On 13/07/2012 17:04, Sacha wrote:
On 2012-07-13 16:55:03 +0100, Jake said:

On Fri, 13 Jul 2012 16:41:39 +0100, Martin Brown
wrote:

On 13/07/2012 13:30, Justinthyme77 wrote:

I'm having the house re-pointed and have a couple of firethorns, pruned
to about 3' wide, which I have nurtured so far to about 12' against the
wall and I don't want to lose them. They have fairly straight central
stems and I intend to prune them back as close to the stem as is
reasonable so that I can then release the ties and carefully lay them
back so as to provide access for the brickies. Anyone know how close I
could reasonably go at this time of year without causing irrepairable
damage?

If you mean pyracantha then the brickies are going to love you. I have
had prunings with inch long spines from that penetrate my thick boot
soles. I doubt you could kill it even if chopped off at ground level.

Mine has survived some serious abuse by unsympathetic industrial
gardeners. It grew back again but took a few years to do so.

It is a bit of a nuisance for being extremely sharp spined. Pruning hard
probably means you will lose this winters fruit but that is all. This
years bad weather may affect next years flowering anyway.

I had to hack one back about 9 years ago for a similar reason. It is
now just as big as it was before the chop though, for some reason, has
never flowered/fruited as prolifically as before its lopping. I read
somewhere a couple of years ago that once you start pruning pyracantha
it never again flowers as well though why this should be escapes me.

I have a feeling there is a trick to pruning it early in the season so
that new wood has time to mature and be fruit bearing the following
year. If you get it wrong you can easily cut off the would be flowering
wood. It tends to respond to hard pruning by lots of vegetative growth
and you can get locked into a pruning cycle that decreases flowering.

Also for me it tends not to flower so well on the north facing side
which suggests that sun ripening of the wood is important.

I could do with a few more pretty and stock proof hedging materials. I
have pyracantha, berberis, hawthorn and blackthorn. The farm now has
rather smaller but more frisky beef cattle and they smashed the fence
and ate half my raspberries last week. Bramble is not up to the task
they ate that to get to the raspberries! They also ate most of the
plants on the VH patio the week before after someone left the field gate
on the latch. Cows tongues are remarkably agile and can open it!

They last broke in there during the general election to make a political
statement about the quality of the candidates.

One thought occurs to me - the mortar isn't going to do it much good if
it drops onto the ground and some is bound to do so. It would be worth
covering the roots with a plastic sheet to prevent that.

I'd be more inclined to use heavy sacking to protect the brickies from
the pyracantha! I expect lime mortar would burn a few leaves but do
little more damage than that. Never really tested it though.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown