Hedgerow update: Rubus fruticosus - encouraging a thug
When I took on the plot, there were already several brambles growing. They were quite out of control: mostly growing around the boundary, and giving fruit, but I regarded them as more of a nuisance than anything else. A few of them I dug up completely and consigned to bonfire piles. As the allotment's edges began to be tamed I started to merely cut them back, relocating some of them. This year, they can come into their own. I've made a blunder with the gorse. I was over-keen to get it into the ground. The dogs, when they were still permitted at the allotment, would run around the fringes of the plot where the gorse was planted, and a lot of them got uprooted. Over winter, grass has been growing on those that remained, and I'm going to have to do a lot of weeding. It's preying on my mind, every day makes the weeds worse, but and old injury to my knee cartilage has flared up, which makes getting down to the plants' level for a good weeding problematical, so I...