If you want to grow any fruit this year, then now’s the time to get your bushes planted. So this weekend we headed out into the plot and planted a new redcurrant tree for this year, and transplanted last year’s blackcurrant tree into a better, more suitable location than the edge of the cabbage patch.

The redcurrant tree was a £2 bargain, which arrived as two bare branches, close to budding, mummified in a black plastic wrap, to keep the soil in place. After taking off the plastic, you’re just five steps away from giving your new bush a happy home, from which to start bearing fruit.

The first step in planting a new bush is to give it a good drink. Once you have removed it from its plastic wrap, carefully knock off the soil around its roots, and then dunk it into a can of water. If you can, use rain water gathered from your gutters in a water butt. It’s free, and full of nutrients for your plants.

Dig a hole for your new bush. Make it a little deeper than the longest roots. Put the topsoil to one side and pick out any stones. You’ll be putting it back around your bush, and you don’t want them mangling its roots.

Put a good layer of manure in the bottom of the hole. We used dry manure, which we bought last summer and stored in the greenhouse over winter. It is organic and natural, and although it is horse droppings, it has no smell.

Remove your bush from the can of water and put it into the hole, gently shovelling the topsoil around its roots. When the topsoil is around two inches below the top of the hole, give it a good drenching, again using water drawn from a butt if available. You can use the same water in which you soaked the roots.

Finally, fill up the remainder of the hole with more topsoil, then then press it down with your boots, being careful not to damage the plant’s branches and trunk. This should compress your topsoil below the level of the edges of the hole again, so use any topsoil you have left to top it up, and press down one more time.

Your bush should now be comfortably rehomed, and ready to spread its roots and start working on the first of this year’s fruit. Feed it periodically using a dedicated fruit feed according to the instructions on the side of the feed bottle, and keep an eye on it in the summer to make sure it doesn’t completely dry out.

At the end of the season, fruit bushes often need some good pruning, but the kind and level of pruning called for will vary from fruit to fruit.

Technorati Tags:
garden, gardening, self sufficiency, self+sufficiency, self-sufficiency, fruit