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Feature imagePruning Problems Solved

Bob Flowerdew has some creative ideas on what to do with all the trimmings from hedges and fruit trees

Save the ash


Onions

The ash from a bonfire can be very rich in potassium, especially if many small twigs were burnt, but it rapidly loses it if wetted. As soon as cold the ashes should be scooped up, sieved and stored dry until given to the crops needing them most such as onions, tomatoes, potatoes, gooseberries and cooking apples. Or they can be mixed in the compost heap. The sieving left will have a few stones and some odd bits of metal doubtlessly, but probably quite a lot of charcoal which can be sorted out and kept dry for next summer’s barbeque.


Onions
The other day an old boy told me something quite true of his carpentry that applied equally well to gardening.

A good carpenter spends more time setting and tidying up than he ever does actually cutting wood.” This applies even more to hedge trimming and pruning. It is so easy to create a shed load of prunings but it takes as long again to dispose of all those bits.

Careful planning and methodical work can reduce the effort considerably after all you do not want to pick up and move anything more often than necessary do you?
Of course when pruning one gooseberry this doesn't matter but in a big garden or with an overgrown hedge you may end up carting a lot of material about needlessly or make it harder to deal with.

Be careful with a big job producing lots of waste if you can’t deal with it as you go. Do not drop the stuff anywhere but lay it down in an orderly manner so it can be easily picked up later. A jumbled pile interlocks and can be difficult to unweave; a carefully stacked pile will be easier to unpick. It’s often better to pre-process large pieces as you go reducing them to more handleable units, and ideally stacking them away simultaneously.

Separate the useful

The whole idea is to reduce everything possible to the most useful categories – so any branch thicker than your wrist is put aside for valuable firewood for anyone with a wood stove. Even if you don’t have a stove, just cut the logs, stack them till you visit a friend with a stove and take a present. Those logs of fruit woods such as apple are especially prized as their smoke is so sweet. If you have no friend with a stove then make a log pile, it will become home to countless creatures.

And do not waste the sawdust – this can be used to smoke foods on next summer’s barbecue, especially that fruit wood sawdust. When cutting green wood, it is best to dry the sawdust before packing it away or it will go mouldy.
It makes sense to put down a sheet where much sawing is to be done as even if you don’t want the sawdust it’s easier to clean up after.

Likewise if producing masses of trimmings from shearing a hedge then put sheets down first.

What to compost

Most fresh live thorn-free shearings can go in a good compost heap but may be too dry for a small one if added in bulk. Mixed with grass clippings they will rot quicker. Evergreen and conifer trimmings are hard to compost and are best reduced to smaller pieces then returned under their donors unless they are likely to be a fire hazard. In the latter case turn them into wildlife refuges.
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