Spring Care For Currants According To The Rules

2023 Author: Ava Durham | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-11-27 07:13

Currant - one or a couple of bushes of this berry culture is necessarily present in any garden plot. It takes an honorable second place after strawberries in terms of cultivation area. Of course, currants are not so sweet, it is difficult to call it a dessert culture, but no one will refuse a jar of jam in the fierce winter cold. So that the currant does not deprive you of a high harvest in the summer, it is necessary now, in spring, to start taking care of this culture. Let's talk about spring currant care according to all the rules.

Contents

1. General features of spring care for black currants
2. We remove winter shelters from currants
3. We carry out spring sanitary pruning of currants
4. Spring propagation of currants
5. Loosening the soil and removing plant residues
6. Watering currants in spring
7. Weed control on currants
8. Spring fertilization for currants
9. Spring soil mulching
10. Prevention and control of diseases and pests on currants in spring
11. Subtleties of spring care for "colored" currants

General features of spring care for black currants

Caring for black currants does not differ in complexity, and spring events also do not promise the summer resident hard physical labor or large material costs. All you need is to carefully remove all the shelters if you are a resident of the northern region; water the plant if there was little snow or you are a resident of the southern region, where melt water quickly evaporates; loosen the soil more often so that a soil crust does not form and the soil "breathes"; mulch the surface, which will protect from weeds, and will become food, and also the roots in frosts will also save moisture from evaporation, preventing the formation of a soil crust. You should also carry out sanitary pruning, protect the currants from pests and diseases, feed the bushes with a certain amount of fertilizer, depending on their age. You can multiply currants in the spring - we will also talk about this.

It is important to start all types of work with currants when the snow has already melted, the soil does not "chomp" underfoot and you can safely move along it, and the air temperature fluctuates at around 4-6 degrees above zero.

We remove winter shelters from currants

As soon as it gets warmer and the daytime temperatures become equal to the nighttime ones, that is, it will be around zero day and night, a little colder or a little warmer, it is necessary to start removing the shelters as soon as possible. In general, the currant is quite winter-hardy and does not need shelter, especially when there is a lot of snow and it covers the bushes "headlong", but in the harsh northern regions the currants often freeze, and the cold can come on the soil not yet covered with snow, so shelter for currants still do not hurt.

Usually, sawdust is poured into the base of the bush to insulate the roots, and on top they put something like a tent made of non-woven covering material. So, in the spring you need to remove all this, for a day shading the bush from the south side and securing the shading with iron clips so that the covering material is not carried away, and the bush is used to both the sun and the open air. The next day, sawdust at the base of the bush must be removed, and if there is snow under them, then remove it too, so that the soil and roots warm up faster and the bush "wakes up". Then the shading itself should be removed, it is no longer required.

We carry out spring sanitary pruning of currants

As soon as they removed the shelter, without postponing until tomorrow, take a good look at the bush and carry out a sanitary pruning. First of all, you need to remove all broken shoots, dry shoots, very thin (thinner than a simple pencil) and those shoots that grow in the center of the bush, which in the future will certainly lead to its thickening and cause a transition of fruiting to the periphery of the crown of the currant bush, reducing and harvest, and quality of berries. Remove the branches older than four years of age, they are usually darker, there is little sense from them, and they spend a lot of nutrients on themselves.

When pruning, always inspect the core of the shoot, if it is light green, then everything is in order, but if it is dark, as if rotten, then this is the result of the vital activity of the larvae of either a goldfish or a glass, and this is bad. In addition to the fact that such shoots need to be urgently burned outside the territory of the site, several more shoots should be cut: if half of the shoots are exactly the same damage, then perhaps your bush is fatally infected with these pests and there will be no sense from it, it is better to uproot such a bush and plant new, but not in its place, but having retreated from the previous place by two or three meters. The place where the bush affected by the goldfish or glassworm grew must be treated with any insecticide allowed in this season, for example, Lepidocide, strictly following the instructions on the package.

By the way, if the bush is alive and well, and after pruning you have shoots, then you can try to propagate them.

Spring propagation of currants

To propagate currants in the spring is as simple as in the fall, only you will have to monitor the plantings more often - not allowing the soil to dry out, but also not allowing it to become waterlogged. To propagate the currants in the spring, the shoots remaining from the pruning must be cut into pieces about the length and thickness of a simple pencil. Next, they should be placed in a solution of Epin, Heteroauxin or another growth stimulator for a day, after reading the instructions for diluting this drug in advance, and while they are soaking, prepare the garden bed. The soil on the garden bed must be leveled, all weeds must be removed, a tablespoon of nitroammofoska must be added per square meter and cuttings must be planted - cuttings of black currant at an angle of 45 degrees to the north, so that the southern side is illuminated by the sun, and cuttings of "colored" currants are strictly vertical, so,so that three or four buds remain on the surface. In the future, a new bush is formed from each shoot, retaining all parental characteristics.

Loosening the soil and removing plant residues

After pruning and reproducing currants, you can once again inspect the plants and bite zones. All remaining garbage from sawing shoots, old leaves, fruits hanging or scattered in the bite zone must be collected and burned. Firstly, it is not beautiful, and secondly, it can cause harm to plants, because on parts of shoots or fruits that are beginning to actively rot, fungal infections or pests can settle, which, as they develop, will spread to currants.

When the trunk circle is cleared, it is advisable to loosen the soil and loosen it every 10-12 days to ensure air exchange of the soil and prevent the formation of a soil crust on its surface.

Watering currants in spring

Any plant needs moisture, but currants sometimes more than enough moisture from melting snow, so its watering is relevant only for southern regions, where snow, and therefore moisture, evaporates very quickly under the rays of the burning sun. Watering young currant bushes younger than three years old is better with a bucket of water every week, but older ones can be enriched with a double rate of water. Remember: it is much better to use not chlorinated water from the mains, but soft water, that is, melt or rainwater.

In no case should you overfill the soil with water, the roots of the currant may begin to rot from excessive moisture, especially the "colored" currant suffers from this, so water it sparingly and as needed.

Weed control on currants

Weeds are a very important component of currant care in spring, because everyone knows that this is a shrub, not a tree, so the currant root system is located close to the soil surface and is slightly deeper than the location of the root system of weeds, with the exception of currants colored”, in which the root system is more pronounced in the stem part, so it more easily tolerates clogging. It is better to remove weeds immediately after they appear, the sooner you do this, the better. It's great if you can combine weed removal with watering (post-irrigation) or if you can remove weeds after rain. Pulling out weeds, if there are few currant bushes on your site, you can manually, and if there are more than a dozen plants, then it is better to use a hoe for this, while trying to bury it in the soil for a couple of centimeters,to cut off not so much the leaf mass of the weed, but also part of its underground stem.

Spring fertilization for currants

Spring is a great time to enrich the soil under currants with fertilizers. In the spring, you can and should use complex fertilizers containing all the necessary elements. For example, nitroammofoska is an excellent fertilizer that has proven itself very well in experimental plantations of various varieties of currants. It can be applied dry in spring. For a bush more than three years old, it is permissible to use a nitroammophoska matchbox without a hill, for younger plants - half a matchbox. The order of application is as follows: first, we remove the weeds from the near-stem circle, with a diameter of one and a half meters, then we loosen the soil to a depth of a couple of centimeters, pour it with a bucket of water, sprinkle the fertilizer evenly and put the fertilizer into the soil with the back of the rake. Next, you can carry out mulching.

Spring soil mulching

After weeding, watering, loosening and fertilizing, it's time to mulch the soil surface in the bush currant zone. It is best to use humus for this - it enriches the soil with nutrition, retains moisture and prevents it from evaporating, inhibits the growth of weeds and even protects the roots from sudden cold snaps, if any. It is better not to use sawdust, they can acidify the soil, but peat cannot be used at all as mulch for currants - it can lead to strong acidification. The layer of mulch as humus should be equal to a couple of centimeters.

Prevention and control of diseases and pests on currants in spring

Of the preventive measures, the simplest is to water the bushes with boiling water, but in order not to burn the plants, it is better to boil the kettle at home, pour the boiling water into a watering can and water the bush thoroughly with hot water (not boiling water). It is said to help ward off pests and ovipositor lurking in nooks.

Preventive treatments with copper-containing preparations help from fungal infection, these are 2% Bordeaux liquid, 2.5% copper sulfate, HOM, OxyHOM and so on.

You can also use approved chemicals in strict accordance with the instructions on the package; so, Tiovit Jet® (80%) will help from powdery mildew, Topaz from spheroteka. If, when examining the bushes, you notice that a number of buds are strongly swollen, this means that a kidney mite has settled in them. With a small number of such buds, no more than 20%, you can simply cut them off and burn them, and if there are more than half of the buds, then it is better to treat the bushes with Fitoverm (0.2%); from aphids, which will immediately appear on only blossoming leaves, Antitlin will help, from a leafworm - Kinmiks, with a moth and a moth you can try to cope with Bitoxibacillin treatments.

Subtleties of spring care for "colored" currants

Colored currants are less demanding on the presence of moisture in the soil, it is more drought-resistant, therefore, it can be watered in spring twice less often or with the same intensity, but by halving the volume of irrigation water.

Due to the deeper location of the roots, loosening of colored currants can be carried out to a depth of 4-5 centimeters, and for a greater effect, it is still better to apply fertilizers dissolved in water, even nitroammofosk, under such currants.

With the necessary spring transplantation of “colored” currants, take into account the more pivotal nature of the location of the roots, so try to dig a hole twice as deep.

These simple spring techniques will allow you to get high yields of currants.