Unfortunately we had a visit from the the Food and Environment Research Agency today. A representative came to discuss the Ash dieback disease Chalara fraxinea recently covered in national news media. 550 Ash trees were planted on our site back in February this year and sadly it looks like this disease is a serious threat to them. The fungal disease has been found in a number of countries throughout Europe with Common ash being the most affected species. Counties in the south east of England seem to be suffering the worst and FERA are currently trying to stem rapid infection of the wider countryside by visiting sites like ours that have inadvertently bought trees from nurseries where the disease has been found.
Aside from the movement of infected plants the disease is spread locally by spores which are released during late summer. As it's November FERA have time to inspect our trees, analyse any that appear to be contaminated and if tested positive remove all 550 trees from site.
Adding to the complication of the inspection is that we have over 1,500 other trees of various species all planted with identical guards to the Ash. It will be a good deal of work to locate and inspect all 550 trees. I'm hoping they can perform a little bit of weeding while they are at it. The sad thing is that there doesn't appear to be a solution to the problem and it is likely that the disease will eventually reach us regardless. There are a lot of questions that we need to consider regarding shipments of plants from other countries and the impact on our countryside. We save a few pounds here and there through economies of scale but catastrophic damage can be caused in the process.
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| Find the Ash Tree |
On a brighter note, we now have doors on the polytunnel, well front doors anyway. The fold up back doors are next to be fitted but they require two people to fit and unfortunately with Jake around it takes us a little time to get the two person jobs done.
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| Sally very happy with her new doors. |
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| This is how Jake rolls. A proud Dad with his doors |
