Raspberries
All your raspberries should be dormant by now. However, if ours are anything to go by there are probably still some green leaves about. Now is the time to prune out old canes and tie in the new growth that arose during the summer. When removing old canes use a good secateurs and cut right back to soil level leaving as small a stump as possible. You can remove some new canes also so as to leave the healthiest ones spaced at about 4” (10 cm) apart. Tie in these canes firmly to their supports.

Strawberries
Strawberry plants are now dormant. Little is now required although the mild autumn has meant that weeds continued to grow, and these may need attention.
When the leaves have died off and gone brown (which is still some time away), they can be removed to help prevent the spread of diseases into next seasons crop.

Apples

Winter is pruning time. There are a number of principles that you can consider when pruning. Remove any suckers (shoots coming up from the ground level). These will compete with your tree. Remove branches hanging on the ground. Remove diseased branches or diseased parts of branches. Try to get your tree into a pyramidal (or Christmas tree) shape. Do not take off too many branches – this will just encourage lots of new shoots next year. Try to assess how many fruit buds you have – these are the fat rounded buds. A 2 metre tall tree (6 feet tall) only needs perhaps 100. If there is an abundance of fruit buds then prune some off. If they seem scarce then preserve the branches on which you see them.

Plums

At this time of year you can assess whether your plum trees have Silver Leaf disease. Those that do will have many little toadstools (up to 1 inch in size (2.5cm)) growing from the trunk or main branches. If the tree is badly infected it should be removed to prevent spread to other trees, although if you only have one tree it can be left in place in the hope that it may recover.
Do not prune plum trees at this time of year, as it facilitates spread of silver-leaf. Wait until May, when the disease is not active.

Last year's Winter garden advice

In our previous newsletter I mentioned the two apple growers days that were going to be held. These have now taken place, and it looks like they will bear some fruit.
The most interesting new apple varieties that were mentioned were some disease-resistant types which, when planted in a garden would need no spraying at all.
So, to add to the list of good garden apples like Discovery, Katy, Bramley’s Seedling and James Grieve are some new types like Santana, Topas, Retina, Alkmene (Early or Red Windsor), Pinova and Delcoro.
While not all these new types are immediately available to gardeners, over the next two or three years they should become more widely available. Keep an eye out for these easy-to-grow apples.

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