BARE NECESSITIES
Agenerous gift came my way this week. A gardening friend, who was reorganising her berry patch to make room for new fruit, decided she didn’t need so many blackcurrant bushes. Would I like them, she asked.
By coincidence, I had just made more space in my garden so, in a very short time, four large shrubs were dug up and moved to my place. I am already planning blackcurrant cordial for summer.
Winter is the ideal time to lift and transplant deciduous shrubs such as blackcurrants, but it is vital to move them soon before spring growth appears.
If no generous gifts have come your way, there’s still time to buy deciduous fruit plants as well as ornamental bare-rooted shrubs, trees and vines.
Buying a tree or shrub in winter when it is little more than a bunch of bare sticks requires imagination to see the rewards, which come in spring and summer in the form of flowers and fruit.
They are usually a good buy and establish quickly as the weather warms.
While these plants are called “bare-rooted” they should have material around their root systems to stop the roots drying out.
The roots of bare-rooted plants are usually wrapped with sawdust and a plastic or hessian cover, or they may be bundled up and covered with potting mix while stored at the garden centre. Select a plant that’s undamaged and with a good branch structure.
The blackcurrants we transplanted weren’t bare-rooted either. They came with garden soil around their roots — complete with some tufts of grass.
Before planting anything from someone else’s garden into your own, hose off any attached soil and remove any weeds that are hitchhiking a ride to your place.
How to plant a bare-rooted shrub
Get bare-rooted plants into the ground as soon as possible. Before planting, prune off any broken of damaged roots and, for an extra boost, soak the root ball in a bucket of water enriched with a seaweed solution.
To give the roots space to grow, dig a hole that’s wider than the root ball, but about the same depth. Make a mound of soil in the centre of the hole to sit the root ball on to avoid air pockets forming around the roots.
This also allows the plant to be positioned at the same level in its new site as it was in the soil before it was dug up.
Look for the tell-tale signs of earth above the root system and below the graft of the growing point to assess correct planting depth. To adjust planting depth, add or