Saturday, 1 February 2014

Clearing Willow Trees

Over the last few weekends, we have been removing the willow trees that run down the edge of our garden. They aren't great as a boundry as they were Pollarded, leaving big gaps for people to look in, but bushy up high shading the sun in the evenings. They also occupy a 3m band down the edge of are already long thin garden.

The plan is to remove a section of them, then replace them with a Polly tunnel that will be our boundry, when the tunnel ends we will either build some more pallet compost bins (doubling as a fence) or invest in a bigger fence of some sort.

One thing we didnt account for is that trees are really big, it is amazing how a small tree vertically becomes a massive bushy mess once horizontal. After making a big pile of tree, we quickly reliased we needed a system.

At a winter sulstance party I was introduce to Fagots, bundles of dry twiggy material that are great on the bonfire! Our chipper trips our mains, and willow being so bendy just jams it up anyway, so this seemed like the ideal solution.

We got to work, felling bits of the trees saving the big lengths for either bean poles or fire wood depending on the size and bundling the rest up into fagots.

We have now removed all the the branches, and will get the chainsaw out next to remove the stumps, then we will be able to start mesuring up for our tunnel! We hope to make one from water pipe and scaffolding poles , so we can make any size we like!


 Morning
Afternoon
 Final pile of big sticks before sorting
First few fagots waiting in new pallet compost bins, its important to store then vertically so they dry rather than rot.

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