Contents
Growing any plant in the garden or in the garden, it is important to care for them throughout the year. However, plants need the most attention in the spring, when vegetative processes awaken in them. The topic of the article is caring for gooseberries in the spring, the main ways to deal with pests and diseases, the necessary feeding and little tricks for caring for bushes.
Features of growing gooseberries in the spring
The spring period is considered to be one of the busiest of the year. On the one hand, it is necessary to have time to prepare all the plants for saturated growth, on the other hand, to provide them with protection by carefully treating the soil and the plants themselves with fungicides and insecticides. Add to this pruning, fertilizing, transplanting, and you can easily understand why in the spring there is so little time to just enjoy the first warmth of the sun.
Gooseberry care begins when the snow has not yet melted. The first step is to prune old, weak, dry branches. It is also necessary to get rid of frozen shoots. With a high probability, fruits will not appear on them, but they will pull the nutrients from the bush. Be sure to cover the sections with garden lime so as not to introduce an infection.
Immediately after pruning, the bushes should be sprayed with boiling water using a spray bottle. Thus, you not only wake it up after hibernation, but also disinfect it, killing most of the pests and pathogens.
With the advent of May, preparatory work resumes. It is necessary to carefully loosen the soil around the bushes, going 10-12 centimeters deep, and then mulch with straw, sawdust or peat. They do this in order to repeat the procedure just a few times in the future. At the same time, the first top dressing with a solution of potassium and nitrogen takes place to stimulate the set of green mass.
You can also tie up gooseberry bushes, especially if it is planted in rows. Install the extensions and stretch a mesh between them, to which, at the level of 30 centimeters, tie the branches of the bush. This procedure is recommended if the branches of the bush are dead or sagging.
Watering and fertilizer
Gooseberries, due to their drought resistance, do not need regular and abundant watering. Of course, if the summer turned out to be very hot and dry, then even the gooseberries will need support, and even after fruiting has ended. It is important to monitor the temperature of the water. Watering with cold water is unacceptable, as this adversely affects the root system and the general condition of the bush. Moreover, this makes the plant extremely vulnerable to the development of many fungal diseases.
Do not forget that almost all fungal microflora prefers high humidity and low temperature or, which is especially dangerous in hot seasons, high humidity and temperature.
That is, watering with cold water not only reduces the immunity of the gooseberry, but also awakens the fungus to harmful activity.
To conserve moisture during dry periods, it is recommended to mulch the soil with leaves, straw, sawdust, or peat to retain moisture in the soil longer.
But gooseberries need top dressing, moreover, regular and well-composed. Given the fact that the gooseberry bears fruit every year and rarely changes its place of growth, the soil on the site is extremely depleted. That is why it is so important not to skimp on mineral and organic fertilizers in order to maintain a normal balance of nutrients that gooseberry bushes consume in large quantities during flowering and fruiting.
In the spring, half a bucket of compost mixed with superphosphate (50 grams), ammonium sulfate (25 grams) and potassium sulfate (25 grams) must be added under each bush. Moreover, for abundantly fruiting bushes, the portion of fertilizer is doubled.
Proper fertilization is carried out along the perimeter of the crown, since the roots extend underground in this radius.
For top dressing, gently loosen the trunk circle and mix the fertilizer with the soil. The next top dressing for gooseberries is necessary immediately after flowering to ensure good fruiting. It is carried out with the help of mullein infusion: dilute it 1:5, and then pour at least 5 liters of the resulting solution under each bush.
Fighting diseases and pests
The fight against diseases and insects that harm not only gooseberries, but also all plants in the garden and in the garden is endless. Due to the fact that the same microorganisms that cause diseases easily overwinter in the upper layers of the soil, plant debris and the bark of gooseberry bushes, it is quite difficult to get rid of them once and for all.
The most dangerous disease for gooseberries is powdery mildew. Fungal microflora develops in a humid and warm environment, manifesting itself as a loose white coating on all above-ground parts of the gooseberry. At first, it is quite easy to erase or wash off the plaque from the gooseberry, but if this is not done, it will transform into a brown, compacted growth on the green part of the plant. Under the influence of the fungus, the leaves and shoots of the bush wither and curl, the fruits crack and fall off.
The fight against powdery mildew consists in the preventive treatment of the bushes with the preparation “HOM” or “Zircon M” in early spring, as well as in the use of these agents at the first symptoms of the disease. The working proportion for the treatment solution is 40 grams of the drug per 10 liters of warm water.
No less inconvenience to the plant is caused by white spotting, anthracnose, rust and mosaic. Against them, they use preventive treatment of bushes and the soil around them with the Nitrafen preparation, a solution of copper sulfate or Bordeaux liquid. For any fungal diseases, a good prevention is the collection of fallen leaves and their subsequent burning.
The fight against insects that harm gooseberry plantings is another important step in plant care. Most often, shoot aphids can be seen on young shoots, and on the eve of flowering, moth butterflies are selected from the ground, which lay their eggs in inflorescences. The offspring of the moth butterfly spoils the fruits and seeds of the gooseberry. The natural, albeit sad, result of their detrimental effect is the complete withering of the bush, since it loses a large amount of nutrients.
To prevent the appearance of insects near the gooseberry bushes in the spring, after the snow melts, the soil around the bushes must be covered with any dense material, for example, roofing material. So the offspring of the moth butterfly will not be able to get out of the ground to lay eggs in flowers. After flowering is over, you can remove the covering material.
Carry out preventive spraying of the bushes and the soil around them with a hot solution of copper sulfate, as well as the Bicol preparation.
Video “Gooseberries: spring work”
From this video you will learn what work needs to be done with gooseberries in the spring in order to get a good harvest of berries.
