Officially or technically spring has sprung about 9 days ago but we’re not going into that at the minute.
What does spring mean for us as a Business?
For us as a tree care company, rather than a cutting company, it means work our work season is about to get busier when the rest of the tree industry is slowing. Why you ask, well, for a start bird nesting season doesn’t affect us. We do have access to a couple of very good ecology companies when needed but as we’re not in a position where we could potentially disturb nesting birds we rarely have to call upon them.
Why do we get busier though
Trees are springing out of their dormant periods and as such the good old terravent begins to get more in demand than normal, although I will admit it has been a fairly busy year for it anyway. Soil moisture levels make banging the probe in easier and the fracture profile seems better, if it’s too wet I think it can expand like a balloon rather than form fissures.
All the beneficial microbes start firing up as well as the soil temperatures rise and as we’re feeding them as much as we’re feeding the soil to make nutrients more bio-available for trees it really is an ideal time to be out.
It’s also an ideal time to break out the Organic material.
By that, we mean top dressing with mulch, which in our case is usually a large wood chip to hold in soil moisture and help keep ambient soil temperatures up. Lots of people will claim that mulching can alleviate soil compaction, but while it can help prevent it and reduce the risk of compaction getting worse, the science clearly shows that even after years of repeated mulching compaction levels don’t really change.
Worms and other creatures will pull this mulch into the soil over time, helping to increase soil fertility and organic matter content so it’s important to keep it topped up once a year for the full effect but we rarely apply more than two inches or 50mm to the surface.
Spring is also the time of year for incorporating inoculated or enriched biochar into the soil with the air spade. We don’t use an off the shelf enriched biochar, we buy the raw biochar and mix it with a suitable amendment to our own recipe, and unlike some companies, we don’t work this into the whole rooting area as you will cause an obscene amount of damage to the delicate beneficial soil fungi and roots negating the majority of the benefits that you are hoping to gain.