The phone at the nursery office rings a little more with the warmer weather. Some folks are tracking down specific stock; others have questions regarding plant health care. As per usual, I hope to open the nursery up around the third week of March. Many folks are wondering, “When’s a good time to start pruning or planting?” and “What do I need to spray on the fruit trees?”
In answer to these questions, I might say that you could prune anytime after we are out of the deep freeze. I schedule my fruit tree pruning December through February when I have some time, regardless of whether it is the best time.
Keep in mind some plants are grown specifically for their spring flowers so we should really prune them after they flower. Pruning them over winter means you would be removing half the floral display. Examples of these might be the yellow flowering forsythia or an ornamental crabapple tree.
Most fruit trees produce an overabundance of flowers and require some pruning over winter for good branch structure and fruit set. You are looking to increase the sunlight level getting into the tree. More sunshine means more and better quality fruit, and less disease. We remove or prune back branches that are diseased, crossed over, backwards, straight up and some that are simply too close together. There are some really neat how-to videos on YouTube nowadays.
Spring planting can begin as soon as the ground has thawed and the moisture level has fallen below saturation. We see a lot of planting from the end of March through the end of May. Bare-root fruit trees do well planted anytime in April and even early May before they leaf out. However, container-grown (potted) trees and shrubs can be planted anytime through the growing season, provided you are around to help get them established.
As for the matter of spraying, your peaches and nectarine trees should really have copper on them to protect them from the peach leaf curl disease. Copper powder or Bordeaux mix applied to the whole tree over winter should allow your trees to grow healthy and productive in spring. Other fruit trees can have a lime sulphur and dormant oil mix sprayed on them anytime up to the point when they begin to flower. The sulphur smells like rotten eggs but is relatively harmless. Spray your apricots with the dormant oil first, then add the lime sulphur part to the mix for all the other trees. Some apricot varieties are “allergic” to the sulphur. Spray them to the point of runoff and, where possible, aim for a window when you have a few dry days and overnight temperatures above freezing.
Remember that backyard horticulture isn’t an exact science. To most people it is a really enjoyable hobby. I think of it as part of a healthy outdoors lifestyle.
Evan Davies owns Beltane Nursery at 2915 Highway 3 in Erickson.
