New Tricks

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:

‘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

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 weed

Removal 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 specimen

Is 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:

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 

(Prunella vulgaris):

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:

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 …