February Orchard Care

This month, beginning 2/2. last Monday, we started pruning the orchard. We are less than half way at this point despite using battery powered pruners and very sharp hand pruners (Tabor – chromed) for the smaller stuff.

The trees are all four and five years old at this point and grew aggressively last year so there is a lot of additional wood to be removed.

In addition, I left too much fruit on the nectarines and the cicadas did some damage so we’ve had to clean up some of the branches that were really bent over to provide a better overall shape. If the branch is coming straight out, or leaning down, there is a good possibility it will break and damage the tree so it is better to either prune it short or prune it off altogether.

Yesterday I also sprayed the whole orchard with Kocide 3000, a copper hydroxide powder and dormant oil. I used 2 lbs of Kocide per acre, although I could have used 3lbs per acre, and a 2% dormant oil mixed in the same tank (2 gallons dormant oil to 100 gallons of water).

I have a single plenum airblast sprayer and spray 100 gallons per 3 acres, more or less.

The Kocide is a fungicide, particularly effective against leaf curl but will also have some impact against brown rot. It is also useful on the apple trees to suppress the fire blight.

Fire blight is a real pain and I have not pruned the apples yet but when I do, I will sterilize the pruners after ever cut. Then I will spray the apple trees with Agrimycin.

Once the pruning is complete, I will spray again in March with Pristine which is very effective against brown rot, and will spray the apples again with agrimycin probably. Once the apples bloom I will spray them every 5 days or so with agrimycin to battle the fireblight.

I am having to replace some trees that broke and that deer killed so I will pick them up from the nursery 3rd week of February and get them in the ground right away as the roots must not freeze.