Gardening

Using Netting For Better Fruit Harvests

Fruit tree netting is something I had never used or considered using until this year. I had experimented with nylon apple maggot barriers before with moderate success, but their application is quite laborious and time-intensive. Now that I have tried tree netting I will never go back. The process of netting a tree can seem intimidating at first, but with proper planning and the right supplies, it is an excellent way of protecting fruit from pests such as apple maggots and coddling moths, as well as those pesky crows and squirrels. Measuring and Preparation The first step is to make sure that you will have enough netting for the tree (or part of the tree) that you want to cover. The netting available at Swansons is 17.5 feet wide and is sold by the foot. I started with an 18-foot length, giving me a roughly square piece of netting. However, by the time my apple tree was covered, I wished I had given myself a little more to work with. To determine the amount of netting to cover your tree, measure the height of the tree starting at the lowest branch and its width at the widest part. Then, add the length and height together and multiply by 2. This will equal the minimum length you need for a square piece of netting. It’s important to wait until your fruit tree has finished blooming and the petals have fallen before netting your tree. You want the bees to be able to pollinate so you get lots of fruit! Before wrapping your tree it is also a good idea to finish up any last-minute work on the tree, such as pruning and fruit thinning if you wish to do so. I cut off all but one apple per cluster on my tree because I want fewer, larger apples.

Mulberry Success

When we first moved into our place about ten years ago, I knew I wanted to grow fruit trees. Our block is not ideally situated for this, in all honesty. It slopes awkwardly, and the front yard is North facing. The soil was very poor limestone. It was planted with eucalypts and palms, with weed matting throughout. The backyard was closely planted with huge conifers and agaves. We paid an arborist to remove the trees and my husband tackled the agaves, and with a blank slate, we planned the garden. Our goal was to have a mix of productive and sensory plants, with the intention to always have something edible to pick from the garden at any time, whether it be herbs, fruits or veggies. A decade later, we have a large herb, sensory, and veggie garden on rich soil, and about twenty different fruiting trees. In the front garden, this includes a black mulberry tree, which was planted nine years ago. I love mulberries, but you can’t buy them in the shops. I have fond memories of visiting my friend’s house in the Summer, climbing her huge mulberry tree and sitting up there and searching around, finding the little black jewels. I still like ferreting around the tree, searching around jewel-like fruits to find the black, ripe berries. They look like they belong in a fairy story. Mulberries are not a commercially viable crop. Picking them takes ages, as the berries ripen at different times. You have to walk slowly around the tree to find the couple of berries per branch ready to pick. They don’t transport well, and the shelf life is not long. So if you want mulberries, you have to grow them. And they are an acquired taste. Not really sweet like commercial berries, mulberries are tart-sweet with an underlying metallic taste that some people do not enjoy. However, they are hard won. I was not expecting to have much of a crop for the first couple of years, but in the past few years we have waited expectantly for fruit that never came. We have had a couple of dry, tasteless berries each season, then the birds have carried off the rest. Last season, I was despondent, then threatening. I told my husband, “That bloody tree has one more season to produce some fruit, or it’s gone!” Then I thought, as with many garden-related issues, maybe the problem isn’t the tree – maybe it’s the gardener. It didn’t fill me with joy to admit it, believe me. I don’t want to accept that perhaps I had been neglecting the tree. After all, the apricot tree gave us a bumper crop last year. So did the lime tree. Clearly, I could get a tree to produce fruit. But just as different kids need different parenting techniques, so might different fruit trees. So, I read up on mulberry trees. Any info I could find on mulberries, I consumed. Of course, there were differing opinions. Some said prune. Some said don’t prune. But almost all the experts agreed mulberries needed two things in abundance. Water and fertiliser. Not so revolutionary after all. Turns out, I had been underwatering and under-feeding the poor tree. I upped the water, which makes a lot of sense on our north-facing hillside (deep water, once a week), and increased the nutrition. From early Spring, I fed the tree with a couple of handfuls of organic fruit tree fertiliser every month around the base of the tree, watered in well.

Pear Trees

The round, gritty “sand pears” (derived from Asian pears) are among the easiest fruit bearing trees to grow. You can sometimes see old sand pear trees still gamely producing pears in southern homesteads long after the house itself has crumbled. The pears you see in the grocery store are European pears and you can grow them too. Except for their susceptibility to fire blight, which causes stem tips to turn black and die, pears are almost disease-free, and do not need a regular spraying program as do many other fruit trees. Pear trees do not take well to transplanting so choose a long term planting site. The ‘Kieffer’ pear is resistant to fire blight and a good choice everywhere in the continental United States. ‘Kieffer’, like most pear fruit varieties, are self-fertile, but you get better production if you have two cultivars for cross-pollination. The popular ‘Hood’ pear is a good choice for southern orchards. Don’t overlook the new Asian pears. These are hardy in the North, disease-resistant, and generally begin bearing fruit at an early age as a young tree

Apple Trees

Apples are only slightly more difficult to grow than pears. Perfect Plants offers eight different apple tree varieties to choose from. Our favorite varieties include ‘Anna’, ‘Ein Shemer’, and ‘Dorset Golden’ for the South; and ‘Fuji’ and ‘Granny Smith’ for more northern climates. If you are looking for a self fertile apple tree check out the Golden Delicious! Apple trees go through a dormant season so you need to know your local “chill hours” and hardiness zone (they are not the same) and check out the Apple Tree Grow Guide for information on how to grow apple varieties.

Fig Trees

Fig trees may well be the easiest fruit trees of all to grow as they are disease-free, drought tolerant, heat tolerant, fairly cold hardy, early bearing, and self-pollinating. If you are looking for a fast growing fruit tree this is it! We also have semi dwarf fruit tree varieties if you need a small fruit tree to grow in small space that will still produce full size fruit. They are perfect as potted plants! Some fig trees will stay compact at 5-15 feet tall as mature trees. A self-pollinating fruit tree variety means it does not need a second tree to cross pollinate and have trees produce fruit. The ‘Brown Turkey’ Fig tree is one of our favorites. It grows fast, gets large, is highly productive, and it is more cold weather hardy (to USDA zone 7) than most other fig varieties. If you live further Up North, the ‘Chicago Hardy’ fig is your best choice; it will survive in zone 5!

Peach Trees

Peach trees are a great choice for slightly advanced beginner gardeners. They can thrive in USDA grow zones 5-9, making them suitable for a wide range of climates. Peach trees are adaptable, forgiving of different soil conditions, and relatively low maintenance. They require full sun but can tolerate partial shade. Regular watering and proper pruning are important, but both can be easily learned. Peach trees offer a rewarding experience with beautiful blossoms in spring and a bountiful harvest of juicy peaches in the summer. Their manageable size makes them easier to maintain and harvest compared to larger fruit trees. Overall, peach trees are a beginner-friendly option for those looking to add a fruitful addition to their backyard garden.Some examples of fruit trees that are friendly for relative beginners are the White Lady Peach, Reliance Peach, and Contender Peach. These varieties are self-pollinating, meaning they do not require another tree for fruit production, although some varieties may benefit from a companion tree for increased fruit yield. Nevertheless, all three types are capable of producing fruit on their own.

Could grasshoppers be eating your fruit?

Have you ever spotted this type of damage on your fruit? Wondered whether it could be caused by grasshoppers? It’s more likely that you’ve never really thought of this particular insect as a fruit-eating pest. After all, they’re better known for eating grass, leaves, and stems. We’re here to tell you that this damage is typical of grasshoppers, or it might even be caused by locusts.Identifying grasshopper damage on fruit First up, when should you be looking for potential grasshopper damage on your fruit? This differs in different climates. Seasonal conditions can also have a dramatic difference on if (or when) they show up. Grasshoppers can become quite a problem from about mid-summer onwards. If you’re on the lookout you’ll probably notice when they show up in your garden. That’s the time to start checking your fruit for potential damage. Grasshopper damage to fruit trees Grasshoppers can damage fruit, but that’s not the only damage to watch for. If they turn up in large enough numbers, they can also devastate whole trees. Here’s a little plum tree in our orchard that was badly attacked. The photo on the left-hand side showed how sad and bedraggled the tree looked after the attack when it was almost leafless. The photo on the right shows the same little plum tree the following spring, covered in healthy leaves and fruit. Since then, it’s continued to grow and become very productive. As bad as it looks, a tree can survive this sort of damage as long as it happens later in the growing season. That’s because the tree has already done most of its growth for the year. Once your fruit trees stop growing for the season, they can survive more easily without any leaf cover. However, severe damage can kill really young trees. Damage early in the season can also be a death knell if the trees are completely stripped of their leaves. Can you prevent grasshopper damage to fruit trees? One way to combat them seems to be to keep the grass cut (or eaten down by animals) under the trees. This removes some of the habitat and protection from predators that they rely on. But honestly? It can have limited success. Two methods of preventing grasshopper damage The first (and probably best) method is to use some animal friends to do what they do best. Chickens and other poultry just LOVE to eat grasshoppers. But there are a couple of keys to making this technique work. You need to have enough birds to cope with the scale of the problem. There are only so many grasshoppers a chicken can eat, so don’t have unrealistic ideas of how well, or how quickly, they’ll solve your grasshopper problem; If chickens are allowed to free-range over a wide area, the grasshoppers may not come to their attention. Try to confine the chickens around the affected fruit trees for a brief time; Consider limiting access to their other food while they’re on grasshopper duty. Obviously, this needs to be short-term and well-managed. Don’t run the risk of starving your chickens! (Find some simple guidelines about what to feed your chickens here). But they’re more likely to be keenly hunting if their bellies aren’t already full when they start their shift. Done properly, poultry can help to clear up a grasshopper problem very quickly. This is a great example of the many fabulous ways that animals can be key partners in your garden. And the last grasshopper control method… The last method is netting. Regular bird netting won’t work, because the holes are generally too big. It was mandated in Victoria in late 2021 that all fruit tree netting must have holes smaller than 5mm in diameter. This will probably be small enough to exclude most grasshoppers. Fruit fly netting has smaller holes again. If you’re netting your trees against fruit fly, chances are you’ll never be bothered by grasshoppers eating your fruit, or your fruit trees.

How to remove fruit tree suckers…the right way

Removing fruit tree suckers is an important part of pruning your fruit trees. They’re sometimes called watershoots, but in fact, watershoots are something entirely different. Pruning is one of the 5 key fruit tree jobs. Whether you’re pruning in summer or winter (or any other time for that matter), removing suckers is an important part of the job. What’s a sucker? Good question! Suckers are shoots growing from below the graft union on your tree. Sometimes they’re growing directly from the roots and coming up through the soil near the trunk of the tree. Most fruit trees have been grafted. This means that shoots from below the graft union are growing from the rootstock, rather than from the variety. Watershoots are something different. Just like suckers they are strong, vertical shoots, but watershoots grow from above the graft and need dealing with differently. Why should you always remove fruit tree suckers? There are three very good reasons why you should always remove these shoots from your fruit trees. It’s often better to illustrate these things rather than talk about them. Suckers are pretty common, so we have lots of photos from our orchards to demonstrate what we’re talking about! Can suckers get as big as the tree? This is a little plum tree with two suckers coming up from the roots. Notice how they’re pretty much the same diameter as the original tree? In just one year, both suckers have grown taller than the tree. Just imagine, for a minute, what this scenario would look like in another year or two if the suckers were left intact. Within a very short space of time, the original grafted tree would become increasingly difficult to distinguish. In fact, the suckers would likely out-compete the original tree, increasing its chances of dying. If you have a multi-trunked fruit tree in your garden, this is one of the common explanations for how it got there.

How to avoid depressing mistakes with your fruit trees

As experienced fruit growers, we know all too well the importance of planning when it comes to avoiding depressing mistakes with your fruit trees. But even the most experienced growers can make mistakes, and we’ve made plenty! We’ve learned much of what we know the hard way. It’s equipped us very well to help home fruit growers (like you) avoid the same depressing mistakes. There’s no point everyone going through the same pain, so we’re very happy to share our mistakes here on the blog. It might help you skate through the rookie stage as painlessly as possible. Some of the worst mistakes we’ve made along the way happened before we had a robust picking calendar. Making the mistake of letting fruit fall to the ground One early occasion was particularly memorable. It was a beautiful summer day near the start of the picking season. We’d been busy with the cherry harvest, and were excited for the apricots to get started. We had a great crop that year, after a disastrous season the year before. One of the first apricots to ripen in our orchard is the delicious Poppicot variety. To be fair, we’d checked a couple of trees at the top of the row, and decided that they were at least a week from being ripe. What we didn’t do was walk to the bottom of the row to check the fruit there. If we had, we would have noticed a few ripe fruit already lying on the ground. A week later we went to pick, and our hearts sank as we saw a sea of ripe fruit lying on the ground, wasted and ruined. A fruit tree plan—what’s that? We realized that we had made two rookie mistakes. The first was that we didn’t have a Fruit Tree Action Plan or an accurate picking diary to remind us of when it was time to harvest. And the second was that we didn’t realise the impact that microclimate can have on fruit ripening (that is, trees can ripen unevenly, even when they are close together). Bottom line? Our lack of planning led to the waste of all the hard work, pruning, thinning, watering, and feeding that we’d done up to that point! Lesson learned: write an Action Plan including a picking calendar, folks! It’s an easy way to make sure you don’t miss out on the fruits of your labour. Learning the hard way why netting your fruit trees is always worth it When we first moved home to the orchard and started growing fruit, we didn’t have any nets at all to protect the fruit trees. We regularly lost fruit to birds and dreamed of being able to protect our precious crops. Then we got a great deal on a job lot of ex-winery netting. We snapped it up and imagined that our bird woes were over. Ah, such innocent, naive thoughts. The thing about bird netting is that it works really well – as long as you put it on early enough! (You also need to regularly care for your nets.)