Watering Humphrey’s End

The recent drought has not been good for newly planted hedges this year, so Stroud Valleys Project put out a last minute call to help water one of the bigger ones that’s under a bit of duress.

We planted this hedge back in March and it’s over 1,000 trees. It’s been superbly stock proofed and will make a super hedge once it gets going. The eastern end is located on a spring line and is pretty damp, but the west side is pretty dry.

We met up with Stuart in the afternoon, and basically just filled buckets from the cattle trough at one end. Some people in between the stock fences doing the watering, and everyone else sherpa-ing buckets. I started off doing in the middle doing the watering, but then switched to carrying.

It was pretty hard work – the hedge line went uphill from the trough, and two 5 litre buckets gets pretty heavy on the arms. In the end, we did a relay system to carry buckets just half the distance and the empty ones back.

So after about one and a half hours, all the plants were thoroughly watered which should get them through the next week or so until the rains arrive (if the rains arrive ...).