By ‘C’:
Green-Gymmers
are pretty used to being flexible, metaphorically as well as literally. Nevertheless, we were perturbed by news of a
change of plan for this week – but not as angry as people have been at that
site in the past:
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| ‘Parliamentary
siege lines, Wallingford Castle’: re-enactment, English Civil War Society, June
2015; for the purposes of the display, lined up in a place where no parliamentary soldier stood during the 17th-century civil war |
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| Royalist artillery, also historically out of place. Background, left: the one section of real castle wall left standing. Right: 18th-century spire of St Peter’s Church – medieval original destroyed during the siege |
The work we
had been anticipating was annual maintenance of the pond area at Wallingford
Castle Meadows (WCM). Instead, we were
redeployed to what we were initially told would be “Dock control in King’s
Meadow, following a site meeting with SODC.”
[SODC, pronounced ‘SodCee’: South
Oxfordshire District Council, who own the land. – Ed.]
So a return
visit to a part of Wallingford Castle Meadows we had not been to in quite a
while ...
But dock control?! In the sense of
clearing dock plants, with hand-tools? Impossible
with the ground as hard as it is at the moment! – was our first reaction. That
we had learned through painful experience in a previous year, with garden-forks
and lazy-dogs, at a site where the soil was not as compacted as it generally is
at Castle Meadows. [All those site-users at WCM, esp. the bovine sort – Ed.] It
was like scraping concrete with a table-fork.
Researching
the subject on the net did little to lift the spirits:
Target: Broadleaf dock (Rumex obtusifolius) – injurious weedRemoval beneficial (whether for biodiversity or improved pasturage),
but terribly difficult to achieve:
- Docks are tenacious – “a substantial taproot” is how one specialist website puts it
- They can germinate from either roots or seed
- They can germinate year-round
- A mature dock can produce up to 60,000 seeds pa, for 5 years
- Seeds remain viable up to 80 years
- Docks can go on producing seed even after they have been cut
The taproot of a dock can be short and fat, like a parsnip,
or long – as on this specimenIs it feasible to undertake dock-control by hand?The Lazy Dog Tool company recommends its products for this purpose where there aren’t too many docks (200 per 25 m²), but adds that the work is best done “outside the growing season when the ground is moist.”Most authorities suggest instead:
- Topping in summer (as an emergency/cosmetic measure)
- Spraying at rosette stage (usu. late April) – a 3-year programme
- Soil aeration
- Improved drainage
Which is
why, in previous years at WCM: either we’ve done weed-control in early spring,
at rosette stage; and/or site warden has – with the necessary permissions –
engaged contractors to do selective spraying in early summer. As SODC would surely know? Or was it possible that they were suffering
from that interesting sociological phenomenon that, however smart the
individual members, the collective IQ of an organization can be lower than that
of a dock plant?
It did occur
to our thoughts that topping might perhaps be done by scythe. In use of which, some of our number have
experience and hands-on training.
There was
also this advice, on a North-American webpage:
Curly and broadleaf dock are difficult to control by hand-pulling because of their deep taproot. The root usually breaks off and plants can regenerate from the portion left in the soil. Cutting them off at least 2 inches below the soil surface with a shovel or other implement is more effective.
(from Weed Control in Natural Areas in the Western United States
– UC Weed Research & Information Center: wric.ucdavis.edu)
If dock-plants
can be cunning and stubborn, so can Green-Gymmers. I for one was certainly willing to give it a
go with lazy-dog, spade, fork, scythe, slasher, dassel-basher, shears, loppers,
&c to see if anything worked.
Realistically, however, most of us anticipated that it just would not be
possible to get sufficient purchase on the soil with point or edge of a tool;
and a good number of us also envisaged that we would be expected by hapless site-warden
on behalf of remote site-owner to go on trying regardless.
Some
volunteers even went so far as seriously to consider pulling out of the session
altogether. Others dared to dream of
alternative tasks, to which we might be set, such as annual maintenance of the
pond area – or being sent further afield:
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| Wittenham Clumps - view (across Wallingford) from Crowmarsh Hill (photo taken earlier this year) |
Perhaps to do some animal-tracking, to recover the interesting beasts which had gone walkabout from the Earth-Trust farm at Long Wittenham? Now that would have been
fun! Although I am not quite sure what
we would have done with the creatures, if we had caught up with them. Sheep we have herded often enough, but not llamas.
Then came
clarification of our mission from the site warden:
We won’t be pulling the docks, just cutting with loppers (or another preferred hand tool) and collecting what we’ve cut. It’s simply to stop the seed from spreading this year. I’ll be going back in month or so’s time to spot-spray the re-growth on the docks we’ve cut.
Phew! Dassel-bashers were sharpened, and sickle-blades
given a keen edge. Green-Gymmers rallied and prepared to do battle:
It turned
out that some of the dock plants could be uprooted reasonably easily, if given
a firm enough tug.
Along the
way, we could admire the “very good sward structure”. There may not be much biodiversity with
regard to flowers in King’s Meadow, but there is a good variety of
grasses. This one attracted the
admiration of some volunteers for its blue sheen:
There was
the occasional glimpse of an interesting flower. Here a Selfheal
Among the
wildlife spotted – but you had to be quick – was a Roesel's Bush-cricket (Metrioptera roeselii), a Skipper, Essex/Small (telling these apart depends on
spotting the colour of the antennae, which in turn depends on the thing staying
still long enough for a human observer to see) …
and
froglets:
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| Common Frog (Rana temporaria) |
The wonders
of tea-break could almost be subject of a blog in their own right. Besides a wondrous ginger-cake, made with
generously proportioned pieces of stem ginger (thank you, Joan!) and, of
course, tea/coffee, there was a warden’s tale of having recently retrieved a
stray cow from the river, without having to resort to calling the Fire &
Rescue Service.
There was
also news of a conservation-success story, which is very close to
Wallingford-Green-Gymmer’s hearts. An
otter has been seen in the River Thames, opposite Howbery Park. That I learned when I happened to stop for a
moment to talk with someone I didn’t know, while walking along the tow-path to
the session this morning. Not only was
the person who saw it, someone whom we at WGG know; but when I shared the
information with the group at tea-break, the warden was also able to tell us
that there is proof that the otter-holt on site is being used.
This was of
particular interest to us because Wallingford Green Gym built the first holt.
It was one of the earliest projects
undertaken when we were still a pilot project, c 2002. More recently, WGG constructed its
replacement. (Watch this blog in the
coming month for our next visit to Castle Meadows, when we hope to be able to
publish the photo which proves that an otter has made use of the facilities we
laboured to provide.)
Green-Gymmers
also spent much of the tea-break looking at the gate leading into King’s Meadow:
They were
not in fact gazing longingly at it, thinking of freedom at the end of the
session. (At least I hope they weren’t!) They were determining the best way to effect
a repair to the latch. Fortunately, the
cows have not yet noticed that the latch no longer engages:
This is not
our problem, in the sense that it was not a job we were called on to do
today. Green-Gym minds, however, just
love to be engaged in that kind of practical problem-solving exercise.
Before
returning to dock control (also demolition of any clusters of thistles or
ragwort along the way), those who wished could join in another task. This they very sweetly described as my having
“organized a treasure hunt.” This was
the prize, for which we were hunting:
One pair of
loppers, dropped for urgent photo-call – and do you think I could find them again
afterwards? It took a fellow
Green-Gymmer to do that: by looking in a section of the field which I didn’t
think I had been in …
