Plant Care

All the plants you have in your garden and also inside the house, should be cared for correctly. This will ensure you get the best displays and long-life from them.

Pruning

Pruning Soft Fruits

It is very rewarding to be able to pick fruit from your own garden. Soft fruits are a good investment for smaller gardens where there may not be room for fruit trees.

Soft fruits are easy plants to grow and most can be trained to fit in confined or awkward spaces. They are long-lived and high-yielding, provided you prune them annually to replace aging stems and branches with younger, more vigorous growth.

Pruning is straight forward, and can be done in mid-summer or on a fine winter day.

Blackberries

Pruning is quite simple, new canes grow one season and fruit the next, after which they should be removed. You will find that a that the canes will be developing at different rates, so a plant will have one-year-old canes bearing fruit, mixed with the next season's stems making their early growth.

After planting a new blackberry, tie in the long developing canes to horizontal wires with twists or soft string. Spread them out evenly to admit maximum air and light and also to make picking easier.

Leave room to one side or in the centre of the wires for the next generation of canes that appear the following summer. Tie these in temporarily, in a loose bundle, while the older canes are flowering and fruiting.

Immediately after harvesting, cut out the fruited canes at ground level and replace them on the wires with the new ones.

If there are not enough of these to cover the whole area, retain the best of the old canes, shortening any sideshoots to one leaf. Alternatively, cut each one back as far as a strong sideshoot and then tie this in as a replacement. In early spring cut back the new canes by about 15cm (6in) to remove any growth damaged by frost.

Separate and tie in the long new canes to horizontal wires as they develop, spread them out evenly. These canes should fruit the following summer.