help! new allotment!

[muddygirl]

As part of a group of 3 families (6 adults 6 kids),with our first allotment, lots of excitement but no experience, I will be grateful if anyone has any fabulous handy hints. We have some thriving couch grass, some good looking soil and some established fruit bushes(blackcurrant,redcurrant and jostaberries??,whatever they are)
 Any advice welcomed!! Cheers :) :

[muddygirl]

[legless]

congratulations first of all!

all those hands should make light work of weeding.

if you can find someone down the allotments to show you how to pune the bushes that is probably best, i am trying to learn from a book and it is very difficult.

other than that - enjoy it and welcome to the forum, so many people here know so much stuff someone will answer your every question!

[muddygirl]

thanks for the welcome! kids are very good at collecting stones and making noise on those quiet sunday afternoons!
do you recommend the pruning advice from book you are using or shall I search the library?

[Mrs Ava]

I have a jostaberry bush in my garden - a gooseberry/blackcurrant cross.  Doesn't produce as much fruit as my currant bushes, but the fruit it produces are large like goosegogs, but black and have that blackcurrant smell.  I treat my plant the same as I treat my blackcurrants....that is, trim off any dead, damaged or diseased bits in the winter...and then kinda leave them to it!  What a professional!!  ::)

6 adults - I agree, many hands make light work!  Mind you, a lot of mouths to feed so plan well and grow what you and the kids are going to eat and enjoy! ;D

[Hugh_Jones]

Black and red currants need to be treated differently from each other.

Black currants fruit on the shoots thrown up the previous year - i.e. this year`s growth will fruit next summer, so just `tip` all this year`s shoots, but cut out any dead or diseased-looking wood. In future years selectively cut out one or two of the oldest shoots at the base to encourage new young shoots.

Red currants fruit on `spurs thrown out from the side shoots. The normal time for pruning is in summer immediately after fruiting, when all new laterals should be pinched back to 5 or 6 buds.  In october these can then be cut back to 3 or 4 buds.

Hope this helps

[muddygirl]

thanks guys i feel quite at home now!
we would like too mulch our three rows of fruit bushes, possibly with something which will benefit them but suppress the persistent couch grass and the pretty, but annoying bindweed. Any ideas? Am I asking the impossible?
nice to find we are not the only people with jostaberries!  :)

[Hugh_Jones]

They all like a mulch of manure or compost in the spring, but this also mulches the couch and the bindweed.  It isn`t safe to try and dig this stuff out from among the current roots, and although hand-pulling will keep it down to some extent you`ll never make any serious inroad on it.  Unless you are determined to be 100% organic I would spray the couch carefullywith Roundup as soon as new growth appears on it (preferrably before the currant bushes leaf it won`t harm the wood), and treat the convolvulus stems individually with "Deep Root" gel (comes in a plastic bottle complete with brush) which you brush onto the leaves and stems of each shoot.  It`s a tedious business, but it does work, and although it won`t completely eradicate the convolvulus it will reduce it considerably provided that you treat EVERY shoot.

[muddygirl]

thanks hugh, you are the king of the fruit bushes!
we want to be organic, naturally!(groan), but as half the plot has been left for some time, we have done a one-off, careful spray of Round up. As we need the whole plot next year (to feed those kids) and didn't feel we had the luxury of time to try to smother the weeds. we plan to plant potatoes through plastic or straw to clean the ground and hope we don't get sick of potatoes! I think that 3 months is the time we have to wait to plant after spraying, does that sound right?

[Hugh_Jones]

No. Roundup (if that`s what you used) de`activates immediately on contact with the soil, and theoretically you could plant the following day.  However, you obviously need to give it time to penetrate through the weeds to the roots, which usually happens within 14 days.  Once the tops of the weeds go yellow you can start digging.

[Hyacinth]

Hello MG & I'm pleased you and your tribe are here 8)

Potatoes to 'clean the ground'?? What they can do is help break up clay-ey soil, but they don't have any magical properties for blitzing weeds (I think???) Dunno..

And your fruit bushes..if they're so intertwined with couch, etc. I'd be ruthless while they're dormant, dig them up, clear out their roots, clear out the patch & replant..don't know where you live, but here in the Mids it's still so mild it could be done..just a thought - Lishka

PS. HDRA have an excellent book abt. pruning fruit bushes/trees. I keep borrowing a copy but one all of my own would be brill ;)

[Beer_Belly]

Is that a hint as to what you want for Xmas Lishka ?

[Hyacinth]

Nope! BB...got my Crimbo present...tickets to somewhere hot for a couple of months..but a new bikini would be nice...oh! and a tin hat to save me from being concussed by all those falling coconuts?? :D - Lishka

[muddygirl]

alishka, thanks for the book recommendation, do you also know where I can get magic beans if the potatoes dont work!! ::) muddy