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 Soft Fruit

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.

Blackcurrants

Blackcurrant bushes need constant renewal to ensure heavy crops.

Older branches will fruit, but the quantity and quality decline with age.

You should aim to plant new bushes, to form a supply of vigorous young branches annually from below ground. These can then used to replace older ones cut out after harvesting.

On an annual basis you should remove about one third of the oldest stems. (The old stems will appear very dark almost black)

Also remove any stems that are weak or very low.

Always cut back to ground level or to a strong new shoot. You can combine pruning with picking the fruit, or wait until winter.