With their beautiful Spring blossom, tasty harvest and year-round structure, fruit trees are suitable for just about any garden. Looking after them isn’t an onerous task either, you just need to know what to do, and when to do it!

November is the perfect time for a few essential tasks which will give your trees the best start in the new season – with the aim of providing more delicious fruit to eat.

Grease Bands

Female winter moths emerge from the soil in November and crawl up apple, pear, plum and cherry trees into the branches to lay their eggs. The eggs hatch into caterpillars just as the Spring blossom and leaves open – and then they start munching! They also eat the leaves of other trees and shrubs, including roses, before crawling back to the soil in June to pupate, when the cycle begins again.

These moths can be prevented from laying their eggs (and their offspring feasting on your potential harvest!) by simply attaching sticky grease bands to your tree trunks – and tree stakes if  your trees are still young enough to be using them.

Winter Tree Wash

Based on fish oils, plant extracted oils or a combination of both, a winter wash should be applied during the dormant season while the tree is bare of leaves. Effective for controlling over-wintering pests such as aphid sap-sucking insects and mites, they can be used on all types of edible fruit trees and bushes.

As tree wash is a contact insecticide, it’s important to ensure that it gets into every crevice, where it will ‘dissolve’ any pest eggs.

Mulching

So quick, simple and cost-effective, a layer of manure or bark mulch will help to:

• retain moisture in the surrounding area, therefore making it available to your trees
• retain nutrients in the soil, by helping to stop them leaching away – thus making them available to your trees
• suppress weeds, which reduces competition for the available water and nutrients – and makes less work for you too!

Whatever you need to care for fruit trees – or if you’d like to add them to your garden – then you’ll find everything you need in-store – along with friendly, expert advice from our staff if you need it!