Fruit trees, like other cultural garden plants, need preparation for winter. Beginners gardeners have questions about when to whitewash trunks, whether it is necessary to cover trees for the winter, than to spray to get rid of diseases. We will try to answer them in our article.
Pest Control
First of all, inspect the trunks of your fruit trees well: if they have "winter flats" of spider mite, plum moth, apple caterpillar and other pests , they need to be scraped off on thick paper and burned.
Those insects that plan to winter in the near-trunk circle will die from frost if they dig through the soil. For the prevention of diseases and pests, it is necessary to process for the winter all the skeletal branches of trees with a solution of iron sulfate.
Painting trees for the winter serves them as a protection against rodents and various diseases like lichen and scab. It is also necessary to whitewash the trunks so that they do not overheat in the sun during the day and are not cooled at night.
Also, to protect trees from rodents, you can cover tree trunks with lapnik and kraft paper. How to wrap the trees for the winter: cut the paper into strips 30 cm wide and reel it on the trunk from the bottom to the top, after which we tie the lapnik (construction bag).
Mulching of the trunks
Preparation of fruit trees for winter is also in mulching - the organization of a kind of fur coat for keeping heat in the near-barrel circle. First you need to loosen the soil to a depth of about 5 cm - loose soil less freezes. Then lay 10-20 cm mulch. It can be peat, compost, humus, sand, sawdust. Do this before the steady colds come.
Specialists do not recommend the use of dead leaves as mulch, as they may have diseases. In addition, they attract mice-voles.
When the snow falls, it is thrown into the trunks and well trampled - this serves as additional heat protection.