Yesterday saw us potting up the remaining Scots Pine and getting them into the poly tunnels. As usual I had the camera in hand. Some would say that this is a cunning ploy for me to avoid the heavy lifting, that is not the case but is a rather handy bonus 🙂

Phil considering binning this one!!

Phew, he’s only removing some of the grass from the root ball.

We managed to find a few interesting heathers as well.

and some rather nice lichen with red flowering trumpets.

The watering area before placing into the tunnels

Smudge doesn’t care about the Pines’ ‘Just throw the Ball Phil!!’

More watering

Important to keep watering until the water runs clear. The grit is dusty and all the fine particles need to be washed out of the bottom.

The Old Tunnel

and the new tunnel

the rest went to Phil’s place to go on his heat bed for a month or so. These were the trees with poorer root systems.

This was our last collecting trip this Spring. If all goes well we are looking at further collecting in the Autumn.

Here some photos from our collecting trip today, well, actually it’s now yesterday. To knackered to type much about it. I’ll let the photos do the talking were I can.

You can see that these Scots Pines have been lifted from a bog. They are self seeded and when asking for permission to collect the farmer told me that they are all scheduled for destruction as they shouldn’t be there. We are happy to try and save them 🙂

First one of the day.

All trees are bagged and taped up to stop the roots drying out.

Nice bark on some if not all of the trees collected.

Trees rooted into the top 6 inches of sphagnum moss, no roots go any deeper. Trees can be dug out in a few minutes.

I wasn’t the only one snapping away.

A large but nice multi trunk.

Clipping out some dead bits.

Easy to dig out.

Bagged and taped up.

Phil, the heavy lifter 🙂

Stephen opts for a tiny one.

and another small one for Stephen, see the pattern here 🙂

We decided to leave this one!!

Scattered everywhere!

Too big for today but cut back for future lifting.

Literati?

Another tall one but as it was closer to the car it came with us.

Lots of fine white tips to the roots.

Phil wondering why these new gloves don’t work very well. Finished lifting time to head home.

Back in the driveway.

Grit ready and waiting.

Pines in for the potting up session tomorrow, now today!

Phil doing more heavy lifting.

We managed to get the two biggest ones potted up before we finished for today.

More later, off to bed!   zzzzzz…..