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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] Summer prune gooseberries and currants?

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  • From: LEE REICH <lreich@hvc.rr.com>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Summer prune gooseberries and currants?
  • Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2004 14:44:39 -0400

Title: Re: [NAFEX] Summer prune gooseberries and currants?
on 7/14/04 2:31 PM, Ribes60@aol.com at Ribes60@aol.com wrote:

I frequently prune gooseberries during the growing season.I do this primarily to reduce the side shoots on the canes. I prefer to have the plants open to make harvesting easier. I am sure that I lose some total capacity of fruit but I think that I make up for it with larger and better quality fruit, just as thinning peaches or bunch thinning grapes. Remember that dormant pruning is a stimulating process and that summer tends to be an inhibiting process.

One thing that I adhere to is that I do NOT tip or cut canes other than back to the base of the plant. Cutting a cane (heading it back) makes many side shoots or branchlets and that makes harvesting a bit harder and painful.

Ed Mashburn

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Ed,

Quoting from my book THE PRUNING BOOK,

  " Traditional theory holds that summer pruning is more dwarfing than dormant pruning, but recent research puts this theory on shaky footing. True, if you shorten a stem while it is dormant, in February, for example, buds that remain will begin to grow into shoots by March and April, whereas if you cut back a shoot in midsummer, no regrowth might occur. Ah, but what about next spring? That¹s when the summer-pruned shoot, according to this recent research, waits to respond. Plants have an amazing capacity to act however they please no matter what we do to them.  . . . Under certain conditions, summer pruning can be more dwarfing than dormant pruning, because regrowth following summer pruning can be again pruned. Under certain conditions, summer pruning also can prompt the formation of flower buds rather than new shoots . . . "

I learned of this in conversations with Dr. Dave Ferree at Ohio State University. He was working with apples but the principles probably hold true for all plants.

Lee



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