Not A Green Thumb? No Worries. Fruit Tree Care Made Simple
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In your garden, fruit trees are surely an attractive feature and there is always the possibility of getting fruit in season. Over the spring, the empty branches of the winter turn into magical sticks that flourish and become filled with delicious fruits later on.
You will not need ‘green fingers’ to successfully grow fruit trees in your garden. Fruit trees require a few simple conditions to keep them in tip top condition that can easily be provided by almost any person.
Starting With the Fall to the Early Spring
The ground level of fruit trees, especially saplings, need to be covered with sturdy netting material. A net or mesh will prevent the bark being nibbled by rodents during the winter when these creatures will seek out alternative food sources.
Paint the main trunk. When you have a garden where it snows often in the winter, paint the tree close to its base with a latex white paint. Blend it with water (half and half) to prevent the burns of the sun. As the sun is reflected by the snow during the winter, this can often cause great damage to the tree. During the night, the frosty air will encircle the trunk and it will often crack it. This is a dangerous circumstance, since those cracks are perfect places for insects that can eat your tree alive.
While in the spring, on a calm day with minimal wind and the temperature 4 degrees C minimum, it’s a good chance to clean up your tree. Garden shears can be used to give the tree a nice form but make sure to keep the crown of the tree clear of growth and to give horizontal branches 10-15 cms space all round.
Hold your tree free of dead or diseased branches by slicing them off with a clean cut. After any shoots show up cut them off too. Leave the biggest horizontal branches alone because these are the ones that can produce fruit. The length of a fruit tree needs to be the same as it’s broadness so check the tree’s height and trim the horizontal and vertical branches to the same length to get the biggest crop of fruit.
Watering your prized tree is very important. A tree struggling by not enough water is susceptible to diseases and insect pests during the crucial period when the buds break in spring. Watering will make sure that you will get plenty of fruit to pick in the fall.
If you want the branches to progress straighter, then train them with a guide. Don’t let the horizontal branches to gather so close that they shade out the light from each other. The greater light they receive then the more fruit they can produce. The fruit bearing possibilities of your trees might be increased by using a mechanism that will physically open out the tree; another way of doing this is by roping your trees together. The tree should not be interfered with like this until the age of four however.
It’s vital that your fruit tree is pollinated during the springtime when the flower is out. This process is carried out by bees which may be attracted to your tree by using a chemical substance which is used either early in the morning or after sunset.