Planting the hedging

Well February was pretty cold and the ground very hard but we collected our order of hedging from Future Forests in west Cork Saturday morning Feb 28th.

As the ground is pretty hard and essentially Farm Land we arranged then to collect a rotovator at 1pm from Toss Bryan's in Fermoy.

The Van was packed with the hedging plants but Toss Bryan's rotovator was broken, we could not get another that weekend so we needed a plan B for breaking the ground.  Chris went off to B&Q for a handheld attachment for the Ryobi strimmer which could work but so much smaller.

By 2pm we were on site and started to break the ground for the hedging, Chris with the small handheld rotovator and Tanya with the Fork & Spade!!! It was tough going so we did not get much done by 5pm on the Saturday.  Back Sunday morning at 10.30am for planting and trying to do as much as we could.  

We got the Beech planted on Sunday morning (March 1st) and spent the afternoon digging the west facing (back) of the site for further planting, and the back corner planted with the Yew, some of the privet and Berberis plants.  We also planted some apple trees, and the Oak tree as planned.

It was so slow that we knew we would have get a rotovator for the following weekend to complete the North Facing site

 

Next post will be the north facing side of the site being planted, and the mini-nursery section where the remaining plants will be planted for re-planting

 after the house build has been completed but at least there will be some growth between now and then.

Planting!!

We found a great great nursery/garden centre in west cork that have a fantastic amount of the plants we want as well as at a great price!!

They are called future forests and also have a great website! They can delivery your order or you can collect.

Their website is: www.futureforests.net

So we made our order for the hedging to be collected Saturday 28th February:

For 50 Yew, 150 Beech, 50 Privet, 50 Berberis Julianae, 50 of the mixture for 4 Seasons native hedging (Cotoneaster, Spindle, flowering currant, Fuschia, Mixed Dogwood, etc) , 50 of the mixture Wild fruiting hedging (Wild Pear, Hazel, Guelder Rose, Bird Cherry, Blackthorn, Spindle, Elder, Crabapple) , 10 broadleaf trees (Ash, Oak, Aspen, Beech, Alder, Wych Elm, Hornbeam, Willow, Whitebeam and Birch)

We may need to get more Willow in as the soil layer under the top soil seems to be clay so we will have to monitor it.

Next post will be how we got on with the planting!!!!  

Overall 410 plants ordered and needed to be planted as soon as collected!!

Getting back into to it!!

For all those people who've been wondering why we've not posted in a while it is because of new Job for Chris and just pretty heavy workload happening for both of us at work since September 08! Plus at the same the economic crisis happened and required us to got through a huge amount of paperwork with the Banks for the financing of our house project!!! 

It all started to go pear-shaped getting the finances in October when we were asked to re-apply for the mortgage and get the land re-valued.  Since then it's been a pretty long slog getting all the paper work together again and going through the details that the bank's now require.

Everything was going soooo slowly it was unbelievable that we just concentrated on work while the banks and the Irish economy were going through the motions.  Everything submitted is almost being checked 100 times (well it feels like that) and wrong dates by the valuer as well as incorrect figures on the engineers form compared to mine has all just taken time to re-submit. 

Given most of the bank staff we are dealing with are on part time hours they only look at the file on a Monday or Tuesday.

We are both delighted that the Banks since February seem to be back in business - the cash injection from the government seems to have done the trick nicely!!

We've been given the go but still lots and lots of paperwork as the next stages are with the solicitors!

In the meantime we have been planning away, continued our research for heating systems so we can plan this effectively as well as monitoring the costs situation.  We could not believe that so many suppliers are still holding out on prices from 07 and 08 which are to our mind just ridiculous!  

Tanya completed the landscape drawings and plan for the hedging plants to be ordered Feb/March.  Next step for the site is the planting in areas we can plant in - The north and south/west hedging :-) as well as get the builder on site to start the build YIPEEEEEE!!!!!