Fruit tree expert Sarah Frater from Edible Garden has pulled together her action plan for taking care of your fruit and nut trees and plants at this time of year. And don’t forget her ever-popular guide on how to control leaf curl.

Check moisture levels

While it’s getting wetter in most of the country, it’s still important to make sure your trees are receiving enough water. It’s particularly important to ensure your citrus trees (which are shallow rooted) get enough water. If they don’t get enough water in summer and autumn their fruit in winter will be pithy and dry. Mulching will help conserve moisture – and under your feijoa trees will make fruit collection easier. Remember to water well and deep – drippers and soak hoses are ideal for doing this.

Check plant ties and stakes

Make sure your plant ties are secure but not overly tight. These can be a great place for bugs (like scale) to over-winter so check and renew the ties if you need to. It’s also important to check any plants that need stakes are secure.

Harvest nuts

Mow under your nut trees so the grass is short. This will make it easier to collect fallen nuts especially if you’re raking them by hand.  Next, dry them OUT of the sun (like under a verandah or in a shed) on an open base (like an old inner sprung mattress base). After a week or two, when the nuts are dried, store them in onion sacks (ideally hanging from the rafters) and away from rodents.

Leaves and prunings

Burn any prunings or leaf litter lying around under any of your fruit trees to avoid the spread of overwintering insects and diseases.  This is especially important for trees that have suffered leaf curl and/or brown rot. Remember to remove all mummified fruit as well. Mummified fruit is fruit that has been damaged by fungi and the fungi encases the whole outer of the fruit. All that fungi, if not removed, is just sitting around waiting to re-infect the following season.

Frost protection

If you live in a frost-prone area, start thinking about how you’re going to protect your citrus, tamarillo and passion fruit trees and plants. Either spray them with liquid frost cloth or for your citrus trees you could make straw bale houses around them which you can then secure frost cloth over the top of.

Protect pipfruit from codlin moths

Place corrugated cardboard around the trunks of your pipfruit trees as a trap for migrating and over-wintering pests such as codlin moths. You could also try planting Pelagonium tomentosa (Peppermint pelagonium) which has strong scented leaves. The oil in pelagonium leaves is also present in the roots and can help to deter codlin moth that may try to pupate or over-winter in the soil.

Spraying

Spray plants like gooseberry with winter oil (we use Enspray 99) to protect your plants against mites. 

Spray lime sulphur on your pip and stone fruit trees as an autumn/pre-winter cleanup to target pests and diseases. It is very important to remember it burns off the foliage, lichen pests and diseases so only apply it in cool months. And NEVER use it on apricots and some pears, apple Cox’s Orange Pippin and Red Delicious which are sulphur sensitive.

It’s also very important to NEVER mix lime sulphur with other products (especially copper) and allow two weeks after the application of lime Sulphur before applying copper or spraying oil to fruit trees.

Brambles and raspberries

This is your last chance for a post-harvest cleanup on brambles and raspberries. Prune out the spent canes or mark with ties so you know which ones to remove and tie new season canes in place.

Planting

If you’re planning on planting your trees (feijoas, citrus, berry, nut, fruit etc) in a pot then you can do this at most times of the year. With the exception of February as it’s normally too dry for fruit tree planting. And if you’re planning on planting in the ground, now’s the time to start getting ready. Work out where and what you want to grow for planting in winter when the trees are dormant (late June to August).

Take a look at Edible Garden’s catalogue and place your order. Their trees are mostly deciduous (loose their leaves) and they will dispatch the bare-rooted trees when they’re in their dormant phase. Bare-rooted means they have been pulled from the ground and will have no soil around their roots. This means they need to be planted as soon as you receive them in winter and then they will shoot away in spring.

Like us, Edible Garden ships their trees all over the country – even Stewart Island and the Chathams. And because the plants are bare-rooted it means they’re cheaper and easier to courier. With over 20 pages in their catalogue you’re bound to find something of interest – the problem will probably be you find too much of interest!

Once you’ve got your trees, try companion-planting something like primulas and pansies around the base of the trees to add some colour before the trees shoot off.