Springtime is upon us and with it my seabuckthorn plants are in leaf and starting to extend new shoots – so all is well.
In response this week they have all had a dose of seaweed. This follows on from the organic plant feed pellets that they had two weeks ago. So the purpose of the seaweed is to provide a micronutrients to improve health and reduce stress. This is particularly important since last year’s disease outbreak remains fully diagnosed and most probably developed as a response to stress.
As I spray with a knapsack sprayer I have said before the advantage is that every plant is visited. I have come across five plants that had the disease last year and are showing signs again. The first two have been pruned back. The other three are not showing significant symptoms. They are in the area that started with the problems last year and again this is with Elizaveta. Having said that the other Elizaveta neighbouring the suspects are fine and healthy so with tight management I am hoping that the issues will remain under control.
In terms of the application of the seaweed I am using Symbio super concentrated 50% liquiud seaweed. The product is much thicker than the one I used last year. I am applying at a rate of 40:1, with one 10lt knapsack full covering up to 250 2 year old plants. The same 10lt probably covers 100 of the 2011 planting. I am finding that in an hour I can cover around 200/250 plants per hour.
I have to add that since I started writing this blog I have been watching the plants and although they have not been scorched by the seaweed application we have now had 14 days of dry and warm/hot weather. The plants are not showing signs of growth and another time in dry weather I might reduce the concentration of these regular feeds.
The other current job is weeding. two weeks of dry weather are starting to bake the ground hard. Consequently I would expect to hoe one row of 90 plants in an hour. This is dependent upon the amount of thistles in the rows. There are increasing numbers of creeping thistle and I need to get on top of it before is spreads out of control.
I had thought that weeding would have been a job for twice a fortnight but it is now becoming a daily job.
As the ground is drying it is also going to be fit enough to have lorry deliveries of compost. As I am weeding I notice how much moisture there is where there are broadleaved weeds around the plants. Where the ground is bare or just has some grass tussocks – the ground is hard. This is a driver to get on with putting compost around the plants in order to retain some upper soil moisture as well as mulch the weeds.
It is remarkable how much time it takes to maintain control on just 5000 plants when it is organic and reduced to hand maintenance. I have a helper now doing 14 hours a week. so that will see some of this work under control.
The next priority is to have a fixed plan as to how to harvest and handle the coming harvest. It might be small but it still needs to be managed to retain optimum quality. So that’s the brain work for the current month and the muscle work as well.
