Guarding fruit trees

A smaller work party today with Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust as a lot of people are away during the summer. But very nice to see Sarah again who hadn’t been for a while after sustaining a nasty hand injury. We headed over to the grassland to continue some tree care for the heritage fruit trees inside the penned area. The first job was to water and mulch all the trees which we hadn’t managed to do last time. After this, Maran and I stayed in the pen to figure out how to add some extra tree guard protection. Trees before deer guards in place Pete had provided some sheep netting which would give some knee high protection from muntjac and roe deer – at least from the important main stem. We already had a few stakes and managed to cobble together some tools to try and get the stakes in the ground. The ground is so hard, it makes it very hard to knock posts in. We didn’t have a wrecking bar sadly which would have been ideal to make a substantial hole. But we did have a crow bar to fashion…