Away with you, creatures of the night!

At this very moment, your beautiful orchard is quite likely teeming with all kinds of creepy crawly critters, and there may even be some fungal covered mummies lurking about.

Eeek, ewe, very spooky!

Okay, so maybe it isn’t quite Halloween yet, but now is still a great time to talk about why it’s important to ensure your orchard is not a welcome environment for any of the spine-chilling creatures above.

Enough with the Halloween metaphors already, what are we really talking about here?

🦟 PEST & DISEASE PREVENTION 🦟

Still a little creepy!

If you hope to grow healthy fruit, there are a few very simple and effective steps you can take right now, that will help you become acquainted with the practices of good “orchard hygiene”:

WEEKLY MAINTENANCE DURING THE GROWING SEASON:

1.) Remove any fallen or mummified fruits from your trees as well as from the orchard floor.

2.) Remove pruning debris and leaves that came from your fruit trees.

3.) Dispose of the above either off site, in your curbside compost bin, as far from your fruit trees as possible, in a managed hot compost system at the opposite end of your property, or by closely monitored burning.

Easy peasy, right!?  While it may seem counterintuitive to get rid of all this nutrient-rich organic matter, it really is very helpful not to let diseased or infested fruit tree debris lay where they fall for a couple of reasons:

• Fallen and mummified fruits often contain disease and large amounts of fungal spores. If left near your trees, they will increase future infections.

• Fallen and mummified fruits are often home to pests that migrate into the soil under your tree to overwinter. If these cozy, edible, temporary homes are not removed before the pest migrates, you will see increased pest pressure the following season.

WAIT……WHAT EXACTLY IS A MUMMIFIED FRUIT?

A “Fruit Mummy” is pretty much what it sounds like - a dried and shriveled fruit made up of both fungal spores and plant tissues.

You may notice these mummies on the ground or still attached to the tree. The shriveled body serves as a survival structure for fungal spores and is often the result of a heavy scab infection in apples and pears or brown rot in stone fruits.  

While mummies aren’t the only part of a tree that can harbor these unhelpful spores, they are a prime source of storage, so you should remove them from your orchard as soon as you see them. 

ARE YOU SURE I SHOULD PICK UP FALLEN

LEAVES & CLEAN AROUND MY TREES?

“Everyone in my garden group recommends waiting to rake leaves until spring so that beneficial critters are not disturbed. And what about soil health? If I remove the debris, aren’t I just taking away all of the good stuff? I’m afraid cleaning up under my trees might do more harm than good.”

What savvy & informed questions!

While leaving healthy, pest and disease free organic matter on the floor of your yard or garden until spring (or forever!) is in fact a very good stewardship practice, growing fruit in a naturally managed orchard requires a bit of extra consideration.

You see, many of the cultivated fruits we love to grow and eat such as apples, pears, plums, peaches, are highly susceptible to a plethora of pests, infections, and diseases, so they require a some extra help from the loving hand of an attentive orchardist. 

AN EXAMPLE: APPLE SCAB

Apple Scab is a common fungal disease that results in rough brown patches on fruit & foliage.

It overwinters on fallen leaves and debris from an infected tree. In the spring, the fungi shoots out spores that are transferred by wind to newly developing leaves, flowers, & fruit. 

Regular orchard floor cleanup removes a good portion of the fungus and is one way to help prevent this type of spread.

Other methods involve shredding or mowing of the leaf litter to speed up it’s breakdown by microorganisms and worms, and spraying the leaf litter with urea in winter.

To be clear, regular cleaning up under your fruit trees throughout the growing season doesn’t mean you should keep the ground bare or uncovered. It just means you want to remove the potential for disease, infection, and pests to the best of your ability on an ongoing basis.

It is still a good idea to provide your trees with a nice heaping dose of mulch in late winter.

The techniques mentioned above are all a part of what is referred to as an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) strategy. Growers who use IPM as a framework are often able to reduce their need for pesticides & fertilizers. In turn the reduced use of pesticides will save many of those beneficial critters we were hoping to protect by waiting to clean up the garden floor until spring. 

Now do you see the beneficial cycle of removing the debris?

Perfect ~ let’s get to cleaning up!

SO MUCH TO LEARN IN THE ORCHARD - READ MORE OF OUR BLOG POSTS HERE!