Crassula helmsii take 2 - Dunham Massey 23 June 2013

We had a gap in the program labeled "to be confirmed".....

At fairly short notice this became a trip back to Dunham Massey to get on with the attempt to kill the Crassula helmsii in one pond by excluding light with black plastic.

The first task turned out to be helping to take down two "marquees" in the garden which had been used for a wedding and other events - as they are not designed to stand in high winds.  We then moved onto the pond.

The roll of plastic still looked quite large - but in actual fact it is a large pond with a lot of Crassula....

Our four volunteers donned waders, and used all the plastic that was left from last time to cover a section of floating Crassula mat that was showing beyond the first sheet that was put in place during our last trip to Dunham Massey.  Without more sheeting it did not make sense to disturb the rest of the crassula - so we packed up and went back to the carpark.

Before leaving we had a short session check the land between the carpark and the wall for Himalayan Balsam - this used to be a major problem and we have done many work days in this area.  The original strategy was to pull the plants but wasn't working then many of the smaller trees were removed which allowed machines to be used to eliminate the balsam problem.  This second strategy has succeeded as we found very few plants - which were easily dealt with.

I assume one day we will be back in the pond with even more plastic as so far we have only covered a small fraction of the invasive water plant, and it needs to be left in the dark for between 6 months and a year.