Allotments 4 All
Produce => Edible Plants => Topic started by: Digeroo on April 24, 2013, 23:53:22
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I have one, this will be the first year it might fruit. It is covered with flowers. Do you think I need to fleece it this weekend? Are they delicate like apple trees, or tough cookies like blackcurrants.
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We've never fleeced ours. We had a really good crop last year despite the sawfly attack :happy7:
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No dont fleece any of my red,white or black currants and they all produce well.
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Many thanks I will leave it.
Are the sawflies the same as the gooseberry. Does it need rhubarb leaves as well.
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The gooseberry sawfly spread across from the gooseberry to the currants so we're trying the rhubarb leaves under them as it worked on the goosegogs last year :toothy10:
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I have lots of rhubarb and the leaves must go somewhere so shoving them under the bushes is a great way of getting rid of them, except that the hedgehog seems to throw them around the place, and everyday I have to put them back in place.
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Nice mind picture, just imagining the hedgehog rolling around and walking with the rhubarb leaves stuck all over it :toothy10:
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:toothy10: :toothy10: :toothy10:
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Unfortunately not seen the hedgehog. I only know from its nightly diggings that it is around. It has been around most of the winter. I put a load of leaves around raspberry canes and they are scatter around every niight. Now it likes where I have covered my potatoes with straw and lead mould. Again there are nightly diggings. I have also fed my rhubarb with a pile of weeds and it likes that too.
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Curious to know why rhubarb leaves are beneficial under soft fruit bushes/canes as indicated above? I have 3 rhubarb plants to plenty of leaves available which I have tended to chop up and put into compost bin. I have raspberries, red currant and gooseberry bush so keen to put rhubarb leaves to use elsewhere
Thanks
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Me too! I've never heard of that before. How does it work?
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How do you know it is hedgehogs? Just interested...... I have put composted leaves around my blueberries, and they are constantly strewn around, which I have assumed is birds looking for worms etc.
I once got a load of grape compost from a vineyard to spread around the plot - it was full of very lively worms, and the birds went mad scratching around for them.
I would love to have hedgehogs here, but have never seen any. Slow worms and foxes and badgers and squirrels, but no hedgehogs.....
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Please explain - What does putting rhubarb leaves under soft fruit bushes achieve?
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Rhubarb is reputed to keep gooseberry sawfly at bay. There has then been a suggestions that once they run out of gooseberry leaves to eat they will start on the currants, though not experienced that myself.
But certainly no problems with the gooseberry sawfly since starting with the rhubarb leaves and there was sawflies at work only three allotment rows away up wind.
I also put the rhubarb leaves under the currant bushes once the gooseberries had enough to keep the weeds at bay, but the hedgehog goes in and throws them about, so I have continued doing it to please the hedgehog. Presumably acts as a mulch. My soil is very very well draining, so anything which will reduce drying out of the soil is most welcome.
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I thought that rhubarb leaves act as a physical and maybe poisonous barrier to the sawfly larvae that pupate and lay eggs under the gooseberry bushes. Stops them climbing up into the bushes to feed. Because they act as a mulch and keep the soil damp underneath both birds and any worm / crawlie eating predator will search underneath. I think its the wind blowing mine around at the moment.... :drunken_smilie:
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I thought that rhubarb leaves act as a physical and maybe poisonous barrier to the sawfly larvae that pupate and lay eggs under the gooseberry bushes. Stops them climbing up into the bushes to feed. Because they act as a mulch and keep the soil damp underneath both birds and any worm / crawlie eating predator will search underneath. I think its the wind blowing mine around at the moment.... :drunken_smilie:
That is my though too..but to prove what it is..barrier and or the oxalic acid that the leaves contain would take some investigation. One that I would love to do but I don't have time nor I'm able to do any chemical testing. Hey ho..it doesn't matter as long as it works. This year I've started to pile some leaves under some small apple and plum trees...I want to know what apple and plum maggots think of my mulches :glasses9:
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I had a huge problem with a codling moth in the pear tree, in the end I felled it. A pity I did not try the rhubarb treatment first.
I think it is hedgehog because it only happens at night so I am sure it is not birds. There are small diggings around the place, something is very much a creature of habit.
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Ohh..I wish we would have some 'hoggies'. I would not mind diggings and moving stuff around at all. It is few years now that I've last time seen evidence of their presence.
Last time I've seen we had 2. I had two open compost bags of autumn leaves left to rot down and I left them leaning against the shed..one day (in the middle of the winter) dog got very interested of the bags and they were there.. :icon_cheers:..snoring away :icon_cheers: I couldn't leave them there to be dog's latest 'toy' so they got luxury hoggie apartment in my cold GH and hubby's woollen golf jumpers to sleep on :icon_cheers:..well actually under..they dug hidey holes and pulled the 'duvet' over.
I gave them flea treatements, and left them with water and some dry food ..they did had odd nibble during winter and in spring I released 2 very healthy and flee free hedgehogs back into plot :angel11: I wonder what happen to them afterwards..?
Sorry...I hijacked the thread...but they must have enjoyed the white currants that I did used to have growing on the plot... :angel11: :glasses9:
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I planted rhubarb around the base of a very old pear tree when I first got my plot as I had nowhere else ready to put it, and both tree and rhubarb do brilliantly....inadvertent proof it works?!
(http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l47/dlp133/34329F9B-66BE-44C9-9541-1D552923C032-181-000000DCE1A3CD0B.jpg)
(http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l47/dlp133/39D7F922-2812-44F1-A8B6-4517AA9CF0A0-181-000000DCC29532F3.jpg)
Just took these on the plot just now, and I've just planted some pink currants I grew from cuttings by coincidence!
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I did not know you could grow rhubarb underneath a tree.
Rather too late unfortunately for my pear, it was a nice looking tree but all the fruit would begin to swell up and then go black and then drop off.
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Sounds like it has pear midge.....they overwinter in soil after falling to the ground in the black pears that drop off, crawl up the stem and bore into the new pears and so on....if you put a thick grease band around the trunk of the tree and burn/dispose of any infected black fruits you can break the life cycle and the tree will recover ok. Sorry to go off topic!