Category Archives: Fruit growing

HOW TO PRUNE YOUR GOOSEBERRIES

To keep your Gooseberry’s healthy and productive we need to prune then this is quite easy if you follow a few simple rules
Gooseberries make fruit in 2 places: little spurs on the old wood and at the base of side-shoots that grew the year before.

It should take 2 years to shape your plant into a sturdy framework of mostly upright branches which all point more or less away from the centre.

With a mature bush, you just need to keep the centre free of ingrowing branches and trim back the new season’s side shoots to help divert energy to the berries that will appear at their bases.
If pruning a standard its exactly the same just on top of the main growing stem.
Always use Sharpe secateurs as clean cuts heal much better
Once the shape of the Gooseberry bush is established normally 2 or 3 years
its just a matter of maintaining the shape
SUMMER PRUNING: In the first week of July but no earlier, prune new side-shoots to 5 leaves. Dont prune the main branches unless the tips have mildew.

WINTER PRUNING: During the winter, cut back the leading stems by a third to a half of their new growth. Now shorten all the lateral side-shoots that you took down to 5 leaves in the summer: this time, cut them back to two buds. If you cut them back to three buds, you will get more, smaller but more fruit

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MULCHES AND MULCHING

Sounds like a double act and in fact this simple technique can bring more than two positives to the garden,quick, easy and great for you garden,lots of materials can be used as mulches,Manure,seaweed,compost,leafmould,grass cuttings,cardboard even wool all of then adding vital nutrients to our garden

This is the way we add all the fertility to our No-Dig beds allowing the soil  organisms to  incorporate the mulch into the vegetable bed

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HOW TO GROW CITRUS – Kaffir Lime

Growing Citrus can be tricky as they like lots of light, feeding well in the growing season but dont like to be kept wet, but they are tough and even very poorly specimens can be revived.
Lemons and Oranges are great to grow purely for scent and the odd fruit but my favorite is Kaffir Lime as its an essential  ingredient in Thai cooking and almost Impossible to buy fresh and the fresh leaves add so much more to a dish when used.

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RASPBERRIES – HOW TO TRAIN AND PRUNE

Raspberries are easy to look after if you follow some simple rules for pruning them to make sure you get maximum crop which also helps to reduce there chance of disease as there not as congested.Your Raspberries will be either Summer fruiting called floricane types or Autumn Fruiting called primocane and as i grow then next to each other its easy to see the difference.These Raspberry were all planted earlier in the year and its important to get your stock plants from a reputable nursery
After you have pruned you raspberries its best to either burn or dispose of the trimming but dont add them to your compost heap as you may spread disease spores

I have been as asked which secateurs I use  Okatsune Secateurs
from Niwaki who have a fantastic range of superb pruning tools

The Nursery I use for my fruit is Blackmore fruit

 

 

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TWOOL – OLD IDEA REVISTED

Just occasionally you come across something so simple you wonder why people have not been using it for years.  Twine is a garden essential but most of it comes from man made plastics.Twool  is compostable,organic natural fibre and biodegrades quickly in the garden and we can all make a small difference  by using it for our gardening jobs

http://www.twool.co.uk

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