Garden Centre

Friday, December 14, 2007

Busy December

It never stops, does it?

This month I’m cutting down my tall-growing bush roses by about a half to help prevent wind-rock loosening and damaging their roots and shortening all the branches on standard roses. I have around three bare-rooted rose bushes to go into the ground this month, but I want to give it another week before planting them out.

Then there’s my soft fruit – The bible (RHS Guide to Pruning) says ‘Sideshoots that were shortened to five leaves in early summer should be pruned back a further 5cm to 7.5cm (2in to 3in). With blackcurrants, leave all the buds intact, but with white and redcurrants remove all but the top four buds.’ I don’t know about you, but I have to prune with the book in my hand to make sense out of all this – although, to be fair, currants are very forgiving and seem to keep fruiting whatever I do to them.

I’ve had to dig up my sweet gooseberry, not because it was a bad plant, it wasn’t, it was wonderful but THAT DOG (aka Falco) , not only ate just about every berry before we could get to pick them but he also:
A – got colic several times as a result
B – got a bad gooseberry scratch near his eye that got infected
C – trod on the gooseberry thorns so often as he trampled the bush to get to the ripe fruit that I was forever bandaging his feet (then he ate the bandages, given half the chance).

So, given that we’re not going to get rid of the dog, and he’s eaten his way through two fruit cages in as many years (literally eaten the netting, not just chewed holes in it) the temptation of the dessert gooseberry was too much for him (and it) to survive. It’s gone to the allotment where I can hope it will thrive and so will Falco.

Labels: rose growing, soft fruit, winter pruning

The All Seasons Gardener at 2:09 PM

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