Time to Clean Your Fruit Orchards

With the end of fruit season, it is time to ready your fruit trees for winter.  Here are some of the things you can do to help them,

Things To Avoid

• Do not fertilize after mid summer to avoid interfering with the trees hardening off process for winter.  This includes compost and manure.
• Do not fertilize your lawn within 20 feet of the tree on the fall for the same reason.
• Stop all pruning until the normal winter pruning to avoid stimulating tender new growth that will freeze this winter.  If there is a broken branch, cut it off but wait to cut the branch collar off until normal pruning.

Things To Do

Here are the fall chores you need to do in the orchard.

• Remove any debris, leaves, or fallen fruit from your orchard. Romoving the debris makes it hard for pests or diseases to overwinter in your orchard.
• Pick and discard fruit left on the trees.
• Keep weeds and grass mown around the trees,
• If you live where it gets very cold, paint the lower trunk of young fruit trees white to reflect sunlight and reduce temperature fluctuations in the winter that can split the bark.
• Install tree guards of 1/4 inch hardware cloth around the lower trunk of new trees.  Bury the tree gauard 1-4 inches.  This protects the tree from rodents that eat the bark and can girdal the tree.
• Make sure trees whose fruit or nut is still ripening, such as a persimmon or pecan tree, has water.  They need the soil moist, but not soggy, to use in fruit and nut production.

Preparing your fruit orchard or fruit tree for winter helps it survive the cold.  It increases the crops for next year by helping the buds stay viable.  A bad winter for an unprepared tree can result in bed damage and few fruits the following year.  In some cases, it can even kill a tree.  Take care of your trees in the fall for an abundant crop next year.