones growing in my roadside hedges would be
*annoying* to be polite!
The Squirrels insist on burying Walnuts in our garden. When they germinate, I move them to any spare bits of ground. The don't like being moved (funny taproot) don't take to protective tubes because of the large leaves and are a pain in general. When I am gone I expect this farm will be known as the nuttery:-)
Homebase had lots of what appeared to be free bare rooted trees. Something to do with "plant a tree day" when there is going to be a record attempt at planting trees.
I have no idea what they were as I didn't look, I can't squeeze anymore trees in. 8-(
I'm not trying to cash in on anything. I just want to plant a wood and leave it for my grandchildren. If the government/ Defra/Forestry Commission / whoever wants to help me do it then fine. It's actually only 1.5 acres so Woodland Trust are not interested. The English Woodlands Creation Scheme is a possibility but I have to register myself (and the missus) and then the land before I can even start filling in the application form. They recommend that you have professional help to fill it in! I just thought that if there was a more straightforward way of getting 1000 trees, it was worth exploring.
Have a dig about for local nature or conservation groups. We got our
800 odd trees from one of them with a small grant that basically paid the VAT. They even planted them.
Survival rate wasn't very good though 10% or more loss the first year. Can't decide if that was because the slivers were out of the ground to long or the shock of being moved up to 1400'.
I kept many of the trees I planted last winter up to a week before planting. I did keep them in the special bare rooted tree bags (black inside, white out) in a dark, cool place for this time.
I was pretty careful to only get a tree out of the bag once I had the slit in the ground so the root didn't dry out. However, I was pretty cavalier about jammed them into the ground and stamping the slits closed.
In my case, the trees came from a nearby nursery at about the same altitude (1,000'). As I mentioned earlier, I've had about 2% losses.
Absolutely - it makes people think they can carry on as normal , but clear their consciences by contributing to some "project" which was probably going to happen anyway
Putting CO2 into the atmosphere today feeling OK that your tree(s) will compensate in 20 years time is nothing more than a marketing gimmick and a load of grreenwash bollocks
I presume that you are also making a massive contribution by unplugging your phone charger when you're not using it
No it gives you feel that you can get away with not changing by transferring the problem to someone else YTC
Sorry, I think most people are ahead of you on that one believing in carbon offsetting is as close to believing media led hype as thinking that removing your charger from its socket during use will save the planet
It is counter productive, it makes you think that you are doing something useful when you really are not
I just rememberered I once did a planting by taking tree prunings, cutting them to 12-18" long sections and simply sticking the sticks into the ground (the right way up). No digging, watering, ground firming, protection or anything. The result was a 25% strike rate, so you just put them in 4x closer than you want. The cost of this is almost nothing for the kinds of tree you can get prunings off. There's no need to plant the lot in one go of course, one could take a year to pick up whatever's available and wanted.
I've considered doing similar, if I ever do this I'd include as wide a range of food producers as possible.
- All the well known fruits, including lots of different apples
- wide range of less well known fruits
- again a good range of nut trees, including bladdernut, and walnut too if you have the land, as they kill many other species.
- good range of timber producers, from fast growing to slow hardwoods. Including durables and a little high value holly timber.
Where you want grafted apples and pears, one can grow prunings from these on their own roots initially, plus quince, then later on graft apple twigs onto the quince rootstocks. This way you can get a quantity and range of good apples at almost no purchase cost.
You might even find a very small patch for clumping bamboo.
A source for some of the less well known food trees is AFRT
formatting link
the cheapest source, but a) a good food producer is well worth a few pounds b) Once can grow 1-2 of each tree at first, and plant cuttings from it in 2 or 3 years.
I've not kept up with land costs for this, do you have any info to share? Might be worth looking at again.
I would go for a mixture of chestnuts, walnuts (include a few black walnuts for timber), gean (wild cherry), hazels and crab apple. You might try a loquat if it is warm enough.
Interesting. Do you throw away all your small change too, by any chance? Obviously those coins aren't worth enough to make a significant contribution to your overall wealth, are they? (Actually, re-reading your last statement, perhaps they dont make ANY difference!)
Your presumption is incorrect. However, I do unplug my phone charger when I'm not using it. The difference it makes is infinitesimal, - but not zero.
Look, what I'm saying here is that an acknowledgement of environmental change, caused by humans, is a good thing. Carbon offsetting is an extremely poor way of dealing with the problem. But it does NOT produce a zero improvement and it is therefore marginally better than ignorting the problem altogether. People who employ carbon offsetting as their solution are more environmentally aware than those who do nothing.
Perhaps it's my fault for not understanding your apparent belief that there are no numbers between 0% and 100%? In your opinion, are the following equations true? ...
0.00000001 = zero tiny = zero one penny = zero
1 milligram = zero
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.