In the middle of summer, you need to focus on preserving the future harvest and protecting it from diseases and pests. Our consultant Alexey Rybin, agronomist, candidate of agricultural sciences, tells how to do this.
July 8 2016
It is impossible to completely eliminate the army of gluttonous insects, however, even novice gardeners can reduce their harm to a minimum. Loosen and weed the aisles of the beds and the tree-trunk circles of trees and bushes – this will limit the access of insects from the ground. To combat the apple and plum moth (remember how many wormy apples there were last year!), You can use baits. Make a homemade mash (in 2 liters of dried fruit compote, add 0,5 liters of bread kvass, 1 glass of sugar, 25 g of yeast and put in a warm place to ferment). The solutions are poured into jars, filling them by 1/3, hung on branches in the evening, and removed in the morning. You can also fight the apple moth by collecting damaged fallen apples every day.
July is the time of active reproduction of garden pests: cabbage scoop, onion or carrot flies, late blight and powdery mildew of bacteriosis. Aphids, spider mites, whiteflies can appear on peppers and eggplants in greenhouses. In rainy weather, slugs are annoying. Therefore, preventive treatments of plants against pests and diseases are important, preferably with herbal infusions and decoctions. Don’t miss years of vegetable flies and other vegetable pests. The signal for their appearance is the cabbage butterfly. As soon as you see it, immediately spray the plantings with “Fitoverm”, you can cover with lutrasil. On cauliflower and white cabbage, you can put on bags sewn from gauze or lutrasil and tie them tightly on the leg. Slugs will not be able to get into such a bag.
While currants and gooseberries are being poured, they need to be watered as needed. Lack of moisture leads to a delay in the growth of bushes, to the crushing of berries. In addition, watering is needed immediately after harvest. The soil is moistened to the depth of the root layer. In the second half of July, they start picking berries of early and medium varieties of black, white and red currants, as well as gooseberries. Black currant berries are best harvested in two harvests. In the first year after planting, plants with light green leaves need to be fed at the beginning of the month with liquid nitrogen fertilizers. Raspberries must be watered during the period of filling and ripening of berries.
In the first half of July, strong shoots are pinched to turn them into semi-skeletal and overgrown branches. At the end of July, the shoots of young trees are pinched, in which it is necessary to accelerate the end of growth and ripening of the wood. You can start bending and tying extra strong annual branches to weaken their growth and accelerate fruiting. Supports are installed under the branches of apple trees with a large number of fruits.
In addition, in the middle of summer, it is very useful to feed trees with phosphorus and potassium with the addition of trace elements. Scare away birds that may chew on cherries and cherries. Sparrows and blackbirds cause the greatest damage to the crop. Hang pieces of foil or plastic on the branches, use wooden ratchets, or cover the trees with coarse-mesh nets.