This is the year I really got a feel for willow, because the intensity of the first plantings has given way to relief in the second and this year, the third. Like a cat, willow doesn’t really need you. We had enough rain this year that we had to do very few watering runs. It was the weeding and mowing that took up our time.
My schedule now turns on the hope that the spring and summer are rainy and the fall and winters are dry. Of course, the weather will no longer conform to any pattern so it’s a week to week thing.
All I can do now during dormancy besides wait for orders and ship dates is to pore over my database and see what numbers can tell me. We have planted 862 cuttings, both purchased (240) and home grown (622) over the 3 years GWF has been operational, about a 2.59 replication rate. But that’s just the gross numbers. I currently have 704 viable plants, a loss of nearly 18%. That’s due to my own inexperience. My first 70 cuttings were in pots for their first year, and that hampered their growth. (and in fact 4 of the 7 varieties are STILL in pots, so there’s that) That was because I didn’t get the farm property in hand and accessible for another year. And pots are much more work to plant than cuttings. So that first group showed a 50% loss by itself.
And my second mistake was to not refrigerate my cuttings last harvest because I thought the weather would stay cold enough. Yes, thank you climate change. We had spring in February this year, about 6 weeks early. I also didn’t regularly check for mold or fungus, and I lost a few dozen that way, even before the planting bed was ready.
We managed to finish planting before May, but we had to race to get the last cuttings in the ground because they were growing roots and leaves already. I had saved the rods on a north-facing porch, out of the sun, and usually very cold in the winter. While I cut and stored 685 cuttings, I only planted 604 and currently of those cuttings, only 454 are viable, with 42 more that are struggling.
Without a dedicated refrigerator, I couldn’t store them consistently. For various reasons, I won’t have one this year or probably next. My solution this year is to leave the rods on the plant til mid spring, and just cut as needed for orders and for our new set of beds. I hope this works and I lose fewer cuttings. I have also become a bit of a nag on the subject of “plant them right away!” Apologies, I came to it by sad experience.
Interestingly, one of my original suppliers of cuttings has a 100% success rate; of the 70 I planted, 70 are still viable. The other has a success rate of 82%, for 20 failed planted stalks out of 114. That sounds bad, but I only ordered 10 each of 10 varieties. They sent 14 extra cuttings across varieties, sort of a bakers dozen approach to orders. One variety didn’t grow at all, and maybe they were compensating me ahead of time. That’s one way to control inventory and loss. They also had a fail rate of 18% and they are an established and respected willow grower. But I think the weather can be tricky and likely everyone is caught short in one way or another these days. In that way, all crops grown outdoors are the same.
Hopes for the New Year -
A few months ago, a friend gave me some 20 bags of wool skirtings from her Romney sheep flock. My plan this winter is to take up the landscape fabric on the oldest bed and mulch it heavily with wool. To counteract the wind, I’ll cover the fleece with a 1”x2” netting. Hopefully it will mat or felt into breathable and long wearing natural mulch. This is the smallest bed and the wool plus netting plan is experimental, but I’m hopeful that eventually I can get rid of the plastic fabric.
And the second commitment for the new year is to take a pile of the Miyabeana rods and make some living gazebos and fencing. We have a surplus of Miya - 200 long rods - and that variety is tall and fast growing. This is going to be the fun part.
And someday, if it please the goddess, we will get some irrigation lines going and we can stop saving ice tea jugs.
We are trying to adapt along the way, but I still think, ‘not bad’ when I look at what we did, largely by hand, just two old ladies. And again, willow makes us look good.
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A note on inventory numbers and how squishy they can be.
My inventory count on plants is variable from date to date. I have had plants that looked dead come back to life and I have had whole plants nestled under others that had avoided being counted for months until I cut them back. I can attest how many plants, rods and cuttings I had at harvest last year, but the count varies from that to planting to fall inventory. The one thing I miss now that I am delaying harvest is having a verifiable number to count at the end of the year.
