We heard about Gone West, https://gonewest.com/, a tree planting organisation that provides free trees and applied for trees from them. They told us that they prioritise project that can receive 5,000 trees or more, so I agreed to take that many and trust that we will find help to plant them, or give some away to other projects and farms in the area. Here is an invitation for some of our planting days in February:
We had to collect the trees from Castelo Branco, around 2 hrs drive away, but thankfully a couple in the area offered to collect them for me if I paid for the fuel, as they wanted to visit that area anyway. They managed to fit the trays of trees stacked on their sides in a medium, low top van, plus a small trailer. Here are the trays of 5,000 trees once they arrived on the land: Cork oak, Holm oak, Portuguese oak, European oak, Spanish swamp oak, Pine, Chestnut, Ash, Alder, Myrtle bush, Hawthorn:
We started planting in an area near the road, with the aim to create a privacy barrier. We tried a syntropic method of planting several different species in the same hole so that they support each other and the most suitable type will be the one to thrive and be kept.
By the river we planted the tree species that need more water: Ash, Alder, Swamp oak, European oak
Parallel to the road we planted tree species that can cope with less water, and are more fire resistant, to create a privacy and noise screen that is also fire resistant:
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