Care Tips for Fall Fruit Trees

If you wish to produce the best quality and quantity of fruits during the next season there are certain things you must do before winter to ensure this. Proper care of your fruit trees in fall will ensure a bountiful harvest in the next season. The process of proper fall fruit trees care involves pruning, staking, fertilizing, protecting, spraying and cleaning. Let us now discuss each of these processes in detail.

Pruning is a very important step often neglected by fruit tree owners. Proper pruning of your fruit trees will ensure that your fruit trees will thrive. Most people think that pruning is done to cut a fruit tree down to size. It actually involves removing dead or diseased limbs or branches so that the fruit tree can grow healthier and become stronger. Inspect your fruit trees thoroughly and cut off all diseased or dead branches as these can leech essential nutrients and retard the growth. Also you are ensuring that any disease does not spread to the other parts of your fruit tree. By doing this you will save yourself of a lot of trouble later.

Many fruit tree owners think that they need to prune their fruit trees only after they bear fruit. This is a mistake as by pruning dead and diseased branches regularly you can ensure that your fruit tree grows healthy, big and strong by the time it bears fruit. A healthy and well grown fruit tree will bear fruit evenly in all its branches. This will ensure a better harvest than a fruit tree that is not pruned before fruiting.

You will have to ensure that your fruit trees grow evenly so that they are using the space optimally. If one side of a fruit tree appears fuller than the other sides trim down the branches of the fuller side to make it evenly balanced on all sides. If two branches are crowding each other then cut off the smaller branch. This will ensure that all the branches are receiving sunlight evenly. Don't worry about cutting off branches, even healthy ones when necessary, as by doing so you are doing your tree and yourself a favor. Therefore cut off even those branches that have a slight problem.

If your fruit trees are young then you have to make sure that they will remain upright against harsh winter winds. This is done by properly staking your young fruit trees during fall. However, staking will be usually needed in the first year only. Be sure to remove the stakes and anything tied to the branches so the tree can grow freely. Fall is also the right time to train the branches of a young fruit tree by tying them to stronger branches or to the stake.

Fall is also a great time for fertilizing your young fruit trees. The best fertilizers for this purpose are time release organic fertilizers. Apply the organic fertilizer by making deep one inch holes around the tree's drip edge and fill them with the fertilizer. The advantage of slow release organic fertilizer is that it will not burn the roots and won't leech into the soil unnecessarily as only a small quantity of nutrients is released at a time. If you fertilize your fruit tree in fall your fruit tree will have a stronger root system by next spring.

You can also protect your young fruit trees against deer and rodent damage as well as wind burn and sun scald by wrapping their trunks with tree wrap or plastic protectors. These are available in garden supply stores. However remember to remove them once winter is over. Fall is also a good time to remove all grass growing around the trees and generally cleaning up your orchard or yard where your fruit trees grow.