Having kept the competition on the tansy plants under some control and reverting as the days draw in to Sunday work parties, we’ll now be looking to clear up after the hay cut and prepare for some reseeding. There’s also work to do on the Cornfield arable site and on the Cornfield wildflower area.

There’s still some hay lying about in the Cornfield grassland and arable, which we need to clear ready for reseeding. There’s also been a bit of cutting, spraying and rotavating in preparation for a false seed bed in the arable section.

We did the Tansy Beetle count on Bank Holiday Monday and found a disappointing total of 351, particularly at the Pond where the northern mound only presented 126 compared with last year’s thousands. It was a week later than the previous year and we’d seen many more a fortnight earlier. Perhaps the spell of bad weather had sent them into hibernation.