January Orchard Care

This month I will be spraying the trees again, this time with Champ 2F, a copper based fungicide, and dormant oil. The dormant oil acts as a surfactant but also helps to control San Jose scale, or peach scale.

The fungicide helps to control brown rot, among other fungus, and on the apple trees helps to control fire blight, which is terrible for apple trees.

I am still looking for broadleaf herbicide, preferably pre-emergent, to control the weeds / growth on the orchard floor. It’s too early to spray with glyphosate as the weeds & grass under the trees are not really growing yet and they need to be emerged before glyphosate will be effective. The same goes for 2-4D Amine, which is a post-emergent broadleaf herbicide.

I will likely start my pruning the last week of January. It’s a bit early for me but I need some help and the only experienced pruner I can find is only available in January. I’m not sure how much we will get done but a week’s help will be great.

I will also be running another gas line this month from the one propane tank so that I can place a heater close to the apricot trees. This is the first year we can expect any apricots. If we don’t get any this year or next I will probably pull the apricots out but I may not replace them, just use the space for additional parking. On the other hand, if we sell a lot more peaches I may replace the apricots with peaches.

This year I have 10 new apple trees I will be replacing some broken and planting an additional 7 trees. They will not be bearing for a few years and when they do the varieties will be ripening in July.

I have 20 new peach trees coming too. About half will be replacing broken trees and we will have the remainder for sale in gallon buckets in the event someone wants to purchase one.