The topic of our conversation is gooseberry. Planting and caring for the seedlings of this berry shrub on the one hand does not cause difficulties for gardeners, but on the other it has its own characteristics, even subtleties.
It turns out that at the beginning of the XX century in many countries of Europe gooseberries occupied the first place in the area of planting! But ... with the spread of a disease such as powdery mildew, the plantations of the berry began to catastrophically decline. It took more than half a century to develop gooseberry varieties resistant to it in order to get high yields annually.
Varieties resistant to many fungal diseases have been bred now, so gooseberries are growing in popularity not only in amateur gardeners, but also in industrial plantations. Moreover, thanks to the efforts of breeders, absolutely unshipable varieties have already been obtained.
Gooseberry planting site and site preparation
Gooseberry is a photophilous plant, so well-lit areas are chosen for it. He tolerates penumbra, but in full shade it grows poorly, practically does not bear fruit.
Gooseberries prefer loams, sandy loams, chernozems. He does not like swampy, highly podzolic soil, heavy loam, sand. It grows best on soils whose acidity is close to neutral - pH 6-6.5. If you lay a berry in an open place, you need to provide protection from summer dry winds, cold winter winds.
Choosing a place to plant gooseberries, first you need to get rid of perennial weeds. For this, the area is twice sprayed with continuous action herbicides (roundup, hurricane, etc.).
Preplanting sowing and scenting of siderates (rye, mustard, etc.) gives very good results. This technique helps to make the soil more loose, fertile. In addition, before landing, make for a continuous digging of 6-10 kg / m2 (depending on soil composition) organic fertilizers (humus, compost).
Another important technique is fumigation, that is, tillage with drugs that destroy diseases and pests. This procedure is not cheap, but it can significantly increase productivity, as well as reduce the use of protective equipment.
Best planting dates for gooseberries
The optimal time is October, in the Kuban - from mid-October to the end of November. Previously, gooseberries should not be planted.
For a successful wintering, plants must accumulate a sufficient amount of plastic substances, and this is possible only at low positive temperatures, which occur just in October. During this period, the gooseberry will have time to take root before the onset of frost, and in the spring it will rapidly grow.
If the optimal deadlines are missed - it does not matter, this can be done later. I planted gooseberries even in winter windows, this did not affect survival. Plants planted in spring may be inferior in development to planted in autumn.
Gooseberry - planting pattern
It all depends on the area of the berry, the processing pattern between rows. On household plots, processed mainly by hand, row spacings are made with a width of not more than 2 m.
The distance between the gooseberry plants in the row depends on the formation. If this is a powerful bush, consisting of 20 shoots, the distance between plants is about 1.5-2 m (it depends on the strength of the variety). With intensive technology, the distance in the row can be 60-70 cm, but then more frequent pruning and rationing of the shoots will be required (leave 2-3 shoots annually and cut them out not after the 6th, but after the 3rd fruiting; the bush consists of 8- 12 shoots).
How to buy gooseberry seedlings
The quality of the planting material is very important. Gooseberry seedlings should be healthy, free from quarantine diseases, pests. Otherwise, it will be impossible to achieve generous fruiting. That is why it is best to buy seedlings in specialized nurseries or from reliable sellers.
Since most varieties of gooseberries are poorly propagated by cuttings, they often offer layering. A seedling with one or more shoots with a thickness of at least 5 mm and 2-3 skeletal roots with a length of at least 15 cm is considered a quality seedling. When buying a seedling, make sure that it is alive. To do this, make a cross section of the spine. If it is white or cream - the root is live, and if gray, brown or black - it means that it has already died, you should not take such a gooseberry seedling.
Then you need to check if the kidneys are alive. To do this, the kidney is separated, knead with fingers, it should be wet. It is also worth picking the bark if a wet green layer underneath is a good sign. You can buy a seedling only if you are convinced that it is viable.
How to plant gooseberries in the fall
We prepare for the gooseberry a landing pit 40 × 40 × 40 cm in size, add about 0.5 kg of complex mineral fertilizers, add 2-3 l of wood ash. Mix everything thoroughly with the ground.
We add organics (1 bucket of rotted manure or compost) only if we plant gooseberries in spring so as not to attract a bear, larvae of the May beetle and other “evil spirits” that can eat the entire root system over the winter. If necessary, in the autumn we bring organics for digging.
For better survival, a seedling with an open root system is soaked in water for 12-48 hours so that the plant is saturated with moisture. If you add growth and root formation stimulants to the water, the survival of gooseberries will grow many times over. Before planting, we remove the leaves from the seedling.
Pour 3-5 liters of water into the prepared landing pit. When it is absorbed, we pour in the same amount, set the seedling into the hole obliquely and fill it with soil, deepening the root neck by 5-15 cm, so that additional roots form and shoots grow better. With this method, the possibility of rupture of small roots is excluded: the soil has the consistency of thick sour cream, it does not form voids, respectively, the roots do not get injured during shrinkage. Pour the earth so that there remains a hole with a depth of 5-15 cm. This will facilitate watering, feeding. After a day, we loosen the soil around the gooseberry, mulch the hole so that the soil does not begin to crack, tearing the roots.
In winter, it is better to sprout a seedling. In the spring, we’ll unravel it, that is, we scrub the earth from the bush, cut it off, leaving 2-3 buds above the soil level. Untrimmed seedlings winter better and grow more intensively in spring.
So we planted gooseberries. Landing and care are not complicated - now you know all the subtleties.
Good luck to you!