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allotment tips throughout the year...

This section of the website is about helping everyone on the allotment - from experienced gardeners to the beginner vegetable growers to the keepers of chickens to sharing your own food recipes - to make the best of everything throughout the year.  We will post up hints and tips from various sources but, if you feel you have something which could be featured here, than just let us know - send us your article, link or just general advice and we'll get it published. 

Allotment Grown Onions
www.allotment-garden.org

 

This is a website which highlights many garden and allotment tips - this particular section looks at dealing with pests - and lots of other things - and I've walked straight into that one, so just in case - not me! - you guys will know more about this than me, so take a look and what do you think???

Is Henry really spot on in getting rid of pests on your allotment or your garden or do you have other tips which will help ...??? 

 

Read more by clicking here

 

How to winter prune apples and pears

 

The type of pruning technique depends on whether the tree fruits on spurs or towards the tips of shoots made the previous summer. No matter whether your tree is a spur- or tip-bearer, the first stage of winter pruning is the same for both:

 

  • Always use a sharp pair of secateurs, loppers and a pruning saw

  • Remove crossing, rubbing, weak, dead, diseased, damaged and dying branches

  • Keep the centre of the tree open by removing larger branches with a sharp pruning saw. If several large branches need to be removed, spread the work over two or three winters as very hard pruning encourages even more vigorous growth

  • Reduce the height and spread of any branches that have grown too large by cutting them back to a vigorous lower branch (making sure this lower branch is at least one-third of the diameter of the branch being removed)

 

Spur-bearing varieties

  • Shorten the previous year’s growth on each main branch by about one third to a bud facing in required direction to encourage development of new branches and spurs

  • Cut back any young laterals (sideshoots) growing from the main framework to five or six buds if there is not enough space to allow them to grow as secondary branches

  • Remove any badly-placed shoots

  • On older trees, remove any spur systems that have become overcrowded

 

Tip-bearing varieties

  • Prune the previous year’s growth on each main branch and the most vigorous laterals (sideshoots) to the first strong bud. Leave unpruned laterals less than 30cm (1ft) long

  • Cut back a proportion of older fruited wood to a young shoot or leaf bud to reduce congestion

 

Read full article here

 

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