Community Day February 2025
As February comes along, the time is finally here to start sowing the first of our native tree seeds we collected last Autumn inside in the tunnel. This will be our first year of growing trees and we will be sowing them both inside the polytunnel and outside in the beds. As we have space in the tunnel this time, as some of the seeds are still in the stratification bed and won’t be planted out till next year, we decided that we have enough Birch and Alder seeds to grow half of them inside and the other half will go out next month when the soil outside warms up a bit in our outside beds. Birch and Alder are pioneer species, meaning they will grow fast and have a short lifespan of 40-50 years. They don’t need to be grown inside, but we are all about experiments.
We made sure that we tagged the beds well with the names of the seeds and the corresponding certification numbers under the watchful eye of our nursery manager 😂. The seeds that went in are Alder, Birch, Guelder Rose, Mountain Ash, a few Hazelnuts and Elder cuttings. At the moment we are watering by hand as the new irrigation system will be installed in the next few weeks.
We put the pole up for the Owl box last community day and we have finally some strong hands around to put the box up. What a triumph. All we have to wait for is an owl looking for housing.
One of us saved frogspawn from their what most likely going to be a very short lifespan - they were found in a puddle next to a road, what could possible go wrong? So she collected them and brought them to the site to be released into the pond. Fingers crossed some of them won’t befall the same fate as those left behind in the ditch.
One of the points on our task board was planting Elder cuttings taken from our own Elder at the gate to our site. We are hoping that by planting some more on the site we don’t have to go far to collect cuttings in the future.
As always there is mulching of trees to be done. To keep the grass down around the trees we planted last year we are going for a labour intensive, but makes for good craic, approach. We use locally sourced cardboard, thanks to Bunkers in Killorglin, and surround the trees with this. The mulch goes on top to secure it in place and it adds another layer of protection. This way we won’t have to spray around the trees with nasty stuff, we are growing for biodiversity after all.
As always we have a warm, filling lunch of seasonal vegan soup with locally baked bread by Kingdom Bakery in Milltown, loads of cups of tea and good laugh.
Join us for our next Community Day on Saturday the 8th of March, starting at 10am.
