Category Archives: Uncategorized

Water Newly Planted Trees & Shrubs from Spring Onwards

by
Reply

A recently planted tree or hedge has two main enemies: weeds and dry soil.

It will take 12-24 months before your plants have grown a new root system that is deep enough to survive on its own. Until then, you are responsible for keeping the soil around them slightly moist and weed free.

Dealing with weeds is straightforward: hoe them down before they can set seed and mulch over them.
For best results, use glyphosate weedkiller well in advance of planting to clear the area and use a mulch fabric from the start to make your life really easy.

Watering is the single most important factor in the success of a new tree or hedge.
You must get to know your own soil, in particular: how fast it drains and how fast it dries out in warm weather.

You can water your plants too much: most plants dislike wet soil.
The aim of frequently watering is to stop the soil drying out in the small area where your plants roots are, not to make a permanent swamp feature!

Please remember that light rainfall onto warm soil won’t do a good job of watering your plants. Only a good few hours of heavy rain counts as a free watering!

How to Test if Your Soil Needs Watering

Scratch and feel: dig down about 3-4 inches into the soil near your plants. If it is dry all the way down, or if it is only a bit damp right at the bottom, it’s definitely time to water. Give your plants a good soaking.

The easiest way to water hedges and rows of trees is with an irrigation system like a leaky pipe, which can be buried out of sight.

Make Your Garden Famous at Excuse the Weeds

by
Reply

We sometimes raise the idea of getting photos from our customers to show how their plants are doing down the years. We all agree that it’s a good idea and then get back to work.

So it’s a good thing that Excuse the Weeds have made it all possible for us – who said that sitting around talking never got anything done?
You can spend some quiet time scrolling through pics of sumptuous gardens around the world and upload photos of your own garden’s highlights.

An Intimate Portrait of the Inside of a Privet Hedge

by
Reply

How to Prune a Privet Hedge – Do’s & Don’ts

This Privet hedge had a corner section of it cut off, then a few days later it was trimmed all over and the top was also pruned down a bit.
I took photos after the first pruning and then 8 weeks later:

A vigorous plant like Privet responds well to being hard pruned. Most hedge plants do too, but remember that conifers, which are popular for formal hedging, will not grow back from this sort of pruning.

The Good: By cutting off the top of the hedge, sunlight can reach the new growth.
The Bad: The angle of the side of the hedge is not ideal: the top is wider than the base.

In the photo below, you can see how the top of the hedge leans out and casts shade over the base of the hedge.

This hedge is being trimmed in a top heavy way that will encourage the base to become sparse over time.

This is the wrong angle to cut a hedge - the base should stick out further than the top.

This bare strip was caused by shade from the top of the hedge.

Privet is an easy plant that grows well in shady places, so the bald patch at the base of the hedge here will recover quite fast.
Again, most coniferous hedges will not recover from the base at all, so they must be trimmed to the right shape every year.

The right shape for a hedge is a bit like this: / \
Not at all like this: \ /

How to Choose Rootstocks for Fruit Trees – The Easy Way

by
4

Rootstocks on fruit trees bought from our Nursery:

Rootstocks cause a lot of unnecessary worry. A rootstock controls the growth of a tree and there are many different ones in existence.
This post is a long winded way of saying do not worry about rootstocks when you buy fruit trees from us; we choose the best ones for the job.

In short, we grow all of our 2 largest sizes of fruit tree, Bushes and Half Standards – on “semi-vigorous” rootstocks that produce a nice size tree for a garden or orchard.
Our 2 smallest sizes, Maidens and Cordons (only apples & pears are grown as cordons) are grown on either “semi-vigorous” or “semi-dwarfing” rootstocks depending on the variety. Whichever it is, it will be suitable for growing as a restricted, wire-trained shape.

Just What is a Rootstock?

All the fruit trees that you know and love are clones, from Granny Smith to Victoria Plum.

More than just clones, they are living in a Siamese twin relationship with another tree’s roots.

So, there is only one Granny Smith apple tree from a genetic point of view.
Cuttings of new growth from that one tree, called scions, can be grafted onto a rootstock chosen from a range of different sapling apple trees.

Grafting a scion onto a rootstock is a much better way of cloning a fruit tree from a cutting than just getting the cutting to take root itself.

The key benefit is that each rootstock type has known attributes and a predictable effect on the new tree’s growth.

The practical reality is that people either want a medium-large fruit tree or they want to train fruit tree on wires, usually against a wall or fence.
As described above, you only really need 2 rootstocks to be able to grow any normal size tree or restricted shape like fans, espaliers, step-overs or arches.