After six months of harsh weeding, we started PLANTING YOUR TREES! Trees are begin out into the ground, in spaces created by the laborious and treacherous wildling pines and invasive weeds clearing. Now the fresh baby trees are into real soil, getting REAL rain from the sky and food from the ground . I planted a few, and will steadily continue until the weather - or my strength - craps up on me! Your trees will be attended to, care for, observed and pinned onto Google Earth where you can follow the new forest growing.
Kanuka and manuka were collected from the nursery and brought to my garden. Every possible window of time, I get the gear, out a few in a bag and carry them with me to a new plating spot. Once in the ground, mulched and protected, I marked the spot with a stick, and log the GPS points for each tree so that I can place it on the map.
I will visit them regularly to check on their health and growth.
I am still waiting the material to build the name plaques and that will be the next step! having your name connected to new growing trees!
If you think these trees are soooo small, well, you're right. Each tree starts from a seed. I plant them at a few months of age. So they establish well in the ground (imagine planting them in a foreign ground when they are 2 m!), and absorb our (yours, in this case) C02, which is a long process, while carbon consumption and its emission is short. Approximately, in 10 years, 10 trees of this species will have absorbed the CO2 of 8 days of meat lunches or dinners, or 600 km of travel by car.
In 5 years they will be approximately 1.5 m high, in 10 years three meters. They grow fast, last for decades and even centuries, reach up to 30 m in height, are the foundations of the forest. Without them nothing comes up, they create shade and keep the ground together and circulate water from the bottom (streams) to the sky (rain), preventing drought. They resist fires. They are the symbol of New Zealand, they are the tea tree or manuka of essential oil and honey (manuka honey).
Stay tuned for more stories.........
