How I Blazed The Gooseberry Trail

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30633, 26 December 1964, Page 5

How I Blazed The Gooseberry Trail

(Specially written for “The Press” by BRIAN CLEMENS) 'pHIS year our gooseberry bushes have produced a bumper crop of fruit—and we owe it all to my size 11, heavily-clinkered, triple-hobbed tramping boots!

For years the bushes, in a back corner of the garden, had grown wilder, more gnarled, and stunted. They withdrew to themselves and only the most daring persons

braved the entanglement each year to pick the berries. 1 imagine they resented any unwarranted intrusion.

No more of this, I decided last year. The time is long overdue to tame the so unruly bushes. But how?

I have watched with awe the deft, surgical skill some gardeners display pruning their fruit trees out. Their practised hands seem to coax lush growth from unwilling timber. This was beyond me—a butcher among the surgeons. Obviously I must look to some means within my capabilities.

In the years spent living in the bush and the ranges I have noted with keen interest the way trees, undergrowth, and grass flourish with renewed vigour after they have been lashed and beaten down by high winds, heavy snow, and hard winter. No rangers have ever been employed to keep this rich flora trimmed and neatly pruned. Instead, it is pruned harshly, and most efficiently, by Nature. After gales or heavy snow it was different to walk through the bush hampered by the tangle of broken branches littering the bush

floor. In the rich West Coast bush I have seen devastation which a casual observer might think almost irreparable.

A few years ago 30 inches of snow left behind a wasteland of flattened undergrowth and grasses and broken branches. After the thaw the ground was covered with twigs, leaves, and dead, rotting fern leaves. A few weeks later, it had been replaced by a green fairyland. Luxuriant fern shoots grew in profusion from the floor of the bush. And the trees looked vibrant and fresh with new growth This, obviously, was all according to Nature’s plan.

Fortified with this knowledge I decided to set to work in similar fashion in our gooseberry patch. In thick clothes and tramping boots, with a saucepan in hand. I descended on the bushes like a tornado. Stripping each bush of its crop of fruit as I went, I worked through the whole area, thoroughly trampling each bush in turn. The old, brittle wood of years split and broke off under my boots. Young, pliable growth sprang back to position as soon as I moved on. The result of this beating is that the bushes have come back with fresh new growth this spring and a bumper crop. I waited a full year for my methods to bear fruit. But I am not suggesting practised gardeners should throw away their pruning shears and forsake their art for harsher tactics.