hey folks. every type of Ribes i grow all want to fall back on the ground. 1st. year some branches stay erect but by the 2nd year they fall to the ground. ive tried corrective pruning but they still want to lay over. does everyone else that grows them have the same issues? if so how do you fix them? ive tried pieces of wire fencing put around them and they still go to the ground. my Jeanne gooseberry, you might as well call it a groundcover, its so bad. makes for very difficult picking. earwigs and slugs this year are having a hay day in them.
What varieties do you have steve? My black velvet spent its first two years crawling before it stood up. Glendale, Jewel, and Red Jacket have been erect for me. Poorman , and yellow hinomaki have done nothing but stay small for me.
Jeanne gooseberry, Tiben b. currant, Selenchenskaya 2 b. currant , Johnkeer von teets r. currant, perfection r. currant, primus w. currant and imperial w. currant. the red currants and the gooseberry are the worst ones. all of them are 4 yrs old or older except the 2 white currants which are only a few years old. yes most of mine crawled the 1st year then had more erect canes but by the 3rd year they flopped over again. if i pruned out all the low branches i wouldnt have much of a bush left.
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i think Drew51 said he espaliers his. i may try that but would be pretty time consuming considering how many bushes i have.
You can make a “fence” around. My mother used to build fence from saplings she collected in nearby woods. Four “Y” shaped posts and 4 horizontal bars from same sapling wood per bush do the trick.
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i tried with the 2’’ x 4’’ square wire but they still drooped to the ground. maybe i just need to go higher with it. the ones i made were only about 16in.
yeah, that is low. I remember her fences were around hip high and placed at about 2/3 of the average length of the branch from center.
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good to know. thanks.
The only ‘floppy’ currant I’ve had to deal with was “Red Lake”.
But, gooseberries, Hinomaki and others have spread more than grow tall.
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Grab all the stems and pull them together till it looks like a broom. Wrap a string around so they remain upright (use stake if needed). Allow to go through at least one hardening. Works best if you thin to your best stems.
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You might want to fertilize some. Also, wondering about your pruning habits (as though mine are perfect!) Gooseberries are pretty rangey, but red currants in particular should form beefy upright stems on their own. Ditto black currants. Older wood tends to wind up horizontal from fruit load, but one and two year old wood should be tall and thick, IME. You might consider reducing the number of stems, too.
Me thinks you can get away with a whole lot more pruning. Which is no big deal; the bushes will push new growth in a hurry. Basically you want to create a strong framework that will keep things elevated. Fruit won’t grow from the hard wood but that’s ok because it will sprout a ton of new growth.
My Hinnomaki Red looks like the crown of somebody’s head. Just spreading straight out against the ground from that central point. It’s the second year and the plant was runty and didn’t grow much the first year. I was thinking of airlayering two branches and getting impaled training the rest of the branches upwards.
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i tried pruning heavily and only accomplished a reduced crop. yes my blacks are more upright but still have alot of branches that droop. ive never had to fertilize them as they are very vigorous and put out alot of growth and berries. other than the drooping problem they are very healthy. i prune out the majority of the lowest branches annually but the new growth still starts drooping by the 2nd year.