My Life on a Hillside Allotment by Terry Walton

Author:Terry Walton
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781407040592
Publisher: Transworld

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Joe’s gooseberry bush

JOE VICKERY MUST HAVE planted my solitary gooseberry bush, a green variety with a reddish tinge and at least twenty years old by now. It’s a real phenomenon and completely abused, because I’ve never really looked after it since taking over from Joe. It just sits there at the top corner of the plot, where my trailerloads of manure are tipped and left until I have a chance to barrow the stuff down.

This possibly excessive feeding is all the attention it gets, and must suit it because it regularly throws 30–40 lb (14–18 kg) of fruit each summer, even on our exposed hillside. Only exceptionally severe conditions will discourage a gooseberry because it is one of the toughest fruits, weathering most winters unscathed. The winter of 2005/6 was particularly hard though, the coldest for at least ten years, and a persistent run of cold easterly winds scorched some of the branches and growth buds, reducing the amount of blossom and fruit.

I’ve never really pruned the bush or kept the centre open – there’s even ancient lichen growing up the main stem. It might not be what textbooks advise, but I’ve tended to leave it alone because it was doing what it had to do, producing lots of fruit. Other members see the crop on it and think it’s fantastic, so now its offspring are growing all over the allotments here. I don’t take cuttings: the weight of the fruit bends some of the branches down to the soil where they actually form roots, and I just chop these off and give them away.

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