• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Bois de Steve

The rough sawdust from rip cutting and the planer (P/T) are fine in the garden, just not very thick layer.

The fine sawdust tends to form a compact layer not allowing in nutrients or water. Does control the weeds, BUT ............... (start reading the sentence again)

If you have a compost bin or heap the sawdust can be mixed in, in small ratios.
 
I tend to put our sawdust and chippings down either on the non paved paths, or in the bottom of Mrs AJBT's raised beds, with rotted horse manure on top. We actually get wood chip delivered - 1 or 2 lorry loads a year. It goes over membrane usually to assist with mulching beneath hedges and topiary. Takes 2 years to rot down. Last year it was almost all Ash and Beech. (We don't pay for it).
 
One of the places we were looking at needed a mega clear-out of scrub and indifferent trees. Had my eye on a 226cc John Deer Man's chipper. Proper Job. Handle 4" timber. Then LOML found out that the soil didn't support her type of plants. Not from Landis - which ergo must be treated in the future with circumspection - but from a neighbouring NGS garden photo's on the web.
 
Chippers are a right pain unless they are big enough to tow behind a lorry. We had one that was supposed to handle 4" stuff and conifers. We did use it a lot one year when we had a leylandii cull, but it was brutal and slow to feed. Sold it to an older chap for a profit in the end.
 
Steve, can you get your french mate to write down the name of that "fever tree" in french, a good friend of ours here is an ex director ( retired about 10 years ago, but still a consultant to the french government ) of some of the french national parks "Parc National de Port-Cros" was the last one he ran , before that I think it was "Mercantour", or it might have been "Parc National de Port-Cros" and then "Mercantour", Louis still has some high rank ( I can't remember what / which ) in the ONF
en.wikipedia.org

National Forests Office (France) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
Plus some very impressive Botanical degrees, knows an awful lot about plants, trees, and wood. He might well be able to be of some help or guidance. His wife ( sadly she died from cancer a couple of years ago ), was a world expert on Posidonia Oceanica.
en.wikipedia.org

Posidonia oceanica - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
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Alongside Steve's Wood, we have an area we like to call the Orchard. When we moved in there were half a dozen or so old fruit trees that had be neglected for may years. We've tried to be kind to them, so we will see what his harvest brings.
We've also planted a dozen or so new fruit trees. Cherries apples (including a Bramley, unknown over here) pear, fig, peach.
We've lost a couple of limbs due to a (*&(*)% deer, but in general, they are in good condition.One of them had a branch in an inconvenient place. I cut it off and grafted it in a better position. Astonishingly, it appears to have taken.

successful graft.jpgenient place, so I cut it off and grafted it in a

A couple of the trees are double-stemmed. Out neighbour, Jeff, says we should remove the secondary stem. But it's a healthy tree, so thought I'd triy to get a free tree out of it.
double stem.jpg
I threaded a milk bottle over the secondary stem, scratched the bark a bit to stimulate growth and filled the bottle with compost and root hormone. If it takes, I'll be able to harvest a new tree come the end of next winter. Two, if they both work
rootpot.jpg

I just need to keep them watered. It's 35C today and forcast to be 40 in a fortnight.
S
 
I feel your pain. About 2 months ago we planted 2 Cornus Kousa of the "Schmetterling" variety and they were doing great. They were really beautiful to look at. Were I say, because yesterday morning we found they had been plundered by a roe during the night. There were prints all over the place. And sadly almost no leaves on the shrubs anymore. We hope they will survive this onslaught.

Good luck with the grafting!

I am sure to keep an eye on this thread, because I had never even thought of trying to make a secondary stem grow roots. What if you succeed? Will you then separate the stem and plant it?
 
HdV said:
I am sure to keep an eye on this thread, because I had never even thought of trying to make a secondary stem grow roots. What if you succeed? Will you then separate the stem and plant it?
Click to expand...
Yes. I'm hoping that new roots will develop in the milk bottle. Then I can cut that stem off (below the milk bottle, obvs) and plant that as a new tree. The original will continue to thrive without the other stem taking half the nutrients.
That's the theory, anyway.
S
 
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This might not be the case with yours Steve, but fruit trees are often grafted on root stock from a different type of tree and I don't think taking a cutting would work in that case (in the sense that the cutting would not grow/perform in the same way as the tree it's taken from).
 
Oh I realise that Nick. I should have taken note of where the bifurcation was. But I don't mind either way. If they are fruiting, all well and good, but if not, they will be just two more trees for the wood.
I don't know if this is going to work, but it's a fun thing to try.
S
 
Update.
Last year we had 6 months with no rain and the oaks are a long way from the nearest tap. I'm afraid that none of them have survived.
But the fruit trees are faring better.
Two of them didn't take at all and two have been breakfast for a deer. One is dead (the tree, not the deer, as far as I am aware), the other appears to have survived, it has new growth and blossom on it, despite the big gash in the bark. The rest are doing very well, buds, leaves and blossom.
I've planted two new cherries. There are several other cherries in the village and they are all solid, mature trees that are generous fruiters., so I know cherries thrive round here.

Nearly 50 years ago, when I started at university, I met a lass called Anne, She was beautiful, clever, funny and quirky. I loved her. But I'd never had a sister, let alone a girlfriend I knew nothing about women (SWMBO would tell you that I still don't...), and a thought she would laugh at me, so I stood by and watched John swan in, sweep her off he feet and marry her. It broke my heart.

On the day she got married, she stood there in her white wedding dress and she held my hand, She said, "Steve, you never asked". I have lived with that ever since.

John went on to abuse her trust. He led a double life, was always "working away". He cashed in the pension pot and spent it on other women. He died a few years ago with a mountain of debt and Anne had to sell the house.

All this whilst battling cancer. She had cancer four times in her life, from her 30s onwards. She beat it three timse, but last week it finally got her. She was 7 weeks younger than I am.

Anne is my life's biggest regret and there have been some. I did see her a couple of years ago, all too briefly, but at least I did get the chance to say to her what I should have said had I been more of a man and less of a boy 49 years ago. She did say that I had been her best male friend ever. I'll take that.

So today I have planted another Bramley Seedling in her memory.

I have some tree guards on order, I hope the deer don't get these.

S
bramley closeup.jpg1957-20026.jpganne willan.jpg
 
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Nice way to remember her by!

Life can be strange and confusing. My love in high school never knew about my crush. 30 Years later I was told by the mother of another girl in my class that girl had a crush on me without me ever knowing. If only we had spoken up, who knows what might have happened?

With hindsight, I guess I should be glad my crush never came to anything. That girl turned into a monster wife with a very expensive taste and not a very nice character, I learned some 10 years ago. Glad to have the wife I have. I couldn't have wished for a better one.

Many of our saplings are not eaten by deer, but used as scratch sticks by roe deer to get the skin of their antlers. Over the years our tally is about half don't make it through their first 2 years because of that. Nowadays we put a small cage around saplings to give them a better chance at survival.
 
Ha. I wish. I never even came close to confessing to her. We always were "just good friends", until our ways separated when we went to different universities. I never saw her again. But a student of mine happened to work for her and when I found out he told me how she was nowadays. Ouch! Not the kind of wife I was dreaming of.

Cherish the thought your Anne thought of you as a very dear friend. Even if it wasn't love, that's still worth a lot!
 
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