Hi and welcome to Garden Ninja! Today I'm going to be showing you how to plant bare
root bushes here in a raised bed. Now some friends of mine kindly got me this gift here,
from the gluttonous gardeners what it comprises of is 3 bare root Prunus spinosa, which are
sloe berries to me and you! Which you can make Sloe gin out of, my friends also know
I love gin so its kind of a bit of a contrived present! But I can't wait to get these planted
up so I thought I'd do a video to show you how you plant these three very small bare
roots into a raised bed and how best to bring them on. SO let's get cracking! So what you're
going to need today is a bucket and what I have done here is filled it full of rainwater
for the rain butt and what we are going to do before we eagarly throw this plants it,
which is what most people probably think 'lets get these in' because they are bare root they
are dormant and what that means is that the plant is in a rest state or a state of stasis
or sleep and its important that we slowly 'wake them up' we do that by putting the bare
roots in water and leaving them for maybe half an hour and hour and what will happen
then is the roots will 'imbibe' which means they will take on the water and start to hydrate
the plant and give it that feeling that springs coming, which technically it is, and then
wake the plants up. If you put them straight in you run the risk they will struggle to
imbibe and find that water quickly given the fact that the roots are so small, so what
we are basically doing is giving them the best chance to get going. Rain water is a
great example of reusing earths resources rather than tap water, it's also better for
the plants as well. What I'm going to do now is to unwrap these bare roots now and put
them in the water. So these have come in a hessian sack which is quite nice it also means
that the roots can breathe which is really important because all plants need air as well
as water, so we are going to gently remove them from this bag, they should be wrapped
up, here we go. They have been wrapped up in this cling film, so carefully unwrap them,
you can actually see on this one its started to wake up already with these tiny shoots
but they are still technically dormant. So there should be a small amount of soil on
these. You can see its very dry so lets pry these carefully apart can you see that, so
we have one, two, three, there is a tag here with the name on, Prunus spinosa, which is
the latin name for the Sloe bush, it's also known as Black Thorn one thing to bare in
mind with Black Thorn is that they do have thorns, the clue is in the name Black Thorn!
They can be quite vicious so you would want to be careful if you were putting these in
a place where children play or maybe people that maybe brushing past them, so I'm putting
them in this raised bed at the side of a house where all my other fruit bushes are. It will
also act as a bit of a deterent if anyone trys to sneak over or decides to come steal
some fruit! So I'm going to pop these in here and then leave them for half an hour to imbibe
that water and then come back. Ok so it's been about an hour now so I think thats enough
now to get them started, so what I'm going to do is carefully lift them out and put them
on the side of this raised bed and then work out the spacing for where I'm going to plant
them. So what I'm doing now is carefully lifting these out of the water now they have been
in there for an hour and making sure to support the root ball I'm going to pop them on the
side here being careful not to put them under too much stress. I'll save that water for
later because I'll use it to fill the watering can and water them. What I'm going to do now
is to space them equally in this bed, so I;ve already worked out that is big enough to hold
them and what I want to do is when they grow to grow them into almost like a screen or
hedge which is why I'm planting them closer together rather than if you wanted them as
a bush you could walk around. So I'm going to space them out and then using a trowel
I'll dig in a hole and then put them in. So here I've got some peat free compost, as always,
peat compost is really bad for the environment given the amount of years it takes tobe created
in the wild. So this is peat free good organic matter and as I always say organic matter
is great for any type of plant whether its a mulch or to pot a plant on. Then I'm going
to pop the Prunus spinosa in, firm it down and give it a good old water. In the organic
matter goes and be quite generous! It also helps it retain moisture, dig that in a little
bit. What I dont want to do is go too far above the soil where the roots start, because
if I do the chances are the actual stem may rot, so bare that in mind when you;re placing
it in. Tease the roots apart a little bit, you can see the roots and even the root hairs
which are tiny folicles, take some care to fill it in, using the back of your hands usually
a good indicator, you don't want to damage the stem. What I will do is cane and support
these as they start to grow, to make sure the wind doesn't whip them around too much.
So there is one, so I'm going to o the remaining ones and then come back to water them in.
So I'm going to give the Prunus spinosa a good water in now making sure they are kept
moist for the next couple of days even probably weeks. I've also put some mulch around the
top to try and keep some of the moisture in whilst they settle and start to send out roots
to find their own water supply. Now I must say these are a really good quality root ball
that I got from the gluttonous gardener as a gift, however you're not going to be quitting
yur job in the city to become a micro sloe gin brewery just yet it's probably going to
take a good year or two for these to send out enough vegatation to then go to fruit
which is what you want them to do. So it's a bit of a long wait however it will be well
worth it when you're picking your own Sloes even making chutneys or Sloe gin with them
and really part of the fun of gardening isn't just the immediate effect its the nuture and
bringing things on and being satisfied that you can then make just your own small bottle
of Sloe gin. Thanks for watching, I'm Garden Ninja and if you have any questions please
visit my site www.gardenninja.co.uk. Happy gardening!