tutorial The Comprehensive Guide to Over-Wintering

[FinInGermany]

Hi Folks,
I successfully (by the looks of things ) over wintered a few of last year's plants, some of which - photo with 4 plants - seem to have had the right idea once the weather started getting warmer. Others - see the individual pics - seem to be restricting their new growth to very close to the stems so far. Can anyone with experience of such things tell whether they are likely to develop proper branches as the season goes on, or whether they will just keep it tight? I can't imagine there would be much of a harvest if they don't stretch their limbs and put out some decent sized leaves .

 

[CaneDog]

They'll branch out eventually and by the looks of it reasonably soon. When they're trying to grow from too many nodes at once, they don't grow any of them fast because the limited amount of energy in the plant is spread too thin. Eventually the new growth gets big enough to fuel itself, but it takes a while for appreciable growth. If I expect a plant is going to do this (based on type, appearance, or previous experience) I typically cut it back farther down the stem to limit the number of growth nodes available and they typically do/grow better. I've considered breaking/scraping off a bunch of the nodes to correct it after it happens, but I haven't actually tried that yet to know if it would help preserve energy if done early enough or if the stored energy is essentially already gone.