I've had one hell of a year and it's not been a great one for my trees, especially not these beech.
I've not had nearly enough time to properly look after any of my trees let alone freshly collected ones. I have learned a lot about the layout of my new property and just how unprotected the majority of it is from the wind and how damaging that can be, nothing has been fertilized as much as it should have been which i'm sure is a large factor in how badly these trees have fared.
Unfortunately there are only two left, and I am not convinced they are going to make it through the winter.
The long branches were left as a sap flow, had lovely green leaves on it for most of the year but in the past month or so the heat and the wind has been savage and all leaves left for sap flow have crisped up and as you can maybe tell by the colour of them, seemed to have died right back to the main trunk, very small amount of green left on it and no sign of next seasons buds being formed, and no lignification.
This one has done which I was surprised about as it was one of two that was left with entirely no sap flow. I don't believe that is a "healthy" amount of leaves for a collected beech to have this late in the season, no signs of lignification yet however there are signs of next seasons buds forming. I am unsure when in the season beech switch to working on vascular growth but there is not much sign of root growth in the basket, if it was not tied to the side of the garage it would most certainly cowp over.
For reference all of the beech trees and hedges in the local area have already lignified this years growth and next seasons bud are firmly in place.
It is a disappointing result that is for sure but as mentioned initially this hedgerow was destined for a bonfire as my brother would rather have a driveway than a hedgerow for some reason. I did my best but life did sure fuckin throw me some curveballs this year. It saddens me that I haven't managed to keep them going as I have since found out that my grandfather first planted these as young saplings in 1955.
What do we think nutters? Do I have any hope to get these through the winter?