Urban gardening from a country perspective: Do it yourself (and easy!) garden trellis

Check out this great article about building a trellis out of electrical conduit.  If you replaced the string net with wire, this would be a great way to build support for the smaller fruits.   I'm not sure it would be sturdy enough to hold up an apple or pear laden with fruit but it would work wonderfully with currants, gooseberries, or even raspberries.

Urban gardening from a country perspective: Do it yourself (and easy!) garden trellis

Protecting Espaliers from Frost

Another great benefit of espaliers is the ease of protecting them from late frosts.  Frost is threatening my home town tonight.  I found some tarps and sheets and clipped them to the wire support system to provide some protection against frost.  It's doubtful that these passive measures will be effective under 28 degrees but the forecast is for 30 degrees tonight.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Tarps and blankets covering espaliers will protect to 28 degrees if you're lucky.

The micro-climate here with the cement driveway close by might be enough to protect these blossoms if there is no wind but I didn't want to chance it.  If you're lucky enough to have your espaliers planted against a rock or brick wall, you've got excellent protection if you can use a tarp to cover the tree and include the wall allowing the radiant heat to be trapped by the tarp.

Good luck to everyone.  I'm hopeful I can still have a harvest this year.

Pruning Black Currants

Pruning black currants is a fairly easy task. Since black currants bear the most fruit on last year's wood, the only real trick is to remove all the wood that is more than one year old. Here's a before photo:

See the finished product below.  It looks like I've killed the poor thing but without removing those old canes, there wouldn't be room for the new shoots that will bear next year's crop.

Be sure to either burn the removed canes or remove them far away from your garden to avoid spreading disease or insect pests.