Gifts for Gardeners
Garden tools, gloves, fertilizer, and plant and bulb gift cards are but a few of the unusual gifts that will be appreciated by gardeners.
Prune Fruit Trees
Peaches and nectarines should be pruned severely this month. Apricots, apples, and pears require only the removal of dead wood, crossed branches, and water sprouts.
Peaches and nectarines form fruit buds (for the following year’s crop) only on new wood, and unless constant new growth is encouraged, the fruit will be less each year.
Most growers see that fruiting wood is completely renewed every three years. This involves the removal of one-third of the fruiting branches each year, never letting any branch remain longer than the fourth year.
Pruning wounds may be sealed with tree wound dressing in pressurized cans. This makes the formerly messy chore of painting on the dressing a clean one.
Spray Fruit Trees
Lime sulfur, applied now in the dormant season, will control three fungus diseases commonly found on peaches, cherries, and nectarines. (On apricots, use a copper spray instead.)
- Peach leaf curl, particularly troublesome on flowering peaches, is a fungus that causes the leaves to be distorted and thickened, and they usually turn red.
- Shot hole disease of stone fruits resembles insect injury. Leaf spots produced by the fungus, fall out leaving circular holes that give the leaf a ragged appearance. The twigs are often affected too, with die-back the result.
- Brown rot kills buds and twigs and causes fruit rot. The causal fungus is especially severe in wet weather.