GOOSEBERRY GROWING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 May 1940, Page 9

GOOSEBERRY GROWING

SOME USEFUL HINTS. The gooseberry is found growing wild in England and Northern Europe and is one of the most useful of hardy bush fruits. It is the first of the hardy fruits to become available, for it can , be used as soon as the berries are large enough to be worth picking, it is excellent for making jam and jelly, and for bottling, and if left to ripen is a most desirable dessert fruit. It prefers a medium loam, but any kind of soil can be made suitable by good cultivation and reasonable manuring. If the soil is light and sandy or gravelly it can be improved by digging in quantities or organic matter such as strawy manure or compost heap, and if a heavy clay, by deep trenching and also the addition of organic matter it will produce good fruit. When preparing the ground it is better to trench to a depth of at least two feet, breaking up the bottom soil, but leaving it there. If the soil is such as we have on the hills (a layer of black soil overlying clay) it is better to bastard trench, burying the grass and another material which will rot a foot under the surface, but retaining the black soil on top. Gooseberries are really surface rooters, but by breaking up the subsoil it retains moisture and assists drainage during wet weather. Gooseberries can be trained in a number of ways, but the bush form is the most popular and useful, though they are both effective and useful when separating the vegetable and fruit portion of the garden from the flower and ornamental part, or against a wall or fence. They can also be trained as standards.

Gooseberries are usually grown from cuttings of the young ripe wood, which can be put in any time now. They should be from 12in to 15 in in length, taken from the most desirable varieties, and are prepared for insertion by cutting the shoot_ straight across immediately below a node, removing all the thorns and all the buds except three of four at the top of the shoot after the unripened thin part has been removed. It is desirable that a gooseberry bush have a clean stem of at least six inches, and by removing the buds there is practically, no danger of suckers arising. The cuttings are put in a nice well drained soil and buried at least three parts of thenlength, a layer of sand being placed at their base to provide drainage, and encourage rooting. Tramp the soil firmly round them. By the following autumn they 'will be fit to plant out and then the roots are kept up near the surface, to provide a clean stem of about six inches, which is necessary when weeding and cultivating the -soil. At the first pruning, the young growth is shortened back to half its length and the least desirable shoot removed altogether if there are more than three. At the next pruning two shoots will be left on the original ones, which will be six now, all side growth being cut back to an inch,.and the leading shoots shortened back from six to nine inches according to their strength. In every case when pruning the upright kinds cut to a bud pointing to the outside of the bush, in the case of the drooping kinds to a bud pointing upwards. By the third year two leading well placed shoots will be left,, again these being treated as thus providing a bush with 12 leading branches, which will be sufficient. In .selecting the leading shoots care should be taken to see that they are so placed that one can gel the hand in between them easily, without getting it scratched by the prickles other picking the fruit it a painful operation. When summer pruning is practised the side or lateral shoots are pinched back to three inches and at the autumn or winter pruning these shoots are cut back to one inch. Gooseberries bear their fruit on little spurs on the main stems, and also on the young ripened wood of the previous season’s growth, the best fruit being produced on the latter.. It is therefore desirable to keep on extending the main branches by six to nine inches until they occupy all the space allotted to them, and afterwards to remove one or two of the old worn-out branches every year, and replace them with young ones brought up from the centre of the bush.

Some people neglect pruning altogether with the consequence that the bush becomes a tangled mass of branches, most of which are barren, and others prune too hard, thereby cutting away the most desirable fruitbearing wood. Gooseberry bushes are usually planted in rows six feet apart with five feet between the bushes in the rows, and it is often an advantage to plant twice as thickly as this at first, and to cut out every second bush before they become overcrowded. The space between young bushes can also be used for growing crops like carrots lettuce, beet and turnips, until they require all the space.

When trained as double cordons on a wire fence they are planted at 18 inches apart, two stems being taken up to each. These stems are extended six to nine inches each season until they reach the top of their support. All side shoots are pinched back during summer pruning and cut back to an inch from the old stem in winter. Cordon gooseberries not only provide a productive and effective hedge, but the fruit is better and easier to protect from the birds than when grown on bushes.

After pruning the primings should be gathered up and burned, the ashes being scattered over the surface and turned in, and if growth is not satisfactory a dressing of farmyard manure or compost heap can be dug in also. As a rule if the ground was properly prepared in the first place, little manure will be necessary, but a topdressing of basic phosphate applied at the rate of 4oz to the square yard in early spring when breaking down the soil will be an advantage. As the roots of the gooseberry are mainly near the surface, when digging it is better to draw away the soil to depth of two inchcf under the bushes and to replace it with clean soil dug from between the plants. This is left rough and open until the spring. Birds should be scared away by stretching a number of strands of black cotton, or some other fibre over the bushes in winter. There arc a great many varieties, but the following six would suit for all purposes:—Red Champagne, Crown Bob, Whinham’s Industry. White Lion Lancashire Lad. and Gunner.