Last month I was pleased to welcome onto site PWC for a corporate work day, on what was a glorious warm, sunny Friday. 15 people from the firm joined us for a day of planting reed out on the old silt lagoon 7 and seedling in the polytunnel.
We grow up to around 50000 reed seedlings a year in our polytunnel and the first step of propagation is sowing the seed gathered earlier in the year from our very own stock out on site. Each propagation tray has 84 plugs, capable of producing around 160-180 seedlings. The team from PWC seeded 100 trays, which should produce around 1600 seedlings - a fabulous days work!This reed should be ready for planting out by August this year and will be used on areas of silt lagoon 7 and Phase 2.
The other half of the PWC team spent the day on the old silt lagoon 7 (the bit looking south from the new viewing screen). This is the other end of the reed growing process - planting the seedlings out on site. The group concentrated on creating a strip of reed along the windward side of the western island on the lagoon, which will help to stabilise the bank and produce plenty of growth to spread into the existing reed on the leeward side of this island. Around 2500 seedlings were planted throughout the day in 20 protective cages - another great effort!
Hobbys kept us all entertained throughout the day, performing their aerial hunting displays over the site.
Thanks to all who took part and to volunteer Julie Straw and John Elwell for helping with the day.
Reed seedlings ready for planting. Andy Hay (rspb-images.com)