January is the best time of year to prune a vine while it is dormant and the sap won't be leaking. We were lucky enough to welcome along Adrian Miles. Adrian is a well known local gardening expert with over 25 years experience and he is a judge for 'Keep Scotland Beautiful'. We were shown how to remove all the old growth and spindly stems and to cut back to the main trunk where there will be lots of dormant leaf buds. These will grow out in the Spring to produce strong new stems. The grapes will form on one year old wood so the vine has to be pruned every year.
We also had a go at the large fig tree in the corner of the garden which hadn't been pruned for a while. It is very vigorous and we could see small embryonic figs on the branches. The aim was to leave these on the plant and prune out any crossing, broken or diseased stems. We also removed a lot of spindly young stems which were very congested at the base of the tree.
It was great to see the plants at the end of the day, looking so clean and spruced up. Now we need to feed them in the Spring with a general fertiliser like fish, blood and bone and wait for the magic to happen!
UPDATE- AUGUST 2024
We have had a bumper crop of ripe Figs on the fig tree today!! We harvested 5 large, healthy sweet figs and they tasted delicious! The mild winter meant that the young embryonic figs didn't get killed off by the frosts and successfully ripened.
