Pruning Gooseberries

Although January is a good month for pruning Gooseberries so far as the bushes are concerned, birds have to be considered. The more a Gooseberry bush is pruned, the easier it is for the birds to get access to the buds on the shoots left, and birds love to get into the bushes and pick the buds out. The earlier the pruning is done, the more time the birds have to strip the shoots. Growers find it wise to limewash their Gooseberries in winter, run threads about the bushes from branch to branch, and defer the pruning till the buds begin to swell.

Young Gooseberry bushes are formed by cutting about three times in successive years, as in the case of other trees. The annual pruning of developed bushes concerns itself principally with the summer shoots, as the Gooseberry is mainly a spur bearer. These shoots are best dealt with by summer pruning, followed by late winter or spring pruning. Whether or not the shoots have been half-pruned in summer, they should be reduced to short stumps in winter, as it is difficult and painful to gather the fruit from Gooseberry bushes which are full of young shoots.

Pruning Peaches And Nectarines

This is partly summer and partly winter or spring work, but the system is reversed, the summer pruning dealing with the old shoots which have borne fruit (these are cut quite out), and the winter or spring pruning with disbudding the young shoots which are to fruit in the ensuing summer. It will be gathered from this that the Peach is not a spur bearer, but a young wood fruiter. The trees are generally trained fan-shape for tying to walls or wire trellises. They are, in a word, flat, not bush trees.

Fig. 16. - Pruning Gooseberry.

a. Branches to be cut off.

b. Branches to be cut out of the centre.

c. If cut here, overcrowding would occur.

d. How to prune so that a bud e. Points upward, and the new shoot grows as denoted by the dotted line.

They need shortening back three times from the "maiden" tree, and this is generally done by the nurseryman, who sells the tree ready trained. The price is relatively high, it is true; but as Peaches require skilful handling, it is worth while for amateurs to buy them in a fairly advanced stage. They need then only shorten the branches by one-third after planting.

The side shoots between the main branches are the fruit bearers. They will themselves push shoots as well as expand flowers either in winter or spring, and these shoots must be reduced to two, one at the base and one at the tip, by what is called "disbudding" - that is, picking them out with finger and thumb directly they commence to grow. The shoot at the base will grow to a length of eighteen inches or so (if much more than this the tree should be lifted and root pruned the following winter) during the summer, and may be tied in to fruit the following year. The shoot left at the tip of the current bearing growth is only retained in order to maintain a free flow of sap, and need not be allowed to expand more than a couple of leaves, when the tip may be pinched off.

By this simple routine, which any amateur can learn by a season's observation and experience, a constant supply of fruiting shoots is maintained in Peaches and Nectarines year after year.