July is busy old month in the orchard calendar – we’re planting, pruning and most important of all, assessing new growth to decide whether or not to add compost.
Plant
Winter is your once-a-year opportunity – seize the day to plant deciduous trees in their preferred moment, to plant shelter, and to overall beautify and diversify.
Shelter. Keep strong, cold or salty winds from your fruit trees! Here’s my step by step guide + fav shelter plants. While you’re in shelter mode check in with existing plantings as to whether they are doing a good job or not. If the wind still whistles through, plug the gap.
Plant companion plants. Planting the ground beneath and around deciduous fruit trees creates exactly the kind of fertility that fruit trees need. Use your most used and beloved perennial flowers, herbs, and vegetables, in a mixture of taproots e.g. chicory, comfrey, fennel or horse radish, and spreading roots like yarrow, white clover, or lemonbalm. Here are a few of my favs. Kahikatea farm has an inspiring collection.
Plant deciduous fruit trees, nuts, berries and currants. Order fruit and nut trees as bareroots from nurseries, if you can, rather than buying potted ones. Berries, grapes and currants will be in pots.
Before planting day double check positions and spacings with a stake and marinate – banging in labelled stakes where you think your trees are going. Ponder the pozy’s by imaging the full grown width and height of the tree, and move the stakes about until trees are a good fit. Such a clarifying exercise, and it makes planting day easy when you don’t have to think about where trees are going. Plant bareroot trees soon after they arrive.
Check new growth
Assess the new growth of all your deciduous fruit trees to see how well they grew last year. This is an especially important check for young trees cos they need to be growing strong limbs!
- If new wood is 30cm-ish long, and there’s a goodly amount of it evenly spread throughout the tree all is well. Even so, give a young tree with healthy growth a spade of compost- toss it about, and maybe a scattering of woody mulch too. An established tree likely won’t need it – gardener’s choice!
- If the new wood is 10cm or less and/or there isn’t much of it, spread a layer of compost and mulch mainly around and a little further out from the dripline to encourage roots to spread.
- If the new wood is bonkers long, thick and strong, step away from compost and mulch, and from the loppers too cos winter pruning inspires growth. Prune after harvest instead.
Prune
Prune berries, currants, grapes, feijoas and avocados for best health and better fruits, next year. Prune young deciduous fruit trees to get a good shape going, and poorly deciduous fruit trees who need a boost of growth. Leave vigorous stone fruits and pip fruits until after harvest.
Check for woolly aphids, and redo stakes and ties
- Check for woolly aphids on pear or apples. They are generally a sign of stress through the growing season – too dry, too wet or too hungry. Take note, and plan to rectify next season. Meantime, order in some Neem ready to spray at the end of winter. If aphids are in the root crown sprinkle Neem granules around the base as well as spraying.
- Check in on stakes to make sure they are needed. If the tree is well seated, whip them out. Reposition any that are rubbing on the tree, situate stakes about 30cm away from the trunk.
- Remove ties, and redo them if needed.
Hi Kath
My daughter in Glen Eden, Auckland has a feijoa which was badly damaged in a storm earlier this year. It has a large crack which she has bound up. Also she has done pruning of some the branches. It fruited in season and is showing new growth near the crack. I have got a photo but not sure how to attach it.
She wants to know what she should do longterm – be radical and cut to a stump? or hope it will recover? Thanks
Graeme
Perhaps I could send the photo by email.
Bind and prune is perfect Graeme! The tree is showing you already its powers of regeneration. Tell her to keep her eyes on it, and trim away any overly long or out of balance growths as they reveal themselves. Thin off as many fruits as possible, as she can bear! – the less energy it puts into the fruits right now, the more energy it has for repair.
All she need do is keep the tree well mulched – don’t go feeding it up at this time of year.
Biological sprays (find the details on the site) will do the world of good, but really, Feijoas are hardy and will shoot away! Just watch and see!
Hi Kath, I have inherited a rather overgrown/well established feijoa tree hedge. 10ft high and dense. Variable fruiting. I have begun pruning…wondering how hard I can prune it? I have thought to bring it down to 5ft approx and thin right out? Is it a problem if there are no branches with leaves left? Or best to leave some small branches with leaves for photosynthesis? Located Hawke Bay. Thanks
Hey Hugh you’ve got options! Its a big move to take it back so hard that there’s no foliage – but I’ve seen it done before. Hard for me to say exactly without seeing the tree. Heres a post from the Fruit Trees tab on my website. Have a read and then use it as a baseline to help you choose whether to gradually reduce the tree (my usual way) or go hard! Either way – feijoas usually are sweet. https://www.ediblebackyard.co.nz/how-to-prune-feijoas/.
Hi Kath
I have a pruning question please that I might struggle to articulate in an understandable way (!). My bare-rooted fruit trees arrived last week and I’ve planted them into grow bags and taken them back to the 1m height mark. However, a branch on my Captain Kidd was sadly damaged in transit and the damage went back into the main trunk. The nearest bud below the damage was quite far down the trunk (would have resulted in a 40cm tree) so I decided to try for a vase shape and cut it off above the branch just below the damage (60cm high). There are now only 3 branches left on the tree and they’re spaced around one half of the tree only. I’m wondering what would you advise? Keep it as it is or take it down to the 40cm bud or something else? I have limited space so need the trees I have to work well and would prefer to donate this one elsewhere and get myself another if it’s unlikely to do well.
Big thanks as always for sharing your wisdom (but if this message is too garbled feel free to ignore!)
Alana
I’m sure your tree will be fine Alana. Its often the case, this imbalance at the beginning. This coming season, new shoots will come, bringing new opportunities. Position the bag so that the side with no branches faces north, this will inspire action! Mulch with a lovely mixed woody chip and biological sprays regularly through the season. If no shoots turn up this summer to fill the gap, (though I’m sure one will!), then next spring, try notching. Details are in my pruning book and I’ll be writing about it in the August newsletter. Dont forget to send your tree confidence with plenty of encouraging thoughts. K x
Thanks heaps Kath!
Hi Kath, where can I buy your Pruning Fruit paying cash?
Thanks
Hey Natalia – I hear ya! pop into Books and co in otaki, they’ll see you right. Cheers
Amazing! Thank you so much, You are my hero! Cheers
Whoops… your Pruning Fruit Trees book paying cash?
Cheers
I’m in Manakau so between Levin an KapitiCoast will be ideal
Hi kath
i have a 4 year old lemon tree covered in lemons – its really healthy.
Sadly i will need to transplant it as its in the way of the new water tanks. or will be in the shade of them. Any advice on transplanting would be most appreciated.
Hey Mary-lyn, use the lemons up – be sure all are gone by transplanting, wait till spring/ until soil and nights start warming and frosts are over (depending on where you live), prep a place for it now with compost and mulch following all my guidelines about growing citrus. After moving prune it back a little so the roots dont have such a big job.
Hi Kath,
my hubby has just finished building me a berry house (2.4m high) and the Compact Stella cherry tree I ordered has just arrived. They are supposed to grow to 3m, but I’m hoping with a 30L Evergrow bag and some creative pruning I can make it fit in the berry house OK. I was surprised however to find that the tree is already 2.2m and I haven’t even planted it yet! It looks like a giant stick in a pot (a maiden whip) with no branches. In your book you say about making the first cut at about 1m when planting. Would that be true of this sort of tree? It feels drastic as I’m basically cutting more than half off, but I really do want to be able to fit it in my berry house and I need to be able to reach the fruit….
Oh yes cherries are strong vigorous growers alright! They work great in an evergrow bag. Yes prune them low! The point you prune back to is the point at which the branches will spring from so low is good, esp for cherries. Set up wires and fan train the cherry to help keep it in check or leave it free standing and train new branches to the horizontal to help slow them down – deets in my pruning book and also on my website.
have fun, K
Thank you!!
I’m planting fruit trees into grass, but would very much like the area to instead be covered in beneficial companion plants. Do you have any suggestions on the best way to achieve this? Do I try to get rid of the grass before planting the trees (likely a big job!), or is there another way to take over grass with something like comfrey and borage? Thanks Kath!
Hey Laura, you got options! my fav is to plant into the grass and create a meadow style groundcover which is a mix of companion plants, grass and weeds like dandelion, plantain etc. For this choose rambunctious companions like comfrey, yarrow, golden rod, borage and plant them in groups, into the grass (check out this months healthy soil project #3), or the more laborious option is to lay plastic over the grass for 3 or 4 months until its cleared of, or lay cardboard on top of the grass, cover it in mulch, then when the mulch is broken down plant companions into it. It all depends on how vigorous your grass is and the kinda look you are into to.
K x
Hi Kath, does your raspberry frame work well as support for blackberries and boysenberries?
Great question Sue!
Yes it sure does, such a great way to open the crop to light and air and make it easy for pruning and picking et all. Vigour of blackberry and your climate depending you may need longer posts than waratahs – 1.5m something like that.
You may also need a second wire lower down – wait and see, once again depends on growing habit of the variety.
K x
Hi Kath, can I get your opinion on pruning a nectarine that I’m meant to be keeping small, I’ve combed through your books as well. It is a vigorous grower, the two lower scaffolds have ended up the max height I wanted and have few laterals coming out of them. I skipped pruning last year as I think I had removed all the fruiting wood in error the previous years. some branches are now 3-4metres with lots of laterals. Should I prune all the laterals by a third or ideally can I shrink the tree somehow? Is this when notching would work well on the lower scaffolds? Or take it right back to the first scaffold? I worry if I take all the high branches off there’ll be nothing left. I have had hardly any fruit from this tree (not sure if it’s pruning or the low chill hours in Auckland) but my plums next to it give me >100. Thanks!
Gosh thats too hard for me to say without looking at it Joanne. Perfect for a garden coach session or off the top of my head dont prune it in winter prune it after harvest for less growth response. And also nectarines arent small trees – and the harder you prune them the harder they respond, and they are fussy – the right variety is key. hope that helps K