I know this is an "edibles" forum but my friend Doris wants to edge one of her beds with box hedge iv'e got some that need trimming and need to know if
a,is now a good time to prune?
b,is now a good time to take cuttings?
in my defense doris's bed is on her allotment where she grows lots of edibles and the bed in question will contain herbs.
box hedging (i know you can't eat it)
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Clive i'm supposed to be making sandwiches to join the better half down the lottie-he's extending the shed just conjure with the phrase "dyslexic d.i.y."-anyway here i am instead posing the question...HATCHET???
sanity is overrated
- Clive.
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Once upon a time long long ago on an old old forum, that was the beginings of this enterprise, I happened to post how we at work made ourselves a stock of Box...
It must have begun in about 1995? when our former Boss decided more Box would be good...we had some in place along one path edge and the plan was to match these on the other side and around 2 ends of the lawn too...
Around the back of the old tomato house in an area that we use for spare stock we had a few Box bushes....on inspection we noted that one had become full of leaf mould from falling leaves from the big old Beech tree above/behind the area....
Now, what had happened was that the Box stems had started to root into this leaf mould that had accumulated in the bush...so we made use of this natural occurance..and chopped the bush up to provide some instant large rooted cuttings....I suspect it was secateurs rather than a Hatchet.??
These "cuttings" were planted out in lines in the same area which is some quite open soil, which was once home to a heap of boiler clinker, to grow on.
They were planted quite deeply, another trick learnt by my colleague the Head Gardener from times previous..
These were used in 1997 to make the required hedge...with another trick being employed at the final planting time....as each one had been planted deeply at "cutting" stage it was possible to split them down again leaving good roots attached and gain an increase in numbers perhaps on average double but some would split to 4..
Again planted deeply we soon had a decent hedge... Such was their growth that we had a couple of visitors who because the hedge added symmetry to the path sides commented that we had put in a new lawn....not so the lawn had been there at least as far back as 1950s and quite likely much longer...
Now we have tried to replicate this by putting a ring..bottomless pot..around a Box bush and filling with cutting compost..with some result..but to be fair we have not followed this up to full potential due to not currently needing more hedging....unless our Boss reads this.....and has an idea..
After this posting I seemed to become .."Hatchet"..with thanks to JB.
Clive.
It must have begun in about 1995? when our former Boss decided more Box would be good...we had some in place along one path edge and the plan was to match these on the other side and around 2 ends of the lawn too...
Around the back of the old tomato house in an area that we use for spare stock we had a few Box bushes....on inspection we noted that one had become full of leaf mould from falling leaves from the big old Beech tree above/behind the area....
Now, what had happened was that the Box stems had started to root into this leaf mould that had accumulated in the bush...so we made use of this natural occurance..and chopped the bush up to provide some instant large rooted cuttings....I suspect it was secateurs rather than a Hatchet.??
These "cuttings" were planted out in lines in the same area which is some quite open soil, which was once home to a heap of boiler clinker, to grow on.
They were planted quite deeply, another trick learnt by my colleague the Head Gardener from times previous..
These were used in 1997 to make the required hedge...with another trick being employed at the final planting time....as each one had been planted deeply at "cutting" stage it was possible to split them down again leaving good roots attached and gain an increase in numbers perhaps on average double but some would split to 4..
Again planted deeply we soon had a decent hedge... Such was their growth that we had a couple of visitors who because the hedge added symmetry to the path sides commented that we had put in a new lawn....not so the lawn had been there at least as far back as 1950s and quite likely much longer...
Now we have tried to replicate this by putting a ring..bottomless pot..around a Box bush and filling with cutting compost..with some result..but to be fair we have not followed this up to full potential due to not currently needing more hedging....unless our Boss reads this.....and has an idea..
After this posting I seemed to become .."Hatchet"..with thanks to JB.
Clive.