Popping Cherries

Five GG Yorkies joined some Sustrans volunteers for a tree planting task.

Xavier Brice, the CEO of Sustrans was also getting his hands dirty and it was great to chat with him about the nationwide partnership we have with Sustrans.

There were 9 fruit trees to plant including apples and plums. We had to dig holes that were twice the size of the pots, lay down two scoops of "fungus helper" and then put the tree in with extra soil, stomp the soil down and top with woodchip. We then had to bang in wooden stakes using a giant hammer and secure the baby trees to the stakes with cable ties.

With that done in super quick time we started on the second task which was to start building a wetland area further along the path. This task required us to remove all the small trees and some of us got to use a brand new (and very exciting) tool: the tree popper.

John baggsied the popper first and started levering out cherry trees, elders and willow, then Becky snuck in and grabbed it whilst John was taking his trees to the habitat pile. He came back to Becky yanking out a pretty big tree..

It's big, but not as big as mine!

Babs and Debbie were focused on one truly gigantic root and were determined not to be beaten. The wetland area will be dug out at another task on a later date, so keep your eyes peeled!