Grow your own Boat

The grow your own boat project is going well so far.  All the willow twigs I have stuck in the ground along the fence line at the shop have sprouted except for the ones that shop neighbor Tim's dog Shasta has dug up. Shasta loves to dig up ground squirrel burrows.  So, at last count, I have something like 50 willow plants growing.  There will probably be several withes per plant, probably enough total to make a basket. I think boat rib size twigs take at least two years to grow. We will find out.

Here's a typical sprout. I have one row growing north south of which this is a specimen. I have another row growing east west which is getting shaded by ice plants and is a little slower coming up.

 

And here's a shot down the east-west row, an attempt to show more than one plant at a time.  Problem is that green is a marvelous camo color for a green background.

And among all this stuff, a mushroom pops up as well.  Don't know what it's called, but a mycelium is a good thing to have in a plot where you are trying to grow something.  That white thing next to the mushroom is a piece of plastic foam.  Don't know what the significance of that is other than that plastic is ubiquitous and we need some plastic eating mushrooms.

Inadvertent Coppicing.

The other day I was out front of the shop looking for twigs and I zeroed in on this particular tree in the corner of the lot. It looked like a volunteer, seeds blown in or dropped by birds.  I have no idea what the species is, some sort of non-native evergreen whose seed escaped from somebody's yard.

Anyway, when I examined the tree more closely, I found out that someone once before had decided that they didn't want the tree that close to the building and had chopped it down leaving a 6 inch stump protruding out of the ground.  The root system was still intact and of course sent up new sprouts which now are two to three inches in diameter and 15 feet tall.  Inadvertent coppicing.