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alec

By Alec

Hello, I bought a gooseberry plant early last, planted it and got a very good crop of berries in the summer. I pruned the bush hard last winter and this year had considerable growth but alas only two berries! Coul you please tell what mistakes I made. Many thanks,
Alec




Answers

 

they fruit on last years wood so the stems you pruned off had the next years fruit.
I prune a 1/3 of the stems every year so 2/3 of the branches fruit.

26 Jul, 2016

 

The way to care for gooseberries:

In February prune for shape, removing any crossing or weak branches and reducing the leading shoots by up to a third. The laterals (the branchlets that grow off the main branches) are where you'll get the fruit - prune those to leave about five buds. Then fertilize with sulphate of potash. A mulch wouldn't hurt either.

In late spring/early summer keep a lookout for the small caterpiilars of the gooseberry sawfly as they can strip a bush of all its leaves in a few days. They hatch on the undersides of the leaves near the tips of the branches usually.

In midsummer you do a second prune, tipping back the leaders of the main branches and again shortening the laterals.This makes the fruit a lot easier to pick and helps to maintain a good air circulation through the bush.

This should produce a bumper crop. Sadly some foul beast of a person came into my garden and took all my gooseberries just before they were ripe and I'd only had a couple of pounds off them - still fuming...

27 Jul, 2016

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