Willow farm for free | starting a homestead uk | willow growing

you may wonder why we are in big big bertie blue bollocks big bertie blue bollocks traveling up the motorway well it's because fingers crossed in a little while we're gonna have like a farm's worth of willow now that's because where we used to live there's an old willow works nearby and i volunteered there before to help coppice and because there's kind of like a community-owned space because of the pandemic that means they basically haven't had anyone um volunteer them the person in charge has said do whatever you want coppice copies wherever and uh fill your boot oh and i forget the best bit they said that we can have all this willow for free [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] looks like because the willow's not been coppiced for nearly over two years since before the pandemic um it's definitely not basket making willow anymore here's an example of and of the height and here's how tall some of it's grown so we've got a couple of helpers as well today which is wicked we thought we're gonna do it all by ourselves but it looks like they've already basically got a van full for us we're not clearing the entire area we're just clearing a couple of rows basically some of the older rows because when i was here a few years ago there was only um basically a few here and a few uh probably about five meters into this field but this field if you can see it goes quite far back and it was just empty so we were coppicing and planting at the same time and like i say some of these plants i'm pretty sure the equivalent of this plant here is some of the plants that's about three years old so it's yeah i'm excited about getting going getting planted okay get started first one first one done now can i just sit and what hey hey whoa can i not just sit and watch you do each one [Music] [Music] [Laughter] this is the pile of willow that we've sourced so now it's just a case of planting it someone just go for another poop i smell dog poos first bundle about 15 left i'm already knackered so alicia and i hey give me that i'm gonna find it difficult to plant all this willow because it's uh a game now with echo to steal the pieces of willow that i'm trying to plant we came up last night we marked out about four different areas um some in the top field and some in the bottom field the top field they're here to do a job ideally because they're going to dry out some of the land that's quite wet as well as um obviously it's still going to be coppiced we're going to have there's a few different varieties that i've got that we just here that are i'm 100 certain that that is just that one variety so these are almost like the if we do tours or if we need to know you know we show people exactly this is the type of widow that we've got the four to four maybe five different types that we've got we know where they are there and down in the lower bit of the field we're going to um hopefully a living dome and some more so all right let's get started whoa okay before i show you that i just want to get into a bit more information about what i'm doing and why i'm doing it and yes it's been a few months so therefore i've had another haircut the willow is a great thing to plant for beginners like myself basically because once you've coppiced it you can just cut it into usable sections and stick it in the ground also it's not a big fan of well fertilized nutrient-rich soil so therefore again in just available land that you've got might be a good idea it does like wet ground and still needs to be well drained but it does like wet ground which is why you see it near a lot of streams and ponds and things so in that sense i would definitely be wary of putting it too near your house or to near pipes and things like that but obviously like here we're using it because it's it loves water and it wants to drink up as much as possible and we're hoping it's going to dry up this area of land now i've got an example here a lot of the websites that i researched said that it should be between 25 and 30 centimeters long that you do you're cutting which is about 10 to 12 inches as you can see i've cut mine a little bit longer generally they vary across the land but my thoughts are i'm sticking it a bit deeper into the ground so that it can out compete the grass we don't have enough money to put a wheat proof membrane all over the area that we want to put the willow so therefore we've basically this is one of the only options now checking me notes another thing that my research has come up with it said that spacing generally you want to do about 30 to 50 centimeters which is 12 to 20 inches i have done them about about a meter apart um mainly because after seeing what they were like at the willow farm yes it was two years worth of growth but alicia and myself were both a bit like it's claustrophobic and it was just a pain in the butt to kind of get through when the cops in so overall because we've planted these in wet areas some of which have competition clearly i've stuck willow literally i'm in and amongst that lot because of that they're i'm expecting that they're probably gonna take a bit longer and some of them may just not work at all some of them may just die off i'm i'm not sure but so far this example this one's been in it's now march this has been in since november granted it's it's still cold we had frost this morning um but there is signs of growth not much but there is signs one thing that i am going to try out though is that i've heard if you damage the side just you know not really damage but um sort of scratch the bark a little bit sometimes roots will come out of that so i'm gonna attempt a few down in the bottom field where i deliberately mark a kind of few of the willow sticks that i put in to see if they grow better for that reason i am going to be doing updates this year and in the years to come of what we're learning and how they're getting on so if you're interested in that hit the subscribe button and you'll find out okay back to the playing [Music] these are the five don't steal my willow i'm watching you jesus sunshine okay come here for a second let's have the sun behind me i'll set you down there because uh someone's in my face and i mean i've got white enough skin as it is let alone when it's being bleached by the sunlight so the different varieties that we've got are fonosia home eli crack welsh white and that one there is the mystery variety in addition to this alicia's mom and dad gave us some weeping willow and some twisted willow and then i've also bought some willow and a and a coppiced just from the local area some goat willow which is just kind of like a common willow that grows in a lot of hedgerows i don't think all of those will work some will definitely work better than others but it's a learning experience so we'll see how it goes before i go i just want to name a few youtubers that really helped me out in the research they've got some great videos on their channels and i think you guys should go check them out so they are hannah van helsit i think that's right please forgive me if i've got that wrong gardens for life and big green art i did look in other places but they're three youtube channels that if you're into willow and growing willow that's where i got a lot of my information from so go check them out thanks again for watching everyone um if you are someone who is growing willow and a similar stage to us put down in the comments below what are you learning is there any tricks or tips that you found out that i haven't mentioned in this video because i'm learning with you basically that's what this channel is for us is it's just a way to meet people who can teach us because yeah i'm a filmmaker and a photographer but i'm not really a farmer i'm quite new to it seeing information that you can share with us is very much appreciated okay anyway right i need to go off and do uh some more planning so thanks everyone i'll see you in the next one [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: A Great Alternative

Views: 3,746

Keywords: willow farm for free, how to grow willow, free trees for life, willow growing, starting a homestead uk, starting a homestead wales, homestead living uk, off grid homestead uk, how to plant willow, growing willow for profit, growing willow from cuttings, willow planting trees, free willow farm, willow planting, grow willow from tree cuttings, plant propagation, alternative living uk, alternative lifestyle uk, alternative living, a great alternative, willow craft

Id: WUILTn55p_c

Length: 9min 39sec (579 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 22 2022