An instructive winter

The latest 12 months have been really disaster from forest gardening point of view. After a mild winter 2016/2017 began rearing year 2017 with prolonged drought and icy conditions until late May, with the result that the fruit set on most things, more or less failed to materialize. A cool and dry summer was followed by a much too wet autumn, which is really bad for invintringen and next year's fruiting. As icing on the cake:et was the worst winter we've been through. There were huge amounts of snow, almost one meter putt Myra forest garden. Recurrent mild weather in the middle of winter made it several layers of crust, thereto was ground unfrozen most of the winter. Evening Weather for voles as unhindered could ring barking and eating roots. The thick blanket of snow hid gnagskydden almost completely and hares, deer and elk ate their fill of our fruit trees. Even the wildlife fence we have around the nursery and vegetable lands became permeable hares which could easily jump through the larger meshes that are usually out of reach for them.

observations

No disaster without lessons, and now that it's been a few weeks since the snow disappeared, it is quite interesting to reflect on the observations we have made. First, voles have multiplied so much that there was a total lack of food during the last winter weeks. They gnawed the bark of a number of plants that have never been affected vole: Currants, gooseberry, raspberries, mulberry and even hazelnuts, Hybrid blueberries and Cornus mas were damaged and destroyed. Vole the preferences was very clear also, some plants were totally renskrapade from the bark, while others had little gnagsår here and there. The clear order of preference, we could identify looked like this:

Interestingly, it is also looking at which plants were protected from attacks vole. Bärtry, klibbal (that we use as Amtrad), all walnuts, sugar maple (Acer saccharum), staphylea colchica (Staphylea colchica), Minikivi (Actinidia kolomikta) and even chokeberry injured almost all of voles. However munching rabbits in the aroniornas shoots sticking up through the snow. Even the location of the plants seem to have had an impact on injuries. The plants are in the woods in the forest garden northeastern part remained almost completely undamaged by voles, whether it concerned coveted Rosaceae such as apple, peach and pear molars (x Sorbopyrus auricularis) or hazel, walnut and the currants.

lessons learned

The biggest lesson we have learned was that we simply had bad luck this winter. Plants to much to be expected with much wastage, but that we would face such a winter as we had just planted over 200 new tree is of course a little sour. It was over 50 years ago there was so much snow this last, we might have time to get any further with the establishment of the next winter with so much snow. Besides this, we have planned and actually even begun to make use of various measures to prevent the coming winter.

1. Accelerate succession: It became clear that the plants near the edge of the forest and in the carefully pruned grove where we have planted many sensitive plants fared much better. Probably it is because the succession has already come a long way here, and created an environment that is repugnant to water- and vole, including many tough and unsavory roots in the soil. To accelerate the succession in the rest of the garden we have already planted 150 alders and will add both silver maple (Acer saccharinum) and hybrid larch (Larix x marschlinsii).
2. Plant in nätkorgar: Although most were above-ground injuries this winter, we have also lost both grapes, pear, chestnut and oak for water voles ate their roots. Therefore, we will continue to plant anything that is the least desirable for water voles to plant in nätkorgar. More on how we manufacture them, and which new design we have chosen will in a future post. Even seedlings will have trunk protector, something we've botched the earlier.
3. Fence off entire cultivation: I have long wanted to have a garden that feels open and inviting, that blend into the landscape. Now I'm beginning to realize that the idea is good, but the wildlife is doing great damage. Although the hares could get through the game and set the fence to the great harm this winter I do not expect comparable amounts of snow in many years. This fall we will therefore add a few days to enclose the entire cultivation simply.
4. Attracting pests enemy: Even if we exclude predators like foxes and lynx by fencing in the culture, we can invest even more in other assistants. Today we have a few sticks of prey, but during the summer to travel further ten. In addition, we will focus more on creating habitats for vipers and others who like to eat voles, by creating sunny stone cairns and outsourcing more rishögar.

Some bright spots

It was honestly a bit gloomy atmosphere here for a while, but now when we see what plants actually survived and probably will produce fruit, it feels much better. Both our mulberry tree 'Illinois Everbearing' and apricot 'Hargrand' in full bloom now, likewise a self-fertile fjärlisranka (Schisandra chinensis). It promises to be a great year for bärtry and to our great satisfaction as the supplier itself fertile walnuts (Juglans regia) 'Ideal' and 'Stambiavaisis' that we planted last year passed the winter without any damage. And even though we lost many sötrönnar is even more that have begun to grow quite nicely, Maybe we will even be able to get the harvest in the us new varieties 'Nevezhinskaja' and 'Sacharnaja'. The many vole aisles led to the draining of odlingarn has been greatly improved, and there were no major problems with flooding. Also, I have seen many queen bumble bees flying in and out of the vole holes in search of the perfect home. Maybe it will be a good year for the bumblebees anyway!