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They are multi-stemmed, large shrubs. It is difficult to be sure of size, but they look substantially bigger than anything that I have seen growing, even older plants where there is not a chance that they'd have been pruned. Must be the local air :)

Black Knight is a slow-grower in all senses - slow to make elongation growth and slow to proliferate/divide/branch.

Ask the owner of the first for one stem, from ground-level. Strike that, trim back and graft Black Knight on the top.

My 25-year-old plants here grow from a leg (covered in water shoots), at a very casual angle. The legs are over 1m, but less the 10cm diameter. My pruning is rather hap-hazard for various reasons, not least that I have hard pruned, to something like a pollard, in the past, and killed more than one.
 
Yes. You manage Buddleia by cutting it back to ground level each year. Otherwise, it gets leggy and untidy, with flowers waaay up high where you can’t really see them.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
Yes. You manage Buddleia by cutting it back to ground level each year. Otherwise, it gets leggy and untidy, with flowers waaay up high where you can’t really see them.
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It doesn't have to be ground level. The thing is that it will take very severe pruning, in the main. But as I have said, I have severely pruned more than one that then died. To some extent it will depend on age, variety and much besides.
If you prune back to, say 2 feet, the flowers appear around 2 feet higher than if pruned to close to the ground. Given that they are usually so prolific, and rather lax, where you pune back to doesn't matter too much.

Not applicable to the Buzz series.
 
Vinny said:
They are multi-stemmed, large shrubs. It is difficult to be sure of size, but they look substantially bigger than anything that I have seen growing, even older plants where there is not a chance that they'd have been pruned. Must be the local air :)

Black Knight is a slow-grower in all senses - slow to make elongation growth and slow to proliferate/divide/branch.

Ask the owner of the first for one stem, from ground-level. Strike that, trim back and graft Black Knight on the top.

My 25-year-old plants here grow from a leg (covered in water shoots), at a very casual angle. The legs are over 1m, but less the 10cm diameter. My pruning is rather hap-hazard for various reasons, not least that I have hard pruned, to something like a pollard, in the past, and killed more than one.
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It may be the air. I planted my Black Knight in Autumn 2020. It is now about 6' tall with maybe half a dozen stems!
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
Yes. You manage Buddleia by cutting it back to ground level each year. Otherwise, it gets leggy and untidy, with flowers waaay up high where you can’t really see them.
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I want the flowers high, so I see them from the other side of a tall fence. And I want them leggy at the base so I can put something else there (on the other side of the fence) -- a Hydrangea quercifolia.
 
Never seen the like. Some of my Sungold tom's melted today. I was surprised that my small g/house tom's survived yesterday but the thermometer was over 40 degrees when I looked just after lunch. Absolutely nothing i could do with 4 vents, 1 door and two louvres fully open. Now picked but rather squashy; edible though.

I think they'll need to redesign small greenhouses if this heatwave is a sign of the times.
 
The tomatoes at the allotment (which is not mine, but the neighbour's) were all ruby red, but some indeed soft. At home most have cooled and are firm. The redcurrants were all out two weeks ago and I got five boxes to make into jam. My own bush at home produced very little.

Just been out in the garden and the little bat is flying about at twilight. They always follow the same little flight path relentlessly.
 
Le Baron said:
The redcurrant bush at home produced very little.
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We had a reasonable crop, with some white and blackcurrants, but they all disappeared or dried up. Straws were good but short-lived. Raspberries are conspicuous by their absence and I normally have plenty from June to October. Gooseberries gave up the ghost early on (brilliant last year though). Greengages looked good and plump but that's where they stayed. My Victoria plums abdicated 2 months ago. The only garden fruit which looks to have survived these droughts/heatwaves is the Discovery apples but unfortunately I don't like them. Sod's Law.
 
Mike Reed said:
with some white and blackcurrants
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I don't think I've ever tried whitecurrants. I just looked them up, making jam with them would probably look like wallpaper paste.:D You have quite a fruit garden going on! I only moved to this house about 7 years ago so not everything is established. Gooseberry bush is still quite small (only went in last year anyway) and I didn't put any raspberries in. Now you say it I noticed for that last three years that the allotment raspberries have had far fewer. Starting from that two month sustained heatwave in 2018.

But apples...yes, there's always apples. And the blackberries.
 
We had whitecurrents. Largely tasteless - best use we found was filler or padding to make up a summer pudding, using less red fruit. Then, one year, both the whites and reds just failed to reappear. Very odd. Now a bean patch. Trying Dwarf French this year - and rather disappointing. Back to Runners next year!
Very pleased that some Chilli plants are growing some good chillies in the greenhouse. Longish green things but I have no idea how to know when they are ripe for picking!
 
I plan on doing the lilies tomorrow. I just want to check: if they are pot bound, I guess I treat them like any other plant and root prune them.
 
JensenHealey said:
We had whitecurrents. Largely tasteless - best use we found was filler or padding to make up a summer pudding, using less red fruit.
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White Versailes tastes like a less acid red currant - excellent. Don't buy any other variety.

I have to say that all this BS about red or black currants, red onions, red lettuce, pink elephants, IS total BS.There are countless varieties of all of them (except maybe the elephants), ALL taste different.

Try Pax gooseberries - sweeter than sweet, fabulous flavour, and deep red when ripe, and yet people whitter-on about how gooseberries (in total) are this and that - total and utter BS. The flavour rivals Invicta, but that is most definitely a cooker - stew with some elderflower cordial, or add it at the end - fabulous, utterly scrumptious.

Cultivated blackberries - utterly dreadful in the main, near tasteless and the huge majority grow like topsy, so are seriously hard work. Try Loch Lommond - HUGE berries that are crammed full of flavour and the plant itself is modest-sized, even tiny by blackberry standards.

The major problem with all fruit, bush or tree, is that useless, esentially unknown, varieties are pumped-out by super-markets et al every spring - not much use for anything but kindling.

I have never root-pruned anything when re-potting and never heard it mentioned, let alone recommended, except with Bonsai. Tease roots out, absolutely, but never prune.
 
Vinny said:
Agreed, they are actually quite decorative during winter, like so many herbaceous , but although a VERY long while too late, those in the public eye suggest pruning ASAP to stop seed being released. So dead-head, at least, even if they are a good deal of the attraction.

As said, the problem will be water shoots. In trying to get a standard/pollard, I strongly suspect that getting a main stem straight, may be a problem. That said, a crooked one ought to be more of a sight worthy of contemplation, the bark being a considerable attraction over winter, for those that do but look.

I would GUESS that I have not seen a clear stem more than maybe 1m tall, but that would probably have been fluke - just the way things turned out. In fact, I have not been out with a tape, but one here may be towards that 1m, by accident, albeit at a rather "casual" angle.

I really cannot be doing with formal gardens, it has to be said. Organised chaos (aka informality) and fortunate happenstance are where I am at.

Grown as a standard/pollard they can rival Wisteria, IMO. Whatten House, very near here, has several of those - utterly beautiful (not as fabulous as their many Cercis when in flower - if passing, with time to spare, just 10 minutes off the M1), a wonderful informal, formal garden to spend a while (very nice tearoom offerings too, whenever I have partaken).


Re fruit - anyone ever tasted mulberries?
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Mulberries are gorgeous. The staff shop recently had a had of upmarket murberry jam for loose change. I said "yes please" .
 
stevec67 said:
Mulberries are gorgeous. The staff shop recently had a had of upmarket murberry jam for loose change. I said "yes please" .
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I am not a huge fan of jam - marmalade or a sharp curd is more my style - but I'd have bought most or all the stock.:)
 
Vinny said:
I am not a huge fan of jam - marmalade or a sharp curd is more my style - but I'd have bought most or all the stock.:)
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This is why I use the redcurrants, the result is much more of a marmalade-like texture. I thought about making marmalade one time and some woman gave me a recipe from an expert (she said), but it had butter in the ingredient list, which seemed bizarre to me. So I didn't do that. A jar of Chivers is only €0.88 imported to here, so I can get that. Or if someone visits me I can even get Rose's Lime Marmalade. Luxury in a country that doesn't know the difference between jam/marmalade!
 
Le Baron said:
This is why I use the redcurrants, the result is much more of a marmalade-like texture. I thought about making marmalade one time and some woman gave me a recipe from an expert (she said), but it had butter in the ingredient list, which seemed bizarre to me. So I didn't do that. A jar of Chivers is only €0.88 imported to here, so I can get that. Or if someone visits me I can even get Rose's Lime Marmalade. Luxury in a country that doesn't know the difference between jam/marmalade!
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Addition of butter would make it a type of curd.
Personal taste ENTIRELY, but the words Chiver's and Rose's in connection with preserves, has me running - FAR too much sugar and not enough fruit for me, far, far too sweet, far too little taste. Something like Frank Cooper or an own label top of the range, often called "bitter", marmalades are far more to my taste.

If I buy jam at all, I get low sugar versions (which obviously mean higher fruit!!) - even own-brand ones are usually pretty good. One step more fruit are what gets sold as compotes.
Low sugar jams and compotes, MUST be regrigerated after opening and eaten within 1-2 weeks in the case of compotes, althoigh low sugar jams will last ages in the fridge.

Red currants don't have anything like enough flavour to make jam. That is why they are used to make jelly to eat with lamb or game.
 
Vinny said:
Addition of butter would make it a type of curd.
Personal taste ENTIRELY, but the words Chiver's and Rose's in connection with preserves, has me running - FAR too much sugar and not enough fruit for me, far, far too sweet, far too little taste. Something like Frank Cooper or an own label top of the range, often called "bitter", marmalades are far more to my taste.

If I buy jam at all, I get low sugar versions (which obviously mean higher fruit!!) - even own-brand ones are usually pretty good. One step more fruit are what gets sold as compotes.
Low sugar jams and compotes, MUST be regrigerated after opening and eaten within 1-2 weeks in the case of compotes, althoigh low sugar jams will last ages in the fridge.
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I won't disagree with you, but my options are limited. I make my own jam for the reasons you supplied: sugar. I use very little of it, less than 1/3 of the usual recommendation for jam. I can buy posh, lower sugar quality marmalade (I bought one in Seville), but if I have the urge and I'm at home, it has to be the Chivers.

Interesting about the butter making it curd. I didn't know this. It's likely the 'expert' was making curd and as I said most people here have no notion that marmalade and jam are not the same thing.

Oh yes...the bit about it lasting ages. This bears out because the redcurrant has been in there a year with no ill effect.
 
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