Perennial fruit trees are characterized by continuous nutrition. Their roots, under certain soil conditions( temperature, humidity), are capable of growing all year, consuming nutrients. The main autumn root dressings of the orchard do not always provide the necessary concentrations, the necessary ratio of nutrients during the growing season. Therefore, spraying, fertilizing, processing of fruit trees, as a rule, are also carried out in the spring, when the nutrient reserves of the plants have already significantly decreased, and the mineral elements available for consumption, the most important of them - nitrogen, are washed away by precipitation deep into the soil during November – March..Consequently, spring foliar, subsurface feeding and processing of fruit trees are most important.
- Foliar processing and spraying of fruit treesLook carefully at your fruit trees. The buds have not woken up yet, but ants are already crawling along the branches. And if you take a closer look, you can see black dots near the kidneys. This is the future aphid, her eggs. Ants are waiting for her to hatch. As soon as the buds hatch, the aphid will hatch, begin to eat leaves, harm our garden.
Young pear leaves are damaged by aphids, and ants are here and there Against such a scourge, early spring spraying of fruit trees will help, which should be done as soon as the snow melts, before budding.
How to spray? Bordeaux liquid can be( slaked lime + copper sulfate).This long-known, popular pest control tool is still in use today.
A more effective drug is a mixture of carbamide( urea) with copper sulfate. Typically, the complex of these components, sold in stores, is designed for 10 liters of water. It includes 700 g of urea( urea) and 50 g of copper sulphate. What is its advantage compared to Bordeaux liquid? It not only destroys pests, but in parallel serves as fertilizer for fruit trees.
Getting on the branches, trunk, carbamide( urea) through the bark, buds nourishes it and in early spring the tree gets very good help for spring growth in the form of nitrogenous fertilizer.
Once I read this information once, since then I have been using this drug in my country house. I see how the trees from winter hibernation amicably and actively awake, but. .. with some delay. Now you will understand why this is also a plus.
Urea inhibits vegetation. The buds of the fruit trees that we sprayed will wake up 1-1.5 weeks later than the rest, untreated. Accordingly, the timing of flowering is also postponed. What is the advantage of late flowering, because we want, on the contrary, early harvest? And the fact that we reduce the risk of such early-flowering plants as apricots, peaches under late spring frosts. Do not worry! Treated fruit trees will catch up, even overtake their untreated counterparts, but they will be stronger, healthier.
In this year, March 29, suddenly, after the apricots began to bloom, snow fell, at night the temperature dropped to -5-7 ° С( Novokubansky District).Of course, you understand what experiences gardeners experienced, I am also among them. But my young apricot has not even buds yet, although it does not belong to late varieties. I think that the processing has played its positive role - the tree did not fall under the unexpected frost.
Let's return to the mixture of carbamide with blue vitriol. It destroys last year's mushroom spores, various pest eggs, including the flowering beetle, protects the future crop from late frosts.
When spraying fruit trees, you must also spray the ground, last year’s leaves under the tree. By the way, the processed leaves quickly rotten, since urea very well stimulates the decomposition of organic matter. In addition, the spores of harmful fungi, pests under the trees will be destroyed.
Carbamide with copper sulfate of the same concentration can be sprayed with a garden in the fall. Here, too, the period of autumn spraying is important - it is best to do this when, for example, apple leaves fall from 20% to 40% of the foliage. Earlier spraying can provoke belated growth of shoots, and this is fraught with strong frosting in winter. Therefore, in the fall they spray fruit trees, the ground beneath them, when the leaves begin to fall. It also stimulates the decomposition of fallen leaves, destroys the spores of fungi. But we were distracted, because we have spring.
How to prepare a solution of urea with copper sulfate? First, pour carbamide into a clean bucket, fill it with water by half, stir well until complete dissolution, add copper sulfate powder. Mix for spraying ready. Be careful. The mixture is toxic. Do not spray trees with wind. Use a respirator, mask, goggles to protect the respiratory organs and eyes from harmful effects.
The same treatment should be carried out on currant bushes and gooseberries. But, remember, the gooseberry wakes up, releases the leaves before the others, therefore, it should be processed before the bud spitting.
↑ to contents ↑Root top dressing of fruit trees
Now let's talk about subsurface spring top dressing.
To begin with, we define how to properly contain the stem of a fruit tree? The earth around it should be loose - this provides air access to the roots. Most often, we dig up the ground near the trunk, trying to ensure that the excavated area does not go beyond the crown.
Nowadays, you can meet gardens in the bowl, in which the space under and between garden trees is a lawn. It is beautiful, aesthetic, pleasing to the eye. Sow the ground around the trunk circle with lawn grass or clover, that is, herbs with a shallow root system that will help keep the soil in a loose, porous state. In no case should it be weeds. The root system of weeds penetrates deep into the ground, takes away nutrients that could get to the fruit.
Feeding of fruit trees, of course, is simplified if the ground near the trunks is clean, without grass or weeds. Then usually when loosening or digging remains a groove around the perimeter of the crown. Put there organic or mineral fertilizers, dropping them all. The rest is completed by rain or watering, dissolving nutrients, bringing them to the roots of trees.
The first in-soil top-dressing is carried out two to three weeks before the mass flowering( March-April).To do this, use high-speed nitrogen fertilizers: from organic - bird droppings, from mineral - ammonium nitrate.
In no case do not plant fertilizers in the immediate vicinity of the trunk, since there are the main bearing skeletal roots of the tree, they do not make sense to feed them. Suction, capillary roots are located around the perimeter of the branches. Such fertilizing can be done from the moment of bud break.
What to do if you have a beautiful lawn under a tree? You don't want to damage it with such dressings? Take a scrap or sharpened stake, retreat a meter from the trunk and poke your lawn with a crowbar / stake to a depth of 5-7 cm around the perimeter of the trunk circle( do not forget about the restricted area directly near the trunk).Of course, near an adult tree you will have to punch a lot of such holes.
Prepare the nutrient solution in advance. We take a large capacity - it can be a tank, for example, a 200-liter barrel - we pour 1-2 buckets of mullein there( it is better to take not quite fresh), or horse manure, or around a bucket of chicken manure, you can add a couple of handfuls of complex fertilizers, an armfulmown grass, crusts of old bread, a half-liter jar of wood ash. Fill with water, insist 12-15 days. For the fertilizer, we will use a diluted solution - 1-1.5 liters of concentrate per bucket of water.
The amount of watering will depend on the age of your fruit pet. For example, for a 10-15 year old tree, 5-7 buckets of nutrient solution are sufficient. Water will fall into the holes punched by you in the lawn, it will be quickly absorbed. Then pour everything on top with clean water - you can use a hose - you will rinse the lawn grass from fertilizers, the nutrient solution will not harm your lawn. It is good to do such fertilizing watering before the rain, then the work will decrease - you will not have to water it with clean water from above - it will make rain for you.
Such supplements( you can have less, but no greater concentration) can be done 1 time per month until the end of July, that is, until the end of the development period, the growing season of trees. Before this period, we had top dressing with a predominance of nitrogen. Starting from August, fertilizing fruit trees should be with a predominance of phosphorus and potassium in order not to cause a new wave of growth, to increase the winter hardiness of your garden. Nitrogen from fertilizing dressings should be completely excluded. During this period, the intensive growth of the tree stops, the buds in the leaf axils pupate, the growth points are punctured.
Now about foliar treatments of fruit trees in late spring. It is good to do them when the trees have already bloomed, maybe already the ovary has appeared, the leaves have reached their full size. In stores for gardeners there are complex high-speed fertilizers( non-ballast nutrient salts), containing in their composition, in addition to nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and trace elements. Dilute the preparations according to the instructions, spray the trees on the leaves.
Thus, processing, feeding fruit trees, spraying them in early spring will save your garden not only from diseases, pests, but also lay the success of the future harvest.
