Ock Valley Walk, Town End, 4th July 2015

By Andrew -
Our task for this morning was to clear around the young trees we had planted over a year ago, as they were in danger of being swamped by nettles and goosegrass. We also needed to clear vegetation back from parts of the woodchip path, hunt down Himalayan Balsam and pick up litter.

We didn't have to look far for Himalayan Balsam. We could easily see the bright pink flowers sticking up above the nettles. The problem was, how to get to it through the nettles. On making out way through to one patch, we found a small silver birch sapling, completely swamped by the surrounding vegetation. 

At first there didn't appear to be too much litter, but eventually one bag of recycables and another of rubbish were filled, mostly from the Drayton Road end of the site.

At  the tea break, we enjoyed cake, allotment grown strawberries as well as delicious biscotti, which Sally had brought back from Italy. Unfortunately there are no photos of these as they disappeared so quickly!

By the end of the session we had freed up a number of young trees and had some satisfactory heaps of very tall Himalayan Balsam. It was quite difficult to drag some people away from the latter very compulsive task, but there are many more small plants waiting to spring up. 
-Eleanor



Kevin tackles the jungle

Kate and Kristine pull up Himalayan Balsam

A tiny silver birch is revealed

Tall Himalayan Balsam in flower

Record breaking specimen

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