Autumn Care For Apple Trees According To The Rules. Pruning, Feeding, Watering, Cleaning. Photo

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Autumn Care For Apple Trees According To The Rules. Pruning, Feeding, Watering, Cleaning. Photo
Autumn Care For Apple Trees According To The Rules. Pruning, Feeding, Watering, Cleaning. Photo

Video: Autumn Care For Apple Trees According To The Rules. Pruning, Feeding, Watering, Cleaning. Photo

Video: Autumn Care For Apple Trees According To The Rules. Pruning, Feeding, Watering, Cleaning. Photo
Video: Pruning by the Numbers: simplified pruning rules for tall-spindle apple trees 2024, March
Anonim

Winter is the most critical period for apple trees and you need to survive it with minimal losses. Moreover, this applies to both young apple trees and those that have been living on your site for ten or more years. Winter is a cold, piercing wind, severe frost, wet and heavy snow, freezing rain, provocative thaws, recurrent cold - all this apple trees need to survive (and we will help them with this).

Autumn care for apple trees according to the rules
Autumn care for apple trees according to the rules

In general, the set of measures for caring for an apple tree in the autumn period is not new and has been developed for a long time. It includes collecting late harvest, collecting and destroying fallen leaves, digging the near-trunk strip, feeding, water-charging irrigation, mulching the near-trunk zone, removing lichens and moss from trunks, stripping bark, removing dry and interfering branches, whitewashing, treatment from pests and diseases, sealing of hollow trees and insulation of young apple trees.

Content:

  • Garbage collection and digging of the apple tree trunk circle
  • Top dressing of apple trees
  • Moisture charging watering of apple trees
  • Mulching apple trees
  • Removal of moss, lichens, processing of bark, sealing of hollows
  • Autumn pruning of apple trees
  • Whitewashing apple tree trunks
  • Harvesting
  • Caring for an old apple tree
  • Apple tree insulation and protection

Garbage collection and digging of the apple tree trunk circle

Let's start by removing all the debris, leaves and digging up the apple tree trunk strip.

The leaves of the apple tree have for the most part all fallen, so there is no need for them to lie in the near-trunk strip and breed an infection. After all, each leaf can carry some kind of disease or pest that wants to overwinter. It is better to send the leaves to the fire, but keep the ash from them. She is a good source of potassium and trace elements. Further, all garbage (branches, rotten fruits) must be sent to a garbage container. If the branch is large, it can also be converted into wood ash by incineration.

When the near-trunk circle of the apple tree is clean, you can begin to carefully dig it, holding a shovel, as we agreed repeatedly earlier, not across, but along the roots and deepening no more than 15 cm. After digging, it is better to leave the soil loosened, so we can kill the wintering pests gathered in the area of the apple tree trunk circle.

Top dressing of apple trees

After a good harvest from those apple trees from which it has already been harvested, you can feed them. For this, it is best to use organic fertilizers such as manure or compost (5-6 kg for one tree younger than five years old and 1-2 buckets for a more mature tree, which is quite enough).

The applied fertilizer must be evenly distributed over the trunk circle. A number of gardeners are advised to add 20-25 g of superphosphate and 15-20 g of potassium sulfate to these fertilizers for one apple tree younger than five years old and twice as much for an apple tree older than this age. At the same time, it is important to apply fertilizers in dry form, and not in dissolved form, they will be more useful in spring, when active snow melting begins, and fertilizers will fall just into the root zone, where they can be absorbed with moisture and become available to the plant.

It is better to combine top dressing of an apple tree with digging the topsoil. And if you want to close up the fertilizers early and dig up the soil later, just scatter them over the surface and level them with the soil with a rake, trying to lightly close them up in this way. After fertilization, if the weather is very dry, then it is advisable to water the apple trees (for plants up to five years old - a bucket of water, older - two).

Moisture charging watering of apple trees

By the way, since we are talking about watering, water-charging irrigation in autumn is required for apple trees. It will stimulate the growth of an additional suction root system, due to which the vegetative mass of the apple tree is better saturated with moisture, it will be less afraid of desiccation, the soil will freeze more slowly and will not react to provocative thaws.

Usually, about a hundred liters of water is poured under the apple tree, soaking the soil well. If the apple trees are adults with a spreading crown, then you can pour out twice as much (the main thing is that the water is absorbed, and not spread over the site). To this end, stretch the watering over several days. It is advisable to closely monitor the amount of water poured out, not to pour it "by eye". If you do not have a water meter, you can use a timer on your phone to notice how long it takes for a bucket of water to fill, and then use this information, determining how much water you poured under the apple tree, taking into account only the watering time.

Be careful with clay soil, it is not worth pouring it, this can lead to root rot. Consider the weather: if it rains daily and heavily, then the amount of water can be reduced by a third. Just don't pay attention to the light rain, since it is not able to wet the soil deeply. Sandy soils, in order to avoid their erosion and exposure of roots, it is better to water by sprinkling.

Garbage collection under apple trees
Garbage collection under apple trees

Mulching apple trees

After watering the apple tree, mulching can be done; anything can be used as mulch, even sheets of plywood. The main thing is that the mulch must be removed in time, as soon as the snow begins to melt, so that the soil warms up well, since the mulch slows down its heating. It is important that the mulch layer is reliably held in the near-trunk strip and not scattered around the site at the first gust of wind.

Removal of moss, lichens, processing of bark, sealing of hollows

Moss and lichens are frequent guests of apple trees, especially those that are of considerable age. Most of them are formed during cool summers and high humidity. Mosses and lichens do not allow the tree to function normally, it seems to suffocate, and as a result, either individual branches or the tree as a whole dry out.

Best of all, moss and lichens, as well as the processing of the bark of the apple tree and the sealing of the hollows, should be carried out only after all the foliage on the plant has fallen (or at least 90% of its amount), without waiting for the last leaflet to fall off.

Mosses and lichens can be removed from the apple tree simply by scraping them or removing them with iron vitriol. To do this, you need to take 250 g of ferrous sulfate and dilute in a bucket of water, after which you should thoroughly process the trunk and branches where moss and lichens were found. If this composition pours onto the soil under the tree, then it's okay.

Usually, after a week, both mosses and lichens die off and they only need to be cleaned, for which they often use a metal brush. Under the apple tree you need to spread a film or cloth and collect everything that has fallen on it, and then throw it outside the garden, since there can be any infection. After the moss, lichen and the rest of the trunk are cleaned, treat it with copper sulfate by dissolving 300 g of powder in a bucket of water, you can also treat the soil.

Next, we move on to sealing the hollows on the apple tree, first you need to scrape all the dirt out of the hollow until it is completely clean, then close the hollow with ordinary plaster. And remember, the tree will grow, and the "seal" may pop out, so this operation may have to be repeated later.

Removing lichens and mosses from apple trees
Removing lichens and mosses from apple trees

Autumn pruning of apple trees

In autumn, it is advisable to carry out sanitary pruning. To do this, inspect the plant, and all dry, broken shoots and those that grow deeper into the crown, leading to its thickening, cut strictly into a ring, followed by the obligatory covering of the cuts with garden red or pitch. Make cuts in dry and clear weather.

Whitewashing apple tree trunks

It is better to whitewash apple tree trunks later, when the risk of rain is minimal. Whitewashing brings many benefits: protection from sunburn, fungal infection, perhaps even from pests, from cracking the bark (due to overheating during the day and cooling at night), and it's just beautiful.

Whitewash with lime or garden paint until the first skeletal ramifications. Always start whitening from the bottom up so that all places are well painted over. If it rains unexpected and untimely, then the whitewashing will have to be repeated.

Harvesting

Against the background of all this bunch of work, do not forget about harvesting: late apple trees are ready by this time, so you need to pay attention to them. It is best to pick apples a little unripe, then they will be stored longer and always in rubber gloves so as not to damage the fruit. Collect the fruits in plastic buckets made of soft plastic and do not throw them, but put them in a container carefully. Do not pluck the fruits, but turn them clockwise so that they break off together with the stalk, then they will lie for a long time. Calibrate apples right away, select ideal ones and those that have damage. Store the former, and recycle the latter.

After picking apples, be sure to walk around the garden, collect all the carrion, and use the fruit picker to remove all the fruits that hang very high. Both of them can become a breeding ground for infection, and if they are in good condition, then they can be used for food. But just do not store them (especially the carrion).

Sanitary pruning of apple trees in autumn
Sanitary pruning of apple trees in autumn

Caring for an old apple tree

In the event that you got an old garden, and the apples hang attractive on it, then the trees can be rejuvenated in autumn. Of course, first of all, you need to do all the operations that we described above. Further, under the branches of the apple tree, which are strongly deflected from the shoots, you can put props. Props are unlikely to interfere with you, and these branches will bear a lot of fruit next year.

Pay attention to whether there are no tops - thick, vertically growing shoots of an apple tree, half of them can be safely cut into a ring and covered with garden pitch, and the other half can be bent to a horizontal position and pinned to the ground or nearby shoots with wooden pegs, laying rubber bands between them … In the future, they will bear good fruit, since they will no longer be useless topping drones.

If you are thinking of cutting off an old apple tree, then in no case do it right away, stretch the pleasure for three or four years, otherwise you can ruin the plant. In the first year, limit yourself to removing dry, broken and diseased branches on the ring (as well as one or two shoots that have not produced fruit at all). The next year, remove those shoots that thicken the crown, and finally, in the third year, try to subordinate the central conductor to the lateral shoots, creating the typical and familiar to all three tiers of the crown.

In addition, just in case, treat the old apple trees with a complex of pesticides, after harvesting, of course, and apply fertilizers (except nitrogen fertilizers, they cannot be used), 15-20 g of potassium sulfate and 10-15 g of superphosphate each, you can pour in a dug up circle soil wood ash (a couple of handfuls). Do not forget about water-charging irrigation.

Apple tree insulation and protection

This is more likely to concern young apple trees, since the apple tree is generally a relatively winter-hardy plant (however, anything can happen). Lay humus in the near-stem zone (with a layer of 3-4 cm), and be sure to protect the stem from rodents with a net before the first branches. And one more thing (by the way, this applies to all apple trees): cut off the unripe shoots (their green tops). After the first snow falls, you can spread the poisoned bait near each apple tree and send the trees to sleep, wishing sweet dreams.

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