Autumn peach care

Gardeners have invented a lot of ways to cover a peach for the winter. The peach is a southern plant, and its progress to the north is fraught with a number of difficulties. First of all, this is the freezing of trees in winter. Depending on the region, gardeners have to cover the whole young tree with branches, sometimes only the trunk.

How to care for peach trees in autumn

Preparing a peach for winter includes several stages:

• pruning;
• digging the soil;
• top dressing;
• pre-winter watering;
• warming.

Autumn pruning has its own nuances and is not recommended for use in the northern regions. Sometimes mulching is included in the stages of caring for a peach tree in the fall, which does not allow an earthen crust to form after digging and harrowing. But the same mulch retains pests that do not freeze out under a warming layer.

How to rejuvenate a peach in autumn

Pruning is the first step in caring for a peach in the fall in preparation for winter. Pruning is carried out after harvesting in early autumn. Before winter, the plant should have time to heal the “wounds”.

Pruning is carried out in the following cases:

• for sanitary purposes;
• for crown formation;
• to rejuvenate an old tree;
• with too dense crown;
• for long-term fruiting.

Sanitary pruning, removal of dry and diseased branches, is carried out before covering the peach for the winter. The time for sanitary pruning does not depend on the region.

Pruning a peach in autumn in order to rejuvenate a plant or to form its crown is permissible only in warm regions. To the north, these procedures are best postponed until spring. The same applies to other types of peach tree pruning.

Places of cuts are covered with garden pitch or other similar disinfectant.

Reconstruction

They completely dig up the entire soil in the garden to the depth of a spade bayonet, do not break the clods of earth. When frost sets in, the water remaining in the clods will loosen the soil, and the pests that find themselves without protection will die.

This point in the autumn peach care is contradicted, at first glance, by the procedure of loosening and mulching.

Loosening, mulching the trunk circle

Even in industrial gardens, after plowing with a plow, the tractor also drives with a harrow to break up very large clods of earth. The result is a fairly even and smooth surface. Large areas in the southern regions no longer require any peach cultivation. In the north, the trunk circle will also have to be covered from frost.

The gardener may not be able to manually loosen the soil in the whole garden, so it will be enough to walk with a rake or chopper around the trunk circle. Such loosening improves air exchange and promotes better penetration of water into the soil.

Mulching when caring for a peach tree in the fall is used in two cases:

• to prevent the formation of a crust;
• to protect peach roots from freezing.

The second is relevant in regions with cold winters. They also cover the trunk circle with mulch to prevent weeds from germinating in the spring. But weeds are indifferent to an old tree, only a young tree needs mulch.

Used as mulch:

• sawdust;
• fallen leaves;
• cut grass;
• hay;
• straw;
• crushed bark;
• dry needles;
• peat.

Mulching should be carried out as late as possible, since pests like to hide in such organic matter for the winter. Usually, after harvesting, gardeners burn all the remaining tops.

How to fertilize a peach in the fall

In the fall, after fruiting, the peach needs to be fed with almost the entire set of fertilizers:

• nitrogen;
• phosphoric;
• potassium;
• natural organic.

Depending on the age, the need for each of the fertilizers in peach trees is different.

How to feed a peach in autumn

Peaches need organic fertilizer the most. Compost or humus is added to the soil when digging. In cold regions, organics can be used to warm the roots.

When feeding peaches in the fall, they are guided by the age of the plants. The need for fertilizers for one tree is shown in the table below.

Another option for applying organic fertilizer is fresh cow dung. Such fertilizer is applied no more than once every 3 years and only on frozen soil. It is impossible to mix manure with the earth.

You can also carry out foliar feeding of plants. When foliar autumn peach feeding, the crown and branches are sprayed with a solution of urea or potassium permanganate.

When to Feed Peach Fertilizers in the Fall

For foliar feeding, peach is sprayed in early autumn, when the crop has already been harvested, but at least 70% of the leaves are left on the trees. The solution is sprayed on the crown of plants.

“Dry” fertilizers are applied to the soil before winter watering. With water, nutrients will go to the roots.

How to fertilize correctly

There are rules for adding dressings:

• fertilizers are applied to holes 25 cm deep;
• the distance from the holes to the trunk is at least 30 cm;
• each type of top dressing is sprinkled with a layer of soil with a thickness of 4 cm;
• phosphorus fertilizer is added first, followed by potassium;
• nitrogen-containing top dressing can be added even on top of the soil.

The compost or manure should already be mixed into the soil.

Pre-winter watering peach

Watering is done in late autumn, when the tree has already hibernated and growth has stopped. But a prerequisite for pre-winter water-charging irrigation: it is carried out no later than in the first days of November.

The depth of water penetration should be at least 70 cm. In order for the water to soak the ground well, 1-5 buckets of water are required per 6 m² of the near-stem circle. If the groundwater is high enough, watering can be reduced. After watering, the soil is loosened and, if necessary, mulched.

Processing peaches in autumn

Before you cover peaches for the winter, they still need to be protected from pests and sunburn. Sun damage occurs when peaches are under-watered. Most often, young trees with thin bark and annual shoots receive burns.

The Importance of Autumn Peach Processing

Peach care in the fall includes mandatory treatment for diseases, tree fungi and sunburn. You cannot get rid of tree mushrooms, but you can extend the life of a tree. To do this, cut off diseased branches, and the affected areas are treated with copper sulphate. This will slow down the spread of the mycelium, but will not stop it.

Treatment for sunburn consists in whitewashing the trunk and large branches with slaked lime. Small peach branches are sprayed with lime water in late autumn.

During the growing season, the plant manages to become infected with a variety of fungal diseases that need to be eliminated by winter. Otherwise, you can not wait for the next year’s harvest. Therefore, an important step in caring for a peach and preparing it for wintering is the destruction of not only pests, but also diseases:

• moniliosis;
• powdery mildew;
• leaf curl;
• clasterosporiasis and other diseases.

To avoid the development of pathogenic organisms after the arrival of warm days, peach is sprayed with fungicides in the fall.

How to process a peach in the fall

Whitewashing when caring for a peach is carried out not only to avoid burns, but also to destroy harmful insects. The plants are re-whitened in early spring, before the leaves appear.

To combat fungi, use a solution of copper sulfate or Bordeaux liquid. Stores also sell other ready-made fungicides for peach care in the fall.

Another important aspect of plant care is the protection of young seedlings from mice and hares. For this, mechanical and chemical means are used. Chemicals are poisons. Mechanical method – wrapping the lower part of the trunks with a material inaccessible to the teeth of hares and mice. Further care for the peach depends on the choice of material. Either periodically for ventilation, the shell will need to be removed, or it will be possible to make it permanent.

How to warm a peach for the winter

After all the preliminary peach care operations have been done, the time comes when the tree must be sheltered from the cold. There are many ways to shelter a seedling from frost. In the southern regions, where frosts do not exceed -15 ° C, peaches do not cover at all. You can apply the following methods, depending on the region:

• insulate the roots with humus;
• cover the trunk with corn stalks or spruce branches;
• cover the trunk to the place of inoculation with earth;
• make an analogue of a thermos around the trunk;
• cover the whole tree with an analogue of a hut;
• form a stunted plant, make the crown hanging, and bend young shoots to the ground for the winter.

The video shows the “average” way to cover a peach for the winter.

Here the gardener uses the principle of a thermos, covering the trunk with sawdust. The branches in his region will survive if the trunk stays healthy.

The nuances of preparing a peach for winter in different regions

Peach care farther north of its homeland differs only in the way the plant is sheltered for the winter. If in the south for autumn care it is enough to dig up the ground and apply fertilizer, then in the Moscow region it will be necessary to cover the trunk. You can sprinkle with earth, you can use sawdust.

Otherwise, sawdust or earth will get wet and damage the tree.

If the tree is very small and weak, it would be better to build a “hut” for it. The most affordable way to cover a peach near Moscow for the winter is shown in the video above. If the winter turned out to be unexpectedly cold, you can continue caring for peaches not in autumn, but in winter, as in the video.

To cover a seedling in the Ural region, sawdust is not enough. It is necessary not only to close the main trunk, but also to cover the branches. In this case, gardeners either wrap each branch separately, or build a hut for the entire seedling.

The hut is often made on a rigid frame. Breathable non-woven material is used as the main building material. It is undesirable to use a plastic film, as condensation can accumulate on it.

A hut can even be made from thick paper, but in this case, all peach branches will have to be collected up. A similar preparation of a peach for winter is shown in the video below, where lutrasil non-woven material is used.

Peach care in Siberia

Growing southern plants in Siberia is a laborious task. And the main care problems arise when it is necessary to shelter such a southern guest from frost. When growing a peach in Siberia, you need to take care of the formation of its crown in advance. A tree from a young age needs to be bent to the ground. The harvest will be lower than in the south, but the seedling will not freeze.

How to get such a crown:

1. In autumn, after the leaves fall, the tree is bent to the ground. Do this on warm days, as branches can break in cold weather.
2. The seedling is always bent in one direction, so you need to immediately choose where to bend the plant. Pegs are driven into the ground and the trunk and branches are pulled to them with ropes.
3. Rigid and broken branches are cut off, and the cut is covered with garden pitch.

The result should be an analogue of the polar trees, which almost creep along the ground to keep warm. Caring for such a peach in Siberia will be much easier, since it will be easy to cover it and save the fruit buds from freezing.

Conclusion

Peach care in autumn is basically the same in all regions. The difference lies in the way the plants are protected from frost. To obtain a crop, it is necessary to choose a method of protection suitable for a particular region.