Time to get pruning before growing season

WINTER is about the one time of year I feel like I am in control of my garden. Nothing much grows and everything remains in the same order – or disorder – that it was the day before and the day before that.

It is as though the garden is idling in neutral and there are a good couple of months during which one can tidy up and prepare for the growing season ahead.

Living quite high up on west Dartmoor it takes until April before the garden starts going through the gears – and by late May it is in fifth and speeding along at such a pace it is impossible to keep up.

But at this calmer time of year I can put tasks off, and given the recent wet weather I’m quite content to save the pre-season clearing of beds until another day.

However, pruning does beckon and there are two main fruit-providers that need annual cutting back: my apple tree and grape vine.

The apple tree, which produced a meagre crop this year but a better one in 2020, so is hopefully due a bumper crop this autumn, is around 20 years old and produces a red devil variety of apples.

I have pruned it carefully every year since we planted it and kept the shape pretty even all over – however, it is just beginning to lean slightly. Strangely the greatest growth is on the north-facing side that gets the least amount of sun.

Our grape is also a plant of two halves – one length of the vine produces next to no bunches of grapes, while the other becomes laden.

It grows under the veranda’s glass awning and provides a sheltered perch for resident sparrows. They are never happy when I prune it back.

We have lost details of the variety of grapes we planted, but they are a sweet, white variety and make for good eating – pips aside. Never enough for wine though.

Many years late in the season the wasps come in such numbers that it is hazardous trying to pick the bunches. Hornets too.

This year wasn’t too bad, but some autumns the grapes are buzzing with insects, which also dine out on windfall apples.

Fortunately we have grapes to spare, and apples too, so they are welcome to partake, especially as wasps do provide a service in preying on other pests in the garden earlier in the year.

But it does make me wonder how professional vineyards manage to keep their harvest intact without it being decimated by these sugarseekers.

Either way, I can postpone the pruning no longer. The sparrows will grumble, but they’ll be back perching on the lengths of vine in no time.