Henry Jabel

I used to put some compost in a cheese cloth put this in a bucket of water overnight and use it the next day. The results were really good! I usually use an aerator now but I still like this method as it's quick ad easy to do.

The permanence depends on the conditions its put through really. If you left it outside for years on end even the most 'permanent' of industrial fence paints needs repainting. If you make a stain with tea or coffee you want it much stronger than usual I would use mutiple tea bags and let it steep for a long while and the same with coffee make it vastly stronger than you would want to drink it.  Just experiment and have fun with it. I used to use it on antiques  so yes it has a long term effect however the walnut is more potent along with the rusty nail (again a form of iron oxide).

If you want iron oxide powder you can buy it from Clearwell caves in Gloucestershire England. However I am going to assume your not in England so perhaps a specialist art shop near you selling pigments would have it.

Yes sealing it does help the stain stay in even a basic wax polish helps


You can pickle the walnuts too when they are immature if the squirrels get them. Its the same time you want to get them for extracting the tannin.

Personally I would use it as a hedge if you can deal with the suckers. However definitely get the cultivated varieties, the taste profile of the perfectly ripe cultivated version is a bit like orange juice compared to the battery acid flavour of the uncultivated.

I have 'Mary' and 'Sunny' for female and a 'Lord' as a male. Both fruiting varieties are very good one is more productive than the other and I think its Sunny as its a slightly lighter colour when its ripe. To help maximise the fruit production ideally you want a male for every seven females.

Some stains I like are walnut (you get the walnuts off a tree when green and young prick them and leave them in water for a few months), rusty nails in a jar also tea and coffee can work if you want something more immediate. Basically things with tannins in tend to stain black/brown.

Like Aaron says iron oxide pigments are good. If you buy the pigments you can get yellow, red and purple colours.

D Tucholske wrote:Well, this'll be interesting, then.

I wonder how it got there? The Amish farm gooseberries, but the closest group is like 10-15 miles from here & there isn't really an avenue to buy any. I'd be amazed that any were still left in the wild, after the White Pine Blister Rust purge.

Probably a bird bought it to you. I could always be something in the Ribes family that is not a cultivated 'gooseberry'. Worcesterberries for example are a wild form of gooseberry. Perhaps post a picture when the fruit develops more.

Looks like a Ribes species to me and the spikey nature suggests its probably a gooseberry rather than a current

Er... Garden centres? Could you not pot it on and sell it?

I agree with all the above compost tea mulch etc. Did you put in some mycorrhizal fungi when you planted it? If not there is a product called Q4 you can add after which although not adding at the time of planting is better than not at all.

Go get your self some liquid seaweed personally I find maxicrop the best though vitax is good too and probably made in the same place. Make sure you water it regularly with that during this first season especially so if it end up being a dry one. Yew is resistant to almost all conditions and issues once established but it can die in its first season if you don't water it properly.

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The best feed to make yew grow along with the seaweed to help it establish is bat guano. It's certainly not the cheapest feed but it really gets it growing and I have established quite a few yew hedges for people by now. I used the brand below establishing some yews the last few years and nothing has made it grow faster than that:

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Heather Gardener wrote:Will have to check them out, thanks for the tip off. I’m pretty sure realseeds do Cinnamon vines too, but Carlin peas are a new one for me, no clue what they are.

Definitely worth taking a look, the annual 'sweet lupin' I haven't grown yet but is mentioned in Ken Fern's book Plants for a Future and is surprisingly hard to get.

Whats the catch?

You have to tell me why you should get it. Thats all.

I have four to give away, the less postage I have to spend the more likely you are to get it. However if you live in the pitcairn islands can really can make a case that you will utilise more than someone down the road from me I shall still send it to you.