COVERT OPERATIONS IN THE DARK



PLANTING AT NIGHT

Quite normal practice for me. 

Just another day at the office.

Usually if I plant anything near civilisation; I do it at night.  I fortunately have developed very good night vision.  I never bring a torch with me, if I need to; I can use the light from my mobile phone to identify what something is, but more commonly I just hold it up and identify it by the invasively glaring lights of Dartmoor prison.  What a waste of electricity.  Whilst I am creating Oxygen; they're burning it up.

I love being out at night.  The dark doesn't bother  me at all.  Most walks I go on are at night, and certainly most of my planting and sometimes collecting too.  you see far more wild life and no people at all.  Everyone who I have spoken to, when I have been out planting has been happy with what I'm doing, but I am concerned that one day someone might give me grief about it, so if it's next to any kind of human settlement, like this site is; then I basically feel much more comfortable doing it at night.

Manly today I am planting wild plants, which I have been breeding in my garden.

 

 All along this road are stone walls, made of granite.  Some of them are just holding up banks of soil, some of them are either filled with or topped with soil.  On others, so much peat has built up over the decades or centuries from moss and other small plants, that now, there is enough to support some small rock loving plants, I would presume.



A wild Strawberry, on the same site, planted two weeks ago and clearly taken very well.
You should be able to clearly see it's many runners, going off in all directions;
producing many new little plants to colonised more of the wall.



Wild Strawberries

 Most of the Wild Strawberries (Fragaria Vesca) that I have planted, have come from my garden and before that; they came from gardens that I have worked in, right across this side of Dartmoor.

I planted them in wild and semi shaded parts of my garden, with a low rate of competition from other forest-floor type plants.  They have flourished and now are beginning to be treated like a pest, although they produce fruit for far longer than the cultivated ones do.

 Now of course; Strawberries famously spread, by producing many of these thread like runners, which grow outwards, from the parent plant; producing juvenile plantlets at intervals, as they creep across the ground.
The plantlets root quickly, once they touch something damp and the roots go reasonably deep for such a small plant.

When I first started to collect Wild Strawberries, from various people's gardens (with permission); I noticed that they were spreading from seed as well as from runners.  A few years after planting them in the garden, I noticed that they had seeded them selves there too.  But only within a few metres of existing clumps.

I thought this was odd, because I had always assumed that birds would have been the main things which fed on them and in turn dispersed the seed in their gwamo.  But if birds dispersed the seed; surely Wild Strawberries would have already got here by themselves, like Elders, Blackberries and Holly.

Got me thinking about it, a bit.  What if I was a bird? What obvious disadvantages are there to  eating a Wild Strawberry?

1. There is nothing for a bird to grab hold of, like a twig, that they could grip hold of, whilst they peck at the fruit. Like they could with a Cherry or a Blackcurrant. 
2. In less the plants were growing in a wall; the bird would have to be standing waist deep in foliage and if it was growing in a wall; then a bird might not be equipped at grabbing that like it could with the twig of a tree.
3. The bird would be much more venerable and at a much grater risk from predators.  stoats and ferrets could easily crouch amongst the leaves.
4. It would be harder for the bird to take off as well, if it was waist deep in leaves.

So I presume that small vertebrates, such as rodents are what eats them and disperses the seeds.  It would explain why the seed don't spread very far.  Small Mammals could move, virtually unseen, through the camouflage foliage.

 Last year I began to plant a few Wild Strawberries in differnt sites, to monitor their progress.  They are quick to root and quick to spread.

This year it is very clear to me, that they like it up here, so I just want to get them planted up along walls, as quickly as possible and all with in a few mouse runs of each other, just in case, my theroy is correct.

To plant them; I find a bit of mud within the wall, maybe add to it a little bit more, with some mud from the road, whiich I scrape up with my boot.  I make sure the roots are couverd from above and below, finaly I train any runners in different directions and push them into soil or moss, if and where any is available.

Re-cycling Tree Gaurds

Re-using redundant plastic tree gaurds

In officially planted woods, like this one, near Exeter; far too many trees are planted, far too close together and all have an expensive tree guard to protect them, regardless of whether they actually need one or not.

 This woods was planted approximately 20 years ago, in fact I remember it being planted.  As you can see; only the biggest, toughest trees are still living, all the others have been smothered out by the faster growing trees, in the race for canopy supremacy.  As can be seen here; the woodland floor is randomly littered with redundant tree guards, lying where their trees used to be, before they died and rotted away.  Some are propped up by the last remains of their trees, most just lie, as if they are fallen branches. 
There are thousands here.

 I have learnt that certain trees, like Oak and hawthorn are very resistant to having their bark eaten and seldom need a guard.  The trees I have found the most vulnerable are Beech and Birch.
2 ways I combat this problem, with out having to use a tree guard; are to plant the trees in something Spiky, such as Gorse, Bramble or Reeds. Or plant something spiky with them, when you plant them, like a Dog rose.
So, I only use tree guards, where no natural protection exists in their new environment, or if a tree begins to be attacked, by some unknown bark eating creature, but I prefer to use natural methods, where I can.

Cycle Journey from Okehampton

Collecting Seeds and Plants
My bike and my computer broke.
Rather than have to try my luck with public transport; my friends let me use their spare bicycle.
Now, I used to cycle everywhere, when that was my only form of transport.  I often cycled to Bristol, Cardiff  (and Scotland once). But that was 6 years ago.

On year 5, I had my last bicycle stolen, from the hollow, where I had stashed it, whilst I was out planting trees in the Meavy valley.  Then I got the motorbike and I haven't pedaled a non motorised cycle since. 
Trouble was; my friends live some 20 miles away, the far side of Okehampton.

Betony grows along the roadside, enough to collect a bit and a few seeds.

 Roadside Plants

From the beginning; feelings of exhaustion were suppressed, by many wondrous discoveries, beside the road, which I could not have possibly noticed or collected, if I was on the motorbike, simply because I was travelling much more slowly and much more able to stop.  In fact much of the time I was pushing up massive Dartmoor hills and more than able to collect some seeds, from a variety of different habitats, like grassland, bog or under trees.



Wild Mustard



Betony and Wild Mustard, both illustrated here are just two of the completely new introductions for the high moor, which today's cycle has made possible.

Betony, which I would say was more closely aligned to the Dead nettle family than of Wood Betony; is a plant I have been blissfully unaware of until recently. Today I found enough of it to take a little rooted bit and to collect a few seeds. not really enough to form a healthy colony, but enough to make a start.

Wild Mustard is usually a very common roadside annual plant, so all I have done is broken off a few dry seed pods from as many different plants as possible.



 In all I got maybe 20 new species, mostly from seed, and from many of the uphill bits, most of the way home. 
The last 8 miles, from Tavistock is across open moors and it was dark and misty and raining.

In all it took me about 8 hours, when it used to take me 4.  But not bad after a 6 year gap.

Can't wait for my Motorbike to be fixed again, though.