Blog Posts - Special Branch Tree Nursery

Water, Water...nowhere !!

7/23/2018

The nursery is now heading towards the end of July with a severe water shortage. Both ponds are looking more like damp bog gardens than deep ponds. They have been topped up with the remaining rain water from our water butts, but there is now no more water in any of our butts, as the picture below illustrates.

Copious watering from our tap now seems the order of the day. As everyone only turns up once a week, the majority of our work-days are spent watering seedlings, pot-plants and small trees...just to keep them alive till next week.

July being peak holiday time, there weren't many volunteers on hand to continue this effort. Having a temporary Mediterranean climate in Stanmer Park certainly has a downside. The upside, wearing shorts and tee-shirts, languidly working through Fridays and having long lunches by the pond are some compensation for lugging watering cans around the site for hours on end.

The reward for all this watering is simply to see our nursery beds vaguely damp for a couple of days, and the plants still green and growing. We have put up shade netting where possible and put some pot plants in shallow trays filled with water.

All of the germinated seeds have now been transplanted to the junior beds. The cold spell earlier ruined what looked like a great year for our seeds. They germinated, went to seed trays and were promptly frozen in their trays at a key stage in their development. Where we hoped to fill three beds with seedlings, there are now only two beds worth of plantlets.
On a different note, the wild flower seeds germinated well in the meadow, with plenty of colour. Currently there are lots of wild carrot thriving in their new home.

The learning curve is wonderfully endless.

Some new soil...and a new loo!

5/29/2018

We now have a pop-up ladies toilet on site. Situated in a quiet and picturesque area of our site, the user has the option of privacy or a room with a view.
This facility, when added to our existing basic tap water and a supply of biscuits at lunch-time, demonstrates how far the nursery will go to gain volunteer satisfaction.
The old orchard, where the toilet is sited, is lush with new growth after a lot of rain and now a lot of sunshine. Ox-eye daisies and other wild flower seeds, sown over a year ago, provide a lovely understorey to the Apple, Pear and Cherry Plum trees. The Hazel coppice adjoining the orchard is now in full leaf and looks incredibly healthy.
Moving around the site i can see the willow has been cut, the comfrey has grown well, the new orchard/meadow looks fine and the ponds have newts in them and dragonflies, demoiselles and damselflies above them. May is such a nice month.

the raised beds, despite our persistent addition of home-made compost, have lost a little vigour lately. Consequently we have had two cubic meters of organic soil improver delivered to us.
In order to help our beds retain moisture and nutrients a little better we have taken off some of the old, tired soil and replaced it with a three inch mulch of soil improver.
Most of the more mature plants now have a mulch. The seedling beds are currently being mulched and seedlings transplanted from trays put into these new beds This will continue throughout June until we have three long beds of new plants...the cycle continues.

Spring arrives!

4/23/2018

We have now finished all the transplanting and only three more bags of seeds remain to germinate. Two of these, Guelder rose, are unlikely to show any sign of life until July anyway. Effectively, the winter/spring jobs of consolidating our remaining sales stock, adding seedlings to them and laying out the new seedlings into trays, has now been completed.
Our less fertile beds are receiving a mulch. The Wild Service tree cuttings get special attention...a mulch and some shade netting from the unusually hot weather we are now experiencing.

Springtime is also the best time to re-pot our healthy stock of Yew trees, all from the seed of the ancient Stanmer church Yew. Checking for vine weevil in their roots and refreshing the compost ensures their survival and good health. Plus volunteers gets to stand round the table by the pond and have a good 'chin-wag'.
The nettles have been gathered, bruised and put in a large bin with water. In around 4-6 weeks time a smelly fertiliser will be ready for the plants.
Everywhere the sights, sounds and smells of Spring inhabit the nursery. We celebrate this new life every Friday lunchtime with tea and biscuits!

Full-steam ahead with the Transplanting

3/25/2018

,A very busy month continues. Two falls of snow have set back the transplanting operation, but luckily also set back the budding of our plants.
Most of our sales stock has now been sold, although we still have one or two customer orders left. Primarily, we need to move all the existing stock into new beds with fresh compost and then add the smaller nursery seedlings to this stock.
All to be completed before active growth starts in the plants.

The first picture shows one of our seedling beds about to be emptied of small seedlings by Anne and Christine.
The second picture shows Geoff and Terry re-siting the seedlings into their new home with new compost and a good drench of water.
Once the transplanting is complete, in appx. two more weeks, the beds look immaculate and weed free...albeit temporarily!
We are also still checking for germinated seeds in our stratification boxes, with only fifteen more bags left to germinate. The tables are getting fuller by the week.
Spring must be just around the corner.

Seedy Sunday an Stratification

2/25/2018

Specialbranch had their regular stall at Seedy Sunday, the annual swap/ 'green' gathering, held at Brighton BHASVIC every February.
We had a very busy time selling trees, giving advice, networking and advertising ourselves to the public.
Lots of our volunteers joined us behind the stall to help out and make it a thoroughly enjoyable experience, aided by copious supplies of biscuits.

Now is the time to check our stratification boxes. We examine all the seeds we collected last year to check if any signs of germination have occurred.

The volunteers found a record 10 bags with very good signs of early growth on our first inspection, even with very cold weather in the ascendancy.

All of the germinated seeds were then delicately transferred into seed trays, covered with a little soil and put outside with some weather/mice protection on top. Finally, we recorded all the details in our plant 'bible'. Hopefully this year will provide us with plenty of fresh plantlets, to replace the now rather depleted sales beds.

New year orders and bare beds

2/5/2018

We have now settled back to our regular maintenance jobs.
These include pruning our hedgerows, coppicing the hazel area, cutting back the willow and gently pruning the fruit bushes.
There are still a few more jobs, including raised bed maintenance, new gates, new posts and fruit tree pruning to be done before mid-february, when the transplanting season begins. Not long till Spring!

The new year brings more orders. The 'sales' stock is now rather depleted.The latest orders have now led to rather large bare patches across the site. The customer orders are put immediately into bags before their transplantation to holding beds, awaiting customer collection.
The site looks tidy, but devoid of saplings.

One last job; preparing a selection of plants for our stand at Brighton's 'Seedy Sunday' fair in February.

Pre-Christmas rush for bare-rooted trees!

12/18/2017

A busy run-up to Christmas for sales of our bare-rooted trees and shrubs. The ground is still warmish and the trees have shed their leaves, si it is ideal planting time.
The volunteers kept warm digging up, heeling in and bagging up plants for our visiting customers; although, if we had to dig up around 500 every week, early enthusiasm might begin to wane.
It was lovely to hear of so many worthwhile projects in Sussex, with so many devoted nature-lovers. I'm so glad we can contribute towards so many great schemes.

Some of the team enjoying another sunny Friday at the nursery after repotting Yew and Holly seedlings.

Only two or three Friday lunchtimes this year have been spent in the polytunnel. The nursery must have its own microclimate!

After completing the repotting of smaller plants we are now pruning hedgerows and generally tidying up the borders of the nursery. Hazel coppicing should begin before the end of the month.

And another year begins......

November 20th, 2017

11/20/2017

The newly built 'holding' bed, designed specifically for customer orders has now been completed. Volunteers cut the timber, stripped the bark, cut the vertical stobs and constructed the bed. Where once there were weeds there is now a rather striking raised bed.
Almost as soon as it was built it was filled with customer orders for our bare rooted trees and shrubs.As the bed is now almost completely full, holding over 400 plants at present, we may have to consider extending it later on!

Here are the volunteers who felled, cut, shaped and erected the timber frame.
They also weeded the soil, put a weed-proof membrane along the base of the bed and then carted more soil in to fill the bed.
A month long process with a very satisfactory outcome. Well done to all!!

By the end of this month the trees in this bed will have gone to their new homes, helping to regenerate a nature reserve and a neglected woodland. More orders to follow and the bed refills!

Seed gathering almost complete!!

10/21/2017

After starting gathering seeds in July, only a few seeds remain to be collected. Holly and Spindle, plus a few Alder Buckthorn aren't yet mature enough. Mid. November will effectively see the completion of this task and the, now full, stratification boxes can overwinter the bagged seeds in their new home.

While continuous weeding remains an important job in this surprisingly wet and mild Autumn, we have also found time to begin building a new structure. In Preparation for incoming orders for our bare-rooted trees, we are building a new bed from scratch. Timber is being cut, posts made and a different set of woodworking skills utilised by our volunteers.

our first Bentley woodfair marquee !

9/25/2017

After growing around 160 plants in pots, finding and making some banners and renting a marquee at the woodfair, we finally celebrated twenty years of Specialbranch trees with our first ever exhibitors stand at this huge event.
The marquee turned into a miniature woodland with the help of our potted trees. A separate table showed varieties of seed collected by us. The visiting public were so enthusiastic in understanding the importance of planting native hedgerows. They were also keen to grow their own trees from seed after our volunteers demonstrated how this could be done.
We sold enough trees to cover our costs, but, more importantly made so many new contacts, new friends and had so many new experiences. It was certainly an event to be repeated.

Back at the nursery the combination of steady rain and mild weather have made weeding the no.1 priority. The seed gathering and processing is starting to gather pace, meaning even if it rains we can take shelter in the polytunnel and continue seed processing in the dry!