PROPAGATING GOOSEBERRIES

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1034, 26 July 1930, Page 28

PROPAGATING GOOSEBERRIES

While strawberries are delicious and wholesome, especially in their natural state, and raspberries take high rank, both are useless unless ripe. Not so with gooseberries. These occupy the same place early in the season, as do that of apples. Both are indispensable for cooking. Gooseberry bushes are generally raised from cuttings, say. 15i.n or lSiii long. These should not be too thick, say about as thick as an ordinary lead pencil. All the eyes should be cut out, except about three or four at ibe top Plant these in the ground about nine inches deep, very firm at the hot tom. Sandy soil is best for rooting these cuttings. If one buys gooseberry bushes, see that they have a stem at least nine inches long. Trim off any shoots to about six inches and endeavour to leave the shoots for the head, so that one can get the open hand between the shoots. You will find that they will break all up these shoots. Now ruff off a few of these so as to leave them a few inches apart. So much for the first year. F>RUNING As the bushes attain size, pruning must be resorted to, and just as it is intelligently conducted, so will the crop be. Some bushes in the gar dens of small growers are never pruned, resulting in small fruit and quickly exhausted bushes. Ou the other hand, pruning without know ledge often prevents good crops of fruit. If all the young shoots are cut back, a thicket of useless growth is pro duced. Main branches should be allowed to extend and the side shoots cut back within an inch of their base —thus forming their spurs—but in addition, where there is room for a shoot to grow, it should be left, because gooseberries bear on these spurs as well as on firm yearly shoots when these are not overcrowded. A very simple guide for the pruner is to cut so as. to he able to. get the hand between the branches, and also to leave the centre as open as possible. CROPPING AND SUMMER PRUNING It now remains to show the result of keeping the branches well disposed for the production of spurs, which cannot form if the trees are crowdod with useless growth. The young shoots that sprang out all up the shoots that were left after pruning will be crowded, and so exclude air and light from them. This evil can be averted by nipping the tops off

them in November or December, leaving some about six Inches or eight inches apart. Notice the direction lu which they are growing, nnd it growing crossways, nip off, leaving about two incites to form spurs. Moreover, every shoot, which exceeds the

boundary allotted to it should be cut off. Gooseberries like deeply-worked, stiff soil, and should not be planted too deeply. They can be near fences or sheds or any other building. providing it is not too shady.