A fresh set of chores must be completed on the farm as fruit makes its way into storage, markets, and consumers’ hands in order to ensure that healthy fruits and fruit trees are well prepared for winter. While your trees are dormant this winter season, it’s a great time to engage in disease prevention practices for a successful season the next year. Practices for post-harvest disease management might lessen the risk of infections the next season. There are several crucial things to keep in mind as the dormant season for your apple trees approaches.
Fall Orchard To-Do List: Taking Care of your orchard in winter
Just when you’re ready for a long winter’s nap, it’s time to tend your fruit trees. If you don’t, chances are they will struggle in the coming season. Giving them attention now helps ward off insects and diseases and save you some headache in the next season. The following post-harvest activities should be undertaken.
- Clean Up the Mess: Pick up fallen leaves, old fruits, and any rotting wood lying around. It’s like giving your orchard a good tidy-up, making it look nice and keeping it easy to walk through. Fallen leaves, mummified fruits and dead, decaying wood on the orchard floor should be removed and subsequently burned or buried. This helps reduce the inoculum for the next season.
- Urea Spray: The application of a 5% solution of agricultural grade urea to the orchard floor can help reduce apple scab inoculum as it will help in leaf degradation by soil microbes.
- Winter pruning: Prune out twigs and branches with symptoms of canker infection. Sanitize the pruning equipment to prevent the spread of pathogens. Do not leave pruned wood sitting on the orchard floor. The pruned cuttings need to removed and destroyed subsequently as it may harbor varies pathogens and harmful insects in it. Avoid pruning during wet periods.
- Say Goodbye to Unhealthy Trees: If a tree looks really sick, it’s better to take it out. Think of it like removing a sick plant so the others can stay well.
- Prevent winter sunscald: In late winter, bark can be warmed by intense sunlight which can cause the bark to split eventually leading to tree-trunk canker. This can be avoided by white-washing the tree trunks.
- Pest Management: Orchards can attract a variety of pests, including insects and rodents, which can cause damage to both the harvested crop and the trees themselves. Removing over-ripe or damaged fruit eliminates a food source for pests, making the orchard less attractive to them. This, in turn, reduces the need for pesticide applications and helps protect the ecosystem.
- Dormant copper sprays: Application of dormant copper sprays can be done as a control measure against various bacterial and fungal diseases like scab and bacterial canker. Copper acts as a bactericide as well as fungicide.
- Cleaning and Sanitizing Equipment: Proper sanitation of harvesting tools and equipment is essential to prevent the spread of diseases from one fruit to another. Regularly clean and disinfect bins, crates, shears, and any other equipment used during harvest to maintain a hygienic environment.
How Orchardly Can Help: Smart Tips for Smart Farming
Orchardly is a platform that provides a comprehensive farmer guide, empowering apple growers to implement effective disease and pest management strategies. Orchardly provides real-time recommendations based on weather conditions, soil health, and the developmental stage of the apple trees. This technological intervention is helping growers to make informed decisions and take timely actions to protect their apple orchards against some major threats to the apple crop from disease like Scab, Alternaria infection etc and insect pests like aphids, mites etc.
Wrapping It Up: Getting Ready for a Trouble-Free Spring
The goal of winter sanitation is to reduce the amount of disease inoculum in the orchard while fungi are inactive and also to destroy the overwintering stages of various insect pests that had been active in the orchard. Sanitation practices like leaf litter removal should therefore be taken up and be a top priority to reduce the pest inoculum in the fallen leaves. Orchards suffering from high insect pest infestation should also ensure timely and proper spray of HMOs in the late dormant season.
Doing these tasks now is like giving your orchard a good night’s sleep. If you need help with all this, just ask the Orchardly experts. They’re like your orchard superheroes!