[spandit]

Hmmm...

I need 65 trees to replace the ones that have died in my plantation (a loss rate of about 4% which is OK), and I had 10 left over tubes for planting new ones. That's a total of 75 trees, I also owed my wife a tree for our anniversary.

However, partly because of minimum order quantities and partly because of lack of stock elsewhere, I've now ordered today:

50 x sweet chestnut, castanea sativa
25 x wild pear, pyrus communis
10 x common dogwood, cornus sanguinea
25 x black locust, robinia pseudoacacia
25 x black maul, salix triandra
1 x black mulberry, morus nigra (anniversary present)
1 x almond, prunus dulcis (present for me!)

That's 137... now I have to decide which get the tubes and which only get spirals (of which I have hundreds!)

[claire]

how lovely, I hope you get some nice weather for planting.

[Treud na Mara]

I would first of all ask why are you using guards ?  Here in Caithness, from autumn 2013, we tubed almost everything except holly as we thought we might have a problem with deer. Turned out the holly is a bit on the delicate side and so we gave them tubes and they have done better since. Our surprise success has been sweet chestnut which I laughed at when OH told me was on order but all 25 have done the best of all the trees we planted. Deer have not turned out to be a problem so far, in fact our own sheep and goats have nibbled quite a few but none to extinction. They all have exclusion fences round their clumps or hedges. Rabbits could be another problem but we have a very good working cat who seems to be on top of that problem. I would be inclined not to bother with tubes or guards for the dogwood especially if multi stemmed. Feeling very jealous of both 'present' trees. We'll have to wait a while for our shelter to grow before we can think of such exotics!

[Mammyshaz]

Wow, spandit, that plantation is going to be foraging heaven in a few years  any plans on forage invitation weekends   

[spandit]

Wow, spandit, that plantation is going to be foraging heaven in a few years  any plans on forage invitation weekends 

We'd quite like to do glamping & bushcraft so foraging definitely on the cards. Ideally, I'd like it to grow into a food forest

[spandit]

how lovely, I hope you get some nice weather for planting.

Last year we were planting in torrential rain, it was horrid! At least there's no lugging of guards around this time...

[Mammyshaz]

I'll be watching this space. Hope your plans go well, they are certainly off to a good start with the  food forest 

[spandit]

I'll be watching this space. Hope your plans go well, they are certainly off to a good start with the  food forest 

Should be quite sheltered in a few years, not that we're that exposed anyway. Details on my blog

I would first of all ask why are you using guards ? 

East Sussex is rampant with deer & rabbits. I've got loads of spirals so not a problem to use them - they're so quick anyway. They also give a bit of protection from my father in law & his strimmer!

[spandit]

With the spares one of the suppliers included, it came to 140 trees. They're all in, under half of them replacing the dead ones. Our new orchard is now getting pretty crammed, especially since the in-laws bought 5 new fruit trees from Tesco. I'm hoping for an abundance of blossom in a few years - we'd better gen up on fruit preserving too!

On a different forum I've had some other species recommended too (sea buckthorn, autumn almond) so I'd better find some space in the forest for those!