Caring for Your Fruit Trees in the Winter: Suggestions for a Better Spring Fruit Crop

The health of your fruit trees can be puzzling. Fruit tree injury or death can result from previous care or weather conditions. Your fruit tree may die in the winter because you over-fertilized it in the summer. It may die in the winter because of you watered it incorrectly in the summer. It may be injured by extreme cold in the winter and die in the summer. Learning how to properly care for your fruit trees in winter is very important to their health all year long.

Winter care for your fruit trees begins in the fall. In order for your fruit trees to flourish, they need to harden off in the winter to remain strong and be able to bear fruit in the spring. This means you don't want to do anything in the fall that will encourage growth, such as pruning or fertilizing. Following a few simple practices will help your fruit tree through the winter dormant period and ensure its vitality for spring flowering and fruiting.

Continue to water your fruit trees well into October. You want your fruit trees to go into the winter months with a good water supply. Make sure you water 2-3 inches each time so that water can penetrate the root zone of your fruit trees.

Rake away any fallen leaves to prevent leaf-borne diseases and to remove a place for mice to live.

Do not fertilize your tree. Fertilized trees continue to grow and ironically, young fruit trees will take longer to mature and bear fruit if fertilized. This is because they will lack winter hardiness because the fertilizer will prompt them to continue to grow in the winter when fruit trees should be dormant.

Take control of insects. If you had canker worms, tent caterpillars or other insects that must crawl up the tree to lay eggs or that just crawl up the tree to feast on the buds or fruit get some tanglefoot and you will have few or no problems in the spring.

If you live in a very cold climate, you'll want to protect your fruit trees from sunscald that occurs in later winter while the roots are still frozen. Sun can warm the bark during the day, but cells die at night causing damage to the tree. Tree wrapping is necessary through the early years until bark thickens. Wrap the lower five to six feet of the trunk or to the first branch, whichever comes first. Remove tree wrap in the spring after snow melt.

The major winter task for fruit trees is pruning. Winter is an excellent time to prune trees and fruit trees should only be pruned during this dormant season to prevent disease infection. Remember that your fruit trees must stop growing for a period of time in order to harden off before winter. If your fruit trees are not allowed this hardening-off period they may suffer winter injury, thus make sure you prune your fruit trees toward the end of winter.

When pruning trees follow these guidelines:

· Topping the vertical branches encourages growth and bushiness. Topping the horizontal branches will thin off excessive fruit. Do most of the pruning at the top of the tree to allow more sunlight to the lower branches - branches that stay in shade will stop producing fruit.

· Remove all dead and broken branches, branches growing towards the center of the tree, and any branches growing out of the fruit tree's natural shape

· If a young tree has two main stems, save the straighter, more dominate step and cut off the other one.

· Make your cuts next to the branch collar or a bud. Do not leave stubs as they prevent proper healing and invite bacteria and fungi.

· One third of the fruit tree should be trunk with the top two-thirds branched. Don't trim the bottom branches so much that you leave less than two-thirds of the tree branched.

· Do not use pruning paint on any pruning cuts. Pruning cuts will heal faster when paint is not used. Pruning paint seals out diseases and is only necessary should you need to remove branches during growing season. The only time you should prune a fruit tree during growing season is if it gets seriously out of hand and you have way too much fruit.