Knocking back orchard thistle

The monthly Fromebridge orchard work party this morning with the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust, and we had a similar job to do with creeping thistle as we’ve done in the main reserve recently. I first went into Pockett’s Orchard in 2021 and it was mostly filled with scrub above head height. Since then, with the management and grazing it has transformed into a grassland, although major pockets of bramble, thistle and dock keep popping up during the height of the growing season. The rest of the team took scythes and started in the middle of the orchard. I took the brush cutter and went to the end by the canal where the patches were most dense. The area we cleared last year had unfortunately grown over thickly with scrub and not much grass, so I decided to leave those areas until the winter and decide what to do with them. After brush cutting the orchard bottom Instead I chose areas which had a lot of thistle and dock, but also plentiful grass growing in between. This should offer the…