A battle with the Docks

As with all horse grazed fields we had a lot of dock growing in the beginning. Each year in the spring I have been spraying them with Roundup, and then at this time of year cutting off the seed heads. There are many fewer this year that cutting the seed heads only took two hours (previously it has taken up to two days!).

This year I have also discovered Roundup Gel - the trouble with the spray is that it killed a section of other plants around the dock and left a bare patch where - more docks grew! The gel is selective and seems to work very well.

Next task is pulling the Ragwort.

Grass Cutting among the trees - my least favourite job of the summer

A weekend of grass cutting around a shelter belt of trees to the north of the Meadow which was planted 5 years ago. I have left cutting rather late in the year so there is really thick, rank grass growing which has really smothered the row of holly.

I have tried some 'natural engineering' using 4 rows of trees to create a wedge shape to take the north wind up and over the house - the furthest north two is holly (low and slow growing) then mixed blackthorn, hawthorn, crab apple, then two rows of tall and quick growing birch with some climax vegetation trees mixed in (oak and beech) to take a very long term view. This creates a wedge - although I think that the wedge is really too narrow to have much of an effect.

Cutting the grass between these trees is a horrible job as the ground in uneven, the vegetation coarse and the are hundreds of horse flies living in it which swarm out so whole body protection is required - which is so hot to wear in the sunshine. It used to take me 2 days to do the cutting, but investment in an Allen Scythe, or front-bar cutting mower (known in the USA as a motorised sickle),  has decreased this to about 4 hours!

The mower is from AT-KO and was a bit of a pain to assemble - but it has transformed my ability to cut grass. Definitely a good investment.

As you can see from the photos above there is still a lot of grass around the holly which will need to be removed buy hand - 5 minutes per tree multiplied by 60 trees. Looks like another day of work before I finish completely. Four of five of the Hollies have died so I will need to replant in the autumn.

Digging a bumble bee nest

I was initially puzzled by a 10 inch deep hole with a mass of bumble bees at the bottom. There was newly dug earth around, and I realised that this was the overnight work of a badger digging out a communal bumble bee nest to eat the larvae.

Lots of path  clearance at the moment as the grass and hogweed is falling over in the regular thunderstorms that we are still having. However the Meadow Cranesbill seems to stay upright and there is a lovely display of blue flowers.

Transplanting Cowslips

Last autumn I tried planting cowslip seed in individual little cells, but only about 30% has germinated. I have had much better germination rates planting the seeds in the summer.

However, those that have grown now need potting on into larger pots, ready to plant out after the grass has been cut if there is some damp weather forecast for a few days. If not they will go into the ground in late September.

Cowslips potted on

We also have 4 or 5 new arrivals with very cute punk hairstyles:

Few Ox-eye Daisys

Where have all the Dog Daisys gone? I have alway struggled to get them to grow, and this year is the worst show yet. Driving around I see a huge number growing on the roadside, so I know that the climate here is good for them. Maybe my field is still too fertile, or maybe I am cutting the field a bit too late (usually the second week of August when the Cranesbill has set seed). Maybe this year I should cut it a week or two earlier.

Talking of the Meadow Cranesbill - this is just going into flower. It is doing much better in the places where I planted 4 or 5 plants together in a patch as this seems to shade out the grass. Places where there is just a single plant seem to be much more of a struggle among the long grass.

Two weeks ago i did some spot treatment with Roundup Gel on docks - this seems to have worked well as the docks have turned yellow - and I haven't got that ring of dead grass that happens when a spray rather than a gel is used. So the gel may be a bit more expensive, but I am impressed with it efficiency.

Catching up with planting - too late

I have been planting out (about 6 weeks too late!) Great Burnet. I saw a single plant of this in flower in a nearby field last year so it is probably natural to this area. These plants came as plugs in January and have been potted on - but should have been planted out earlier as there is now only about 6 weeks growing time before the field is cut. However they seem unhappy in the pots so I thought it better to plant them out now rather than keep them for planting after the hay cut.

Great Burnet (Sanguisorba officials) ready to plant

I had put roundup in some small patches across the meadow earlier in the year, so i am hoping that they will be able to grow well without the competition from established grass.

Elsewhere in the meadow things are growing well, with Field Buttercup and Ragged Robin giving a good show of colour.

Field Buttercup

The cuckoo flower is just about over. Ten years ago there were only 7 or 8 heads of cuckoo flower, but with the right cutting regime this has increased every year. Last year there were about 50. This year for the first time there were just too many to count - more than a hundred I would guess.

Transplanting Lords and Ladies failed

So I asked the question of whether the transplanted Wild Arum would survive - the answer is "no". I think that I dug them up from a very stony area so didn't get enough of the roots, so I also may have planted them too deep to try and compensate. Still nothing lost, as I had to dig them up anyway.
I will try planting some of the seeds on the woodland edge a bit later in the summer to try and get this plant to move out of the hedge bottoms and into the dense patches of scrub on the woodland edges.