New arrivals in the Nursery!

There was much excitement in the Nursery in the last week, with the arrival of a shipment of new saplings!

With the lockdown and stringent COVID-19 policies (both National and University-imposed) still in place, the EucXylo Project – by virtue of delivering contracted research in an economically-important agricultural area – has been provided with a limited number of permits for certain team-members to carry out essential work.

While wearing masks and maintaining social distancing precautions adds to the challenges of manual labour, senior staff were only too happy to get stuck in for the preparatory work: carting bags and wheelbarrows of sand and compost around, and preparing several hundred litres of the soil mixture using shovels. On the day the saplings arrived, ready for planting, the long potting tables were already in place, complete with a bag of soil mixture for each sapling.

At this point some reinforcements arrived – with newly-issued permits for essential work! The EucXylo students were also only too happy to get involved in the necessary tasks in the Nursery, and displayed that a wonderful team spirit that has become such a distinguishing feature of our group.

What followed was a careful process of unpacking, re-labelling, and planting our new acquisitions: all two hundred of them!

Once the new saplings had been re-labelled and planted, they were carried into the Nursery and organized neatly among the other plants (which had been re-shuffled to make space in the already brimming facility!). With all the work done, the happy team was able to breathe a sigh of satisfaction (into our masks) and admire the new arrivals in their new home.