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To dredge or not to dredge? Woodland ponds

To dredge or not to dredge? Woodland ponds

by Angus, 24 January, 2013, 7 comments

In deciding how much you should be dredging your pond or ponds you may want to do a sort of "loss vs benefit analysis" - ponds which are soak-aways from heavily-fertilised agricultural areas are likely to be poor in wildlife and by dredging you may be able to remove polluted sediments and hopefully create silt traps and ways to buffer the pond from future pollution.  It may be that your pond is in a marshy area and you may be better off digging small shallow pools rather than undertaking big excavations.  Often it is easier  and cheaper to create a new pond than to dredge an existing one.  Digging new ponds can be much more useful to wildlife than planting trees - trees will self-seed if land is left alone whereas ponds are much less likely to create themselves.  Indeed, very often the most useful way of improving a pond for wildlife is to reduce (or remove) overhanging trees which keep out light and can degrade the pond with heavy leaf-fall. Read more...
Wooden gutters, shingles and downpipes

Wooden gutters, shingles and downpipes

by Peter, 17 January, 2013, 6 comments

Making gutters out of wood was traditional in most countries before the widespread use of metal and plastic made these a rarity.   But some people still use them to keep buildings looking as they would have been in the past and, actually, they work very well.  Certain woods work better than others - for example Scots pine, sweet chestnut and elm.  In Germany and America, pitch pine (Pinus rigida) was widely used for wooden gutters because of its high resin content. Read more...
2012 – a rather wet year.

2012 – a rather wet year.

by Lewis, 8 January, 2013, 7 comments

It has been a rather strange year.  After another dry winter – March arrived and was one of the warmest and driest on record; consequently, many of us were threatened with restrictions (on hosepipes etc)  as a severe drought threatened - many reservoirs were very low on water. But then came April, which was one of the wettest recorded in the UK.  Some 121.8 mm of rain fell, beating the previous record of 120.3 mm -which was set in 2000; some parts of the U.K. had three times the ‘normal’ amount of rainfall. June was also very wet and set a record. There then followed the wettest summer as a whole since 1912.   The final rainfall figures for the year have been released and the total rainfall for the UK during 2012 was 1,330.7 mm (52.4in), just 6.6mm short of the record set in 2000. The big winners in these wet conditions were slugs – including the giant Spanish super slug, or Spanish stealth slug that was reported to be invading gardens.  These have an  ‘enhanced’ breeding cycle producing many more eggs Read more...
Bracken Control

Bracken Control

by Nick Burton, 7 January, 2013, 2 comments

On 1 January 2013 it will become illegal to use the bracken-control chemical Asulam.  The chemical, which was sold as Asulox, was banned by the EU on 31 December 2011 but those who already had stocks had a year to use these up. While good in small areas, as it provides cover for animals, bracken can be a real problem, quickly becoming a monoculture, shading out and eliminating wild plants and flowers. Landowners are now considering their options, Read more...
What's happening in the market for commercial woodlands?

What’s happening in the market for commercial woodlands?

by Angus, 6 December, 2012, 2 comments

Every year Tilhill produce a report on the state of the forestry market and this was just launched. What their Forest Market Report 2012 shows is that UK forestry is dominated by Scotland where about 3/4 of transactions by value take place and the market is currently very buoyant - so much so that the average selling price in 2012 was almost double the average guide price. Even for these larger conifer woodlands the price reached about £6,500 per hectare. According to the Tilhill figures the average size of woods that come to the forestry market in Scotland is 157 acres (387 acres) whereas in Wales it is much smaller at only 66 hectares (163 acres). The report calculates that over the last 10 years average forestry values have gone up steeply and have increased by almost 17% per year. Read more...
The million ponds project.

The million ponds project.

by Lewis, 29 November, 2012, 2 comments

Over the last fifty or so years, many of our freshwater ecosystems (rivers, streams and ponds) have been polluted – particularly with nitrates and phosphates.  This pollution has lead to eutrophication : an overgrowth of simple green algae and subsequent loss of biodiversity.  The million ponds project seeks to create new ponds, with clean, unpolluted water. The question might be posed “why not clean up and manage existing ones?”  Of course where this can be done, then it should be done but new ponds allow one to start with a clean slate.  They can be created in places where their water supply will be clean throughout the pond’s lifetime, and generally creation is cheaper and simpler than the restoration of an existing pond. Read more...
Back to bees, again

Back to bees, again

by Chris, 23 November, 2012, 1 comments

Further to the woodlands post about ‘bees and weather’, the British Beekeepers Association has announced that honey yields from hives are substantially down.  The average annual yield per hive is about 13.6 Kg but this year the figure is averaging 3.6 Kg per hive  – down by over 70%.   The worst results were for the London hives, where the figure was down to 2.5 Kg / hive. Most beekeepers have attributed this fall to the (wet) weather.  Bees had a poor start to the year as the poor weather this Spring (April onwards) limited the bees foraging - for early crops, such as oil seed rape.  The rain was also a feature of early summer - June and July, for much of the country. Read more...
Woodland carbon recycling

Woodland carbon recycling

by Lewis, 9 November, 2012, 0 comments

The world store of terrestrial carbon is estimated at 2860Pg (petagram = 1015 g), of this, some 1240 Pg is ‘locked up’ in woodlands – that is over 40%.  Much of  woodland carbon is ‘locked’ in dead leaves and decaying wood – in the form of complex organic molecules (carbohydrates, proteins, lignin, cellulose, pectates etc) that make up a plant. However, with time these molecules can be degraded, broken down by the activities of micro-organisms (bacteria and fungi) – though the first stage of the process may be a physical disruption by beetles (saproxylic) and other burrowing small animals.  The activity of fungi is more obvious / visible at this time of year (autumn) as their fruiting bodies Read more...

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