Himalayan Balsam at Turnditch Orchard

The River Ecclesbourne which runs along the foot of our orchard is a conduit for the seeds of the Himalayan Balsam (HB). This is an invasive weed which needs to be controlled. Over the  past couple of years we've been removing any HB we've found growing on the land. It is under control now. You have to be very ruthless about its removal before it has the chance to go to seed. The seed pods pop and explosively scatter seed over quite a distance when they are ripe.

However the adjoining field and the river upstream of our site are full of this resilient weed and provide a source of new "infections" of HB. I noticed some growing in the silt at the edge of our river a few days ago, so I donned some waders to deal with the weed. It is fairly easy to uproot the  weed roots and all by gently pulling on the stem. If you leave any broken off weed stems they soon regrow.

Here's a picture of before and after:

Himalayan Balsam at the Turnditch Orchard

Himalayan Balsam removed from river bank

Note I removed the pile of weeds shown in the lower photo, they'll be incinerated. There's useful leaflet about controlling the weed from the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust here.

ASBOs for orchard owners.

The UK Government is introducing new rules aimed at preventing the spread of invasive alien plants. Landowners are exposed to 2500 GBP fines and a criminal conviction if they don't control these plants on their land. The focus is on Japanese Knotweed and also Giant Hogweed. However they've also included Himalayan Balsam in the scope of the legislation. 

We have found some Himalayan Balsam on our orchard plot and during the year have taken action to carefully remove the plants when we find them. The problem is largely under control. The seeds seem to be carried to the field along the route of the Ecclesbourne river. There are large infestations both upstream and downstream of our stretch of the river which act as a source so it is going to be a continual process of eradication. I do wonder how the adjoining land owners/tenants will deal with their infestations. As we're on the edge of a residential area there is a risk of ASBOs (Antisocial Behaviour Orders) and a criminal record.

Other links are here.

Investigating the river

We spent Sunday morning at the orchard site. I'd been intending for some time to get my wellington boots on and go along the river during the low summer water levels. As long as I avoided the obvious deeper areas I was okay and didn't get boots full of water. The banks are about 2.5 metres above the riverbed and quite steep, I pre-fixed a knotted rope to a tree so I'd be able to climb out again. 

One side of the orchard is a road embankment which leads to a railway bridge from the river. The road was built across the floodplain when the railway was first built, so quite a substantial amount of landfill was used to create the "hill" leading to the bridge. The bottom section of our field which forms the river bank has also had some build up of fill to allow access to the  road. It looks like the fill material was quarry chippings. Over the past 150 years this has been overgrown and no longer looks artificial. However when the river runs in full spate in the winter rains it fills almost to the top of our river banks. The river is a very different beast from the gentle brook of the summer months. The flooding causes erosion of the material dumped to form the ramp up to the road. 

Wash-out of the river bank

The washed out materiel is then dumped on the river bed. You can see the results of this in the above picture. The rubble is limestone chippings and appears to have built up above the normal level of the river bed. The picture below shows the roots of elm trees which have been exposed by the erosion of the bank during periods of river spate/flood.

Eroded tree roots on the river bank

We'll be removing these compromised trees in the autumn and as mentioned in an earlier blog replacing them with  live willow spiling to control the erosion of the river bank. During this inspection process I was assisted by two young apprentices. They  seemed to be intent on making much splashing in the river.

Apprentice river bank surveyors

We also managed some weed clearance, particularly the Himalayan Balsam  which is an unwanted invasive species. This is going to be an on-going battle because the weed is is rampant upstream and down stream of our site. We can at least prevent the seeds being formed on our land. There are some legal responsibilities in dealing with this weed.

Himalayan Balsam on the river bank

The Orchard - We've started clearance work.

Yesterday we started the process of clearing the plot in preparation for planning the orchard. The picture below is the strip of land next to the River Ecclesbourne. One of the local farmers has a right of access to his fields through this strip. We managed to to clear back about 80% over the undergrowth in the available time.

Given the uncertainty of what is hidden under the grass and brush we only using hand held tools to clear the ground during this first pass. We were using a Kawasaki KBH27 brush cutter and managed to burn through two tanks full of petrol in the clearing process. We're raking up the felled vegetation and will be hot composting it later. The brush was mostly grass, nettles and some Himalayan Balsam. The Himalayan Balsam is an invasive species and will take a few years of repeated strimming to eradicate.  Given the proximity of the river spraying with chemicals is not an option.

We'll be relaying the hedge on the left hand side of the picture at some point soon. It looks like there's been no proper hedge maintenance for a good few years.  I was pleased to note there is some healthy looking English Elm saplings forming part of the old hedge. We'll do what we can to preserve this species of tree. The question is should we lay Derbyshire Style or Midlands style, I was raised in Buckinghamshire so I prefer the Midlands or Southern Style hedging. 

We also need to have a missing gate post installed in the entrance to the main field to enable us to rehang the steel gate which we found laying on the ground.