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Evidence based gardening
tom edwards2
Posts: 1
I have a sceptical mindset and I do not always follow the advice given by gardening experts to the letter. When advice is given there is seldom a reference to the evidence that this advice will work. For example experts regularly tell us not to prune plum trees in Winter as it may encourage leaf curl. I have never heard anyone provide back up evidence supporting this view. I often prune plum trees in Winter as it's convenient to do so and I have no leaf curl problems. I may have been lucky, but I do wonder if some advice is more folklore or received wisdom than science. What do fellow forum members think?
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You seem to be confusing leaf curl with silver leaf.
I know nothing of plum trees but of course gardening is full of myth and old wives tales, that's life.
In the sticks near Peterborough
You would have to carry out an experiment involving thousands of trees, controlling all variables, over a number of years to obtain a scientifically valid result.
Following the path of anecdotal experience costs nothing and is not a major inconvenience to the gardener. It may even help you avoid silverleaf!
If you are interested in science you could carry out smaller scale trials to find out for instance, whether slugs really like Hostas, or whether this plant or that will grow in dry shade, or if it will survive the winter in your conditions. Most of us carry out these trials and call it gardening, but often it is cheaper to follow received wisdom
Anyone who could be considered an experienced gardener (as opposed to an expert, necessarily) will have amassed quite a lot of evidence on which they base their gardening methods and particularly timing. It is impossible for any expert, no matter how knowledgeable, to know the soil and climate conditions in any (never mind every) garden, so all advice - including the instructions you find on the back of seed packets, the advice on TV shows, the often comprehensive guidance in books - will be either quite specific to where the author gardens or generic to the UK (or wherever) as a whole. That's the point of a forum like this really - a broader range of experience which may help people find their own solutions that could be quite far from the 'average' condition.
I wouldn't say I'm sceptical, particularly, but I never do take this sort of advice as inviolable truth. I don't sow broad beans in the autumn, despite all the advice you read everywhere saying that it's a good idea to do so. Mine get eaten by voles (which all advice usually says are not a particular nuisance) within about an hour of going in the ground or any pot that isn't suspended on really thin wires at least 4 feet off the ground. The squirrels get those.
So I would say yes, you're lucky. Some conjunction of climate and other conditions makes the plum trees in your garden less susceptible to diseases that are prevalent in this country. That doesn't make the advice wrong, (or your trees invulnerable). But we are all free to ignore advice we find doesn't help us. It is only advice, not edict.
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
Tom, it depends on where you are in the UK, what kind of winters you get also the position of plants. Dad pruned his plums after leaf fall as they were fanned on south facing walls that held enough heat in winter to produce early blossom and fruit. Uncle Arthur with an open orchard never did, this is the North East one foot in the sea area. I think you mean Silverleaf.
Myth and legend go with gardening after all we need keep our minds active whilst double digging and winding the neighbours up comes to mind, we are incompetion to be the best. I am an old fashioned gardener and give advice where I know the problem from experience, you are free to use it or not, your choice this is not the army. I would say at my age you are still learning, some of the tips on here are new to me so do not knock it. If some one wants to plant seed at full moon who is to say they are wrong.
Frank.
Growing conditions are different in almost every garden . Different amounts of sun, which way the garden faces, local climate, micro climates in gardens. Soil types and much more. Go and talk with your gardening neighbours about what grows well for them.
In my garden we are on largely sandy glacial till with patches of the sort of clay you could throw pots with. Between Sandbach and the Potteries, some old coal seams to the south and salt works to the north. My garden soil is better than many in our Close.
'You must have some bread with it me duck!'