Year-round fruit tree care

A seasonal disease-prevention plan

Some fruit trees and berry plants thrive happily without a pest and disease prevention programme, whereas others struggle. The reasons why can be a mystery, or due to any number of factors: position, neighbouring diseased trees, climate (especially high humidity), or just plain bad luck.

As we get ready to say goodbye to long summer days and hello to cooler autumn mornings, it’s timely to consider fruit tree maintenance to ensure the next season’s crops are bountiful and beautiful. If pests or diseases have been a problem for your fruit trees in the past, now’s the perfect time to deal with the causes.

Sprays of any sort should be used in conjunction with best growing practices like good pruning hygiene (cleaning your tools), sealing pruning wounds and removing infected fruit and leaves. And, of course, when you’re spraying, take care not to kill or negatively affect beneficial insects like bees, pollinators and natural predators.

The following care calendar to prevent pests and diseases of fruiting plants is intended as a preventative programme. Some plants will grow perfectly well without the need for this care and attention, but others will be susceptible and require year-round intervention to ensure a healthy, attractive and productive fruit tree or bush. This programme is particularly important if there have been disease or pest problems in previous seasons, to get on top of the infections before they get worse or spread to other trees.

The use of organic control measures is recommended where possible.

Autumn

When deciduous trees start to enter their dormancy period with the autumn leaf drop, the timing is right to apply a clean-up fungicide. Copper oxychloride is a good organic option for smothering the fungal spores and bacteria that cause diseases like leaf curl, bacterial blast and leaf spot. Copper sprays are available in various forms, including liquid, powder and ready-to-use products – just choose your preferred method.

Good coverage is required as fungal diseases can be harboured in the rough crevices of the bark, so apply the solution until your trees are dripping wet. Smothering the diseases will mean there’s less chance of reinfection when the tree comes into blossom and leaf next season.

Winter

Winter brings an extra opportunity to cover any lingering diseases or pests that are overwintering in or under your deciduous fruit trees and berry plants. Copper oxychloride or lime sulphur can be used as a coverall fungicidal spray for the likes of leaf curl and botrytis. Just don’t use lime sulphur on apricot trees – they’re sensitive to sulphur.

Winter spraying oils, such as neem oil or Yates Conqueror Oil, work by smothering the eggs or larvae of insect pests. Bugs like cherry aphids and pear blister mites can be controlled by this application, which should be completed a few weeks after you douse them in the copper or lime sulphur.

Spring

Early spring is often when infections strike fruit trees, thanks to the combination of warmish, wet weather, which promotes rapid spore and bacteria growth, and the soft, fresh growth of blossoms and leaves from the dormant branches. Diseases such as leaf curl (in peaches and nectarines), black spot (in apples and pears), bacterial blast (mainly in stone fruit) and botrytis (mainly in berries and grapes) accelerate at this time of year.

The good news is, the application of preventative sprays in early spring will usually help you to avoid these diseases altogether. Applying copper sprays to fruit trees (especially stone fruit) prior to bud burst and again after flowering will help to cover any diseases that are on the tree. During periods of wet weather, the spray should be applied immediately after rain (rainfall will wash the spray off, removing the shield of protection).

The life cycle of codling moths sees them hibernate in larvae form over winter, inside a cocoon in the crevices of the bark or beneath the tree, then emerge as moths in mid to late spring to lay eggs in the small fruitlets of pip fruit. Thwart them by scattering neem granules around the base of the tree to the dripline (the area on the ground from the trunk to below the tips of the widest branches) from the start of spring

With any spray, take care not to kill or negatively affect bees, pollinators and natural predators. Use organic control measures where possible