Blackcurrant-no fruit- when to prune?

[wygela]

Last year someone else pruned my currants. This year there were no flowers or fruit- just some leaf curl. Should I wait to prune- or prune now?
And by how much? ( I am a bit of a novice )
thanks

[FelixLeiter]

I wouldn't prune it at all. Blackcurrants fruit on previous years' wood, and the reason you didn't get any fruit this year was because the fruiting wood had been removed. This year's growth, though, will give you your fruit next year. So leave all new growths well alone and hopefully you will get a bumper crop next year.

My mother employed a "gardener" last year who pruned her bushes for her. He left most of the dead / moribund wood alone and pruned all the new growth to stumps. So no fruit for her this year, either.

[Elaine]

Hi Felix. Did your Mother have words with this "gardener" she had paid good money to ruin her blackcurrant crop????? I think I may have done..... Cheers.

[wygela]

Thanks Felix for the advice.
Yep it was a 'gardener' who pruned mine too!
I'll have to do without my blackcurrant jam this year.....

[FelixLeiter]

Hi Felix. Did your Mother have words with this "gardener" she had paid good money to ruin her blackcurrant crop????? I think I may have done..... Cheers.

No, I did. But she doesn't need to know that. He charges £15 an hour to knacker people's gardens. I suggested he spends some of his loot on getting some basic horticultural training. He operates in the Hull area, Elaine, so watch out! He hasn't been back this year, strangely, but I've had more time to help her out, and her health's much better for her to be able to do more of it herself. My father cuts the lawn, but it's probably just as well he doesn't do anything with the rest of it.

[Elaine]

Hi Felix and Wygela. There are some robbing sods around arn't there. Someone I know got one of these jobbing "gardeners" in and he completely ruined her magnolia tree by hacking it almost to the trunk. Sadly, it never recovered and it had been a magnificent tree. To think she only wanted it trimming to stop the branches tapping on her window!! I think the answer is, check the credentials and qualifications of any horticulturist before you let them loose on your garden. A genuine person shouldn't be offended by this. It's not as if they charge pennies for their services, and rightly so, if they are qualified to do the job. Cheers.

[FelixLeiter]

Someone I know got one of these jobbing "gardeners" in and he completely ruined her magnolia tree by hacking it almost to the trunk.

Not the same bloke, was it? The shocking thing is he came recommended by several of my mother's friends, who he gardens for regularly. They think he's value for money. He's quite candid about not having any qualifications. He's ex plod and draws a nice little police pension.

[Elaine]

Hi Felix. I don't know if it was the same bloke, this was about 8 years ago. You see these people advertising their services in the local paper.. "No job too small"...wonder how many other disasters have happened which have gone unreported? I think folk who use these charlatans should write it up somewhere but then they would probably be sued......

[oldherbaceous]

Maybe he has moved to Bedfordshire.

[FelixLeiter]

I think folk who use these charlatans should write it up somewhere but then they would probably be sued......

Not a bad idea. But the tragedy often is that their incompetence doesn't always get noticed. My old aunt had a pair of blokes who came to do her garden. She was on the whole grateful for them coming once a week to rob her blind by moving a bit of soil about, clipping bits off her shrubs (usually the best bits; usually the following year's flowering wood) and charging her for bedding plants which, we found out much later, they had stolen from the Council, who they were also working for. Her eyesight was poor and, to be frank, her sensibilities were rather too diminished for her to notice that they were turning her garden into an ivy-choked dog's breakfast.

[Elaine]

It's really sickening when the unsuspecting victims are elderly and unwell. Talk about taking advantage? These people should have their digits pruned.