Radical pruning projects

Let me summarise my week in two pictures:

Me making a god almighty mess just about everywhere.

And me slicing a good bit of my thumb on a new sharp knife and a recalcitrant onion.

And believe me the whole garden is breathing a sigh of relief about the thumb injury.

She has stopped hacking us to bits!

But I have been pondering a few very hard pruning jobs for a few months now and decided to act.

The courtyard.

I knew that the furthest honeysuckle was too top heavy and needed a chop.

I had done something similar to the closest one last year and it worked. Down came the whole unwieldy mess. And in a few months time the plant had resprouted. And I was able to tame it properly for once. It now travels along the pergola rather that sitting in a bulbous mass on top. (A bit like my hair before I went for the excellent 15 euro haircut last week.)

I have great affection for these climbing plants as I bought them for £2 each at a supermarket in London when I was completely green and new to gardening. 2012, Lonicera periclymenum Belgica.  

What did I know? That has been the mantra of two of the pruning projects this week. What did I know about proper tying in and pruning? Not much.

Because of course these things look ‘okay’ from afar. But close up and underneath…

Indeed.

So out came the secateurs and I started to hack. And then climbed the ladder and hacked and hacked and finally a huge amount of the top just fell off. Narrowly missing the cat.

It was so deeply pleasing to haul it into the wheelbarrow and lob it down where the tricky-to-compost bigger things go.

You aren’t seeing a picture of that.

And once I raked and tidied and gave the roots a good watering for the resprouting magic, it was off onto the next big thing.

The potager wall.

My potager backs onto this enormous stone wall. Which is the barn. Or as we now have to call it, the climbing wall.

And Mistake of Many… I planted two things.

A fig and a kiwi.

When? Gawd I don’t recall.

Not in 2014.

But there it is in 2015 fruiting like mad.

And you would have thought that as an optimist I should have been happy with one fig tree against that back wall. After all, there is an underground spring somewhere under the masses of stone, and things will get sustenance. So it would have grown nicely over time.

But no.

I planted two kiwis as well. Obeying the rule about having a male and a female to pollinate…

And only this male survived. I tried twice with the females… No luck. And yes I had to check the photos of the kiwi flowers I have seen on these vines only as recently as two years ago. The rest of the time it has just been romping up and along the wall.

Although just a year ago I seemed to be in charge. But a mild winter and a serious amount of incredible rain this spring seems to have tipped it into triffid territory. I should have spotted this in May 2023 making a dash for the tiles.

And it’s way out of control. I had been trying to tie it into wires and run it along the back wall… but it decided up into the fig tree and up as far as the tiles would be much more advantageous.

And I can tell you that standing underneath this imposing wall and pulling hard on about three metres of vine is very life affirming. ‘Please don’t dislodge any of those stones’ I kept repeating and I pulled and yanked and had them down. Not a pebble was dislodged. Thank goodness. In fact the only mishap was losing a dahlia seedling when I swiped with the unwieldy ladder. And a pair of mp3 earphone wires. I saved the player but who knows where the earphones went. I will find them in the compost heap no doubt. In about a year’s time.

You can see the ladder buried under a sea of green there. As was I.

But it’s down and I have few regrets.

Is it age? I just don’t want to put with with a non productive garden plant when the fig is divine and could do with all the space I can provide.

All the prunings went onto the compost heap just to the left of the fig. With the earphones.

I lost the will to live after all the vines came down and would not have managed getting so much green matter in between the raised beds and off to the bigger compost heap. I didn’t even chop them into bits in the end. I just folded them up and shoved them onto the teetering pile.

I didn’t dig out the whole plant, so that might be a winter project when I can actually see in behind the fig.

Or just do as the lonicera is doing in the courtyard and re-sprout and train better.

My last mad job was also something I have been contemplating for ages.

The east garden.

The snowball shrubs are planted in the north facing entrance to the courtyard. Not planted by me.

And like all these wonderful viburnums they are divine for about a month. And then a pain.

I have obviously been enjoying the greatest hits of 2015 today (I’m hiding from the heat indoors) because here it is and showing exactly what is wrong.

It is seeking the light. And growing out from the wall and needs a good hard prune.

Naturally I chose the moment just after I had enjoyed them in a vase (the petals drop relentlessly once they are white).

And something came over me and I went mad.

Loppers this time. But I know already that I was too timid. I was terrified that I had killed the lot!

But of course they re-sprouted after about a month.

And I may do another radical prune next year to get the shape a bit more uniform. I wonder if they will colour so dramatically as they do some autumns… Actually I have just wasted ten minutes searching my photo folders. It has only done its autumn glory twice. And the last time was 2017.

And even then you could see that it needed a jolly good prune.

It was threatening the gutters. A dread expression for any gardener.

So there you have my mad week. Although this not very productive rose in the corner of the potager might be facing a similar chop. It snags clothing well, flowers for about a week.. but does produce marvellous hips..

Luckily for the rose I can’t wrap my thumb around the secateurs with any vim right now. So it has been reprieved.