Pruning The Jostaberry

 I've been properly attacking my soft fruit this year. Last year I missed out on pruning the bushes and the quality and quantity of fruit really suffered. 

So I've got busy and really gone in heavy with my cutting on my dozen or so blackcurrants and dozen or so gooseberries. 

The main thing is to go in and remove the old wood, any that is lay on the ground or going that way, it wants lots of young wood to fruit on. I managed to dig up about 15 blackcurrant plants (which will get given away at the seed swap). 

One tree I haven't touched with a blade in years is the Jostaberry. Not quite a gooseberry and not quite a blackcurrant, the Jostaberry is a hybrid of the two. I think combined it not as good as either of it's parents, but it grows stupidly fast, crops heavy and I think they will dry really well for use with cakes and breakfast if we ever get a big enough crop. 

You can see the sheer amount of wood I removed, some of the old branches nearly fell away as I was pruning them. There were plenty of young plants, rooted from branches touching the ground, so I dug these up...

Unfortunately another old spade had to pay the price of me being stronger than I sometimes realise (or the wood being past it's best) and I had the handle snap on me. Always a horrible feeling and I won't repeat the words I said as it happened, but it might have involved someone's mother...

I still manged to dig up enough young plants to take to the seed swap and maybe plant a few more for ourselves. I always feel that the more soft fruit I have in production the better, I started on another plant to increase it even more, but more of that later! 

This area is where I planted the plum trees in the last video, but it will also be where I'm going to squeeze in another 20 pear trees fairly soon.