How To Plant & Maintain Fruit Trees
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In the garden, fruit trees can be an attractive feature and there is always the prospect of gathering fruit in season. During the spring, the bare branches of the winter develop into magical sticks that flourish and become filled with delicious fruits later on.
You don’t need ‘green fingers’ in order to successfully cultivate fruit trees in your garden. Fruit trees come with a few simple necessities to keep them in tip top condition that can easily be provided by just about anyone.
Fall Through Springtime
The bottom of fruit trees, especially saplings, need to be covered with sturdy netting material. A net or mesh prevents the bark being nibbled by rodents during the winter when these animals will seek out alternative food sources.
Color all the main trunk. If you have a garden where it snows often in the winter, paint the tree around its base with a latex white paint. Blend it with water (half and half) to prevent the burns of the sun. Because the sun is reflected by the compacted snow during the winter, this can often cause great damage to the tree. A fruit tree is usually susceptible to cold winds that leads to cracks in tender bark. These cracks can create ideal hiding places for insects that may go on to damage your tree.
While in the springtime, on a calm day with minimal wind and the temperature 4 degrees C minimum, it’s a good chance to clean up your tree. Give them an agreeable shape while using garden shears. Make some incisions to open the crown of the tree and to fix the straight limbs from about 10 to 15 centimeters.
Hold your tree free from 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 will produce fruit. Employ special tools to check the heights of the trees and then trim the vertical branches to have the same length as the horizontal ones. This tends to guarantee the maximum return of fruit.
Watering your prized tree is very important. A tree plagued 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 have plenty of fruit to pick in the fall.
Employ supports to guide the branches so that they grow straight. The branches that develop horizontally must receive the most light, since they will produce more fruits this way. When your tree or trees are in their fourth year you may then consider improving their fruiting efficiency by opening up the branches. This can be achieved using a manual spreading device or you could connect one tree to another using ropes.
Pollination is the central element of the growing process. While your fruits are typically growing, you can increase its efficiency by applying a special substance (usually available from your local store) to the trees that draws the bees. It is suggested to add this to the trees only after sundown, or in the early daybreak.