Summer Fruit Tree Care
- โข Sow lettuce seeds now for a fall crop. Set out broccoli and cabbage plants too.
- โข Wisteria trees need to be trimmed throughout the summer. Keep long tendrils trimmed back to maintain the shape of the tree.
- โข Feed fuchsias, begonias, summer annuals, hanging baskets and container plants to keep them green and blooming right up until frost.
- โข When lily flowers fade, remove the flowers but don’t cut back the stems until leaves have yellowed in the fall.
- โข Plant beets now for fall harvest. They will have a deeper red color than beets planted for spring harvest, and tend to have higher sugar levels too.
Summer Fruit Tree Care
Summer is the time when fruit trees grace us with their abundance of sweet, juicy fruit. It is also the time when fruit trees need your care and attention. This year may not be a very good fruit season, but you need to keep your trees healthy and strong so they will produce well for you in years to come.
Young fruit trees need particular attention. The most important cultural practice during the first year is watering. No other single element of plant care causes more problems or failures than over or under-watering. Water supply must be consistent. Drought followed by flooding can cause trees to stop growing due to the shock of these extremes conditions.
Check the soil weekly. A new tree needs approximately 10 gallons a week during the hot summer months. A tree two years old may need 20 gallons a week. A mature fruit tree can use 50 gallons a week or more. Fruit trees need water to size up their fruit properly. It’s best to water deeply and infrequently rather than shallowly and frequently. Water trees on clay soils, water every 2 to 3 weeks. For young trees, make a moat around the base of the tree so the water stays in the root zone. On older trees, water at the drip line of the tree.
Keep the base of your fruit trees weed free. Spread a 2- to 3-inch thick layer of organic mulch, such as pine straw or bark mulch, over the root zone but keep it a few inches away from the trunk. Organic mulch also breaks down gradually, providing organic matter to the soil.
Inspect your fruit tree bark, branches, leaves, and developing fruits often. Look for signs of insects and diseases and apply the appropriate organic controls. It’s usually easier to control pests if you act before or just as they are getting established, than to control them after they have caused lots of damage.
Paint trunks of young trees with white latex paint or Tree Trunk White to prevent sunburn which causes the bark to crack. This leaves openings for boring insects to enter. They can cause serious damage and even death in young trees.
While most pruning of fruit trees is done in the late winter, some can be done in the summer as well. Summer pruning can eliminate any dead, diseased, or broken branches. prune off any new branches that are growing from the base of the tree (suckers) or straight up from horizontal branches (water sprouts).
Keep your fruit trees healthy and they will give you many years of abundant harvests.
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