The Ash man Cometh...

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.

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.

Sally very happy with her new doors.

This is how Jake rolls. A proud Dad with his doors

It's getting hot in here...

Two days of work on the polytunnel and the cover is almost fixed tight. We are really grateful for the help given to us by Bill, Meg and Heather & Gwyn (Meg's parents) to get trenches dug, door frames fixed and heat tape applied. They all worked really hard so we're eternally indebted to them, we'll have to pay them off with lots of polytunnel grown veg next time they come to visit.

The weekend just gone Amy, Wayne and Charlie came down for the day while Beth & Andrew were visiting for the weekend. We got really lucky in that there was only a moderate breeze, some sunshine and everyone was willing to spend the day getting a massive plastic sheet tucked in around a 2.5m high metal frame. It was all a bit tricky, the breeze didn't help as the trick is to get the plastic fitted as tightly as possible. Time will tell if we managed to do a good enough job but again we're really grateful for all the help.

There she is

Overgrown veg plot... oh the shame of it all.

It frames the view very nicely don't you think?

 We finished folding and burying the ends of the polytunnel on Sunday, the only bits left to do are filling in one of the trenches and building and hanging the doors. We're working on the basis that a tunnel wont take off in the wind as the wind can blow straight through it and out the other end. Hopefully that's not an incorrect assumption. Feel free to comment if you know better...?

In all her glory, don't worry it will be shielded by hedges eventually.

Rabbit Fencing

So cast your mind back to my post on the 'Cropping Plan' and I can confirm that we've created a veggie patch in our field (rather than the garden) loosely following the family size veggie cropping plan from Joy Larkcom's book 'Grow Your Own Vegetables'.

A tractor load of eight and a half tons of compost has been delivered and spread across the beds then rotovated. There's an area set aside for a polytunnel, aside from that there are four 15m x 1m beds for veggies and another four beds for salad. Our organic seed order has been received and many seeds sown so we have plants in the greenhouse ready to be transplanted to the main beds over the next few days. Before the plants are moved we thought it a good idea to knock up some protection from rabbits. I just hope the deer don't get any funny ideas either.