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Spudsand Pruning!


Mayennaise
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We are in our first year here (top of dept 53) and are planning the veg garden for the coming year. Hubby has dug it all over and fed it but can you tell us where and when we get seed spuds from? We also have a very spindly peach tree that produced 5 plum sized peaches last year - should we prune it and when.

Tnank you
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You'll get seed potatoes from places like Gamme Verte or Jardiland but not yet. All the big supermarkets will have loads of gardening stuff in and plants and SP, if I remember, during April - it's a major promotion during the calender year for them.

Pruning should be done now during the dormant season AFAIK without looking in my books.
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Stone fruits should wait until the sap rises for formative pruning and the summer for mature trees to minimise the risk of silver leaf infection.
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Alexis, we had ONE ruddy beetle and it was more interested in the runner beans for some reason. The pots were not very good, what the bad spring, dry summer and overall bad time for pots did not get the ruddy mice did. Never mind, I am not easily put off, JOHN will be planting more this spring.
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If you are a super organised gardener like what I am....you can grow earlies and hope they are ready before the beetle arrives.  I did this the year before last.

So pleased with myself.

Until I looked at my aubergines......  They ate all their leaves then moved on to the tomatoes.

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I pick off adults and spray the lot with derris in the evening if I see the grubs.

Blight is usually a bigger problem in my part of 24 (borders with 87 & 19).

Neither stops me from growing plenty of potatoes although the 2003 canicule meant I had a small crop that year.

Most earlies keep well until around now in my experience.

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I know that you are both trying to shame me into growing potatoes again this year

The problem seems to be my neighbour who grows potatoes every year, in the same place ie all his garden, to sell.  The beetle toddle across from there.  No one else in the village gets them.

I picked them off into a créme fraiche pot and drowned them by putting another same sized pot inside.  The said neighbour even sprayed the spuds.  Days later, another crop of DIFFERENT VARIETY beetle arrived.

I was pig sick by this time, as you can imaine!

I am training the chickens and the turkey to pick them off......trouble is, they prefer green, new stuff.

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Grief, I'm glad not to have any neighbours' gardens so close...

I'd be very wary of the poultry if I were you, I remember that they're lovely at this time of the year but take seconds to devastate a seedbed and I find that they are difficult to confine once they've tasted the joys of ransacking a potager.

Some people claim they don't do any serious damage but this is not my experience.

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Our hens had the run of part of our veg garden from October. Occasionally nibbled a cabbage or broccoli leaf but did not do much harm in this way. Their real damage is done with feet, not just in newly turned soil either.

So they now have their own playground where their digging will be harmless.

John

not

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The chickens have the run of the garden from about September onwards.  Nothing but a bunch of destructive thugs.  However, all my plants are herbaceous/shrubs/trees so my fingers are crossed.

The turkey made her bed on one plant.  I don't think it will ever be the same again

The garden is SOOOOOOOOOO wet and I am wanting to get in.  As I type I can hear the wind roaring and the rain is lashing down.

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Wot, no salad?!

I have the opposite problem, I took to the garden over the festive period as a break and now don't want to do anything else, struggle to drag myself away from it and get on with more potentially useful things... the weather here was glorious yesterday, pretending to be the spring, and the forecast is decent for the foreseeable future...

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Someone has suggested that I try mounding up grass clippings (something I have an elegant sufficiency of...) around my spuds as an alternative to earthing up. Apparently this is good as way of retaining water and insulates the soil, thus speeding growth. I'm happy to try anything once (except incest and folk dancing) unless anyone out there knows of a good reason not to?

Re chickens. I fence them OUT of the veg garden, EXCEPT for the patch I am using for potatoes. They leave the plants alone (not as stupid as they first look, chickens) and do a great job on the nasty old Colorado beetles.
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  • 4 weeks later...
  I'm in same area - like your twist on your name!!  I too am in the process of preparing my garden, collected a load of manure yesterday in preparation, also am planning to grow some spuds this year, i have even seen them in my local shop.  When its time you won't be in any doubt because they'll be everywhere!!
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'Until I looked at my aubergines......  They ate all their leaves then moved on to the tomatoes'.

As Colarado Beetle much prefer aubergines to potatoes It is common practice round here to intersperse the potatoes with a sacrificial planting of aubergines.

Sue

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  • 2 weeks later...

[quote]Stone fruits should wait until the sap rises for formative pruning and the summer for mature trees to minimise the risk of silver leaf infection.[/quote]

Hi Pucette

We have cherry, mirabelle and apple trees. All are mature and look as if they have never been pruned. Can we do major pruning on mature trees? Any advice, please?

Also, in one part of the garden, there are 3 pretty dead looking cherry trees. Summer before last, the underneath of their leaves were covered in small black insects. I put glue bands round all the trees that autumn and no black insects appeared last summer. Too late though for those 3. They didn't have many leaves and only produced a few poor looking cherries. Think they will have to be cut down.

All the other trees have produced well but are too big to spray. Should I put glue bands around again and what would those black beasties be?

Thanks

Anna

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Cherry trees can be very deceptive in FRance particularly considering the drought of 2003.  In 2003, I had hundreds of cherries from one tree and few from another, both were overgrown with ivy and brambles, I managed to prune, fertilise and weed one but not the other,  The tended one produced very little last year,  the other one was full of cherries, it appears that some, particularly the red cherries can be cyclical.  Of course fruiting can also be affected by late frosts and wet springs, so before you get the chainsaw out to your cherry trees, give them another summer, you may be pleasantly surprised.
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So what would you suggest for a jungle ???

I've just acquired a large garden with  - what looks like - apple and pears, about a dozen in all, (not to mention chestnut and possibly a cherry or two) all of them COVERED in ivy and that creeper which has the yellow/orange bell-shaped flowers. I don't believe anyone has touched them this millennium: certainly nobody has been close to them for a couple of years because the grass/weeds/nettles are chest high.

Given that I can manage to hack and strim up to and around the trees, before I'm too old to straighten up, what do you suggest?

My first thought was to prune savagely and feed this year with no expectation of any blossom let alone fruit, sticky band and prune lightly in the autumn, then hope for the best.

None of my books gives any advice about bringing w-i-l-d trees under control, so any advice would be gratefully received!

paul 

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[quote]So what would you suggest for a jungle ??? I've just acquired a large garden with - what looks like - apple and pears, about a dozen in all, (not to mention chestnut and possibly a cherry or two) al...[/quote]

Paul  What i would do is clear around the trees and get rid of the ivy and brambles from underneath the canopy area.  While it is wet, you will have some success also with getting brambles ( ronces) out by the roots, which apart from spraying Roundup around and risking all, is the most effective method of keeping them at least in check.

Don't let clearing become a chore, gardening is to be enjoyed, even if you only clear round the trees that will be an achievement and a spur to go on and sort out the rest.

I would leave the fruit trees alone apart from cutting off any obviously dead branches and applying a  general fertiliser round the root area and see what transpires, you can do your heavy pruning in the autumn depending on the results.  I have been amazed by the fruit yield from some of our fruit trees that looked dead when we first saw them though the sea of brambles.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Also in Mayenne (top left) and in 7/8 years of growing potatoes I've never seen a colorado beetle, so you may be lucky too.

Bricomarche and Point Vert are normally pretty good for seed potatoes. BF15(early), Charlotte(salad) and Desiree(maincrop) are fairly reliable.

Happy weeding

 

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Been looking through forums, books and the internet in general regarding when to prune stone fruits. There is so much conflicting advice re. when to do it! Some say the dormant season, some say late winter/early spring, some late spring/early summer etc!!!

Common sense dictates that I won't be able to see diseased, dead wood and crossing branches when the trees are full of leaves, so we just set to today and did the lot! Will however spread the major pruning over a couple of years as the trees need a lot of tlc. They aren't old, just a right mess!

Seems to be the same conflicting advice everywhere regarding crop rotation too. Think I'll just "do it my way" and see what happens!

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