Key points for apple tree planting and management in February

In the cold weather of February, apple trees are dormant. To ensure efficient production, the key is to perform proper shaping pruning, properly treat pruning wounds, keep the orchard clean, and ensure that the trees overwinter safely. These basic management measures are the key to completing winter pruning work and enhancing the trees' winter survival ability. Let’s learn together the key points of apple tree planting and management in February.

1. Plastic surgery

Pruning should not be carried out too early, as it may make wound healing difficult and increase the risk of disease. The best time to prune is in early spring, before the tree begins to sprout. After pruning, the wound should be protected immediately with a healing agent.

For young trees, you can follow the early fruiting technique of "fixing the trunk in the first year, heavy pruning in the second year, pulling branches instead of pruning in the third year, forming the tree shape and bearing fruits in the fourth year, and ensuring high yields in the fifth year." This approach allows trees to grow, bear fruit and shape simultaneously, achieving efficient management.

During the growing season, branch growth should be controlled by early opening or delayed branch pulling, while moderate heavy pruning should be carried out in winter. The goal is to quickly increase tree height and trunk thickness while promoting branch growth and crown expansion. When pruning, thinning should be the main method, combined with shortening and removing competing buds to control vigorous growth of branches.

When increasing the branch-to-trunk ratio and branch age ratio, more consideration should be given to branch thickness rather than space. For trees in the early fruiting stage, more branches should be retained, and the branches should be lightly pruned and lengthened to form a "disordered" tree shape, with the goal of early formation and fruiting.

For trees in their peak fruit-bearing period, pruning should focus on balance, stabilizing yield, reasonably loading, renewing branches, and standardizing the tree shape. When pruning, thinning should be the main method, with moderate pinching and less short cutting. A pruning method that combines "sparse, loose, and slow" is used to cultivate a tree shape with high light efficiency, and to cultivate more single-axis extension branches and loosely drooping fruiting branch groups.

For trees in the aging stage, major reshaping measures such as "raising the trunk, dropping the heads, thinning the branches, and thinning" should be taken to improve the tree shape, renew and strengthen the trees, and restore their vitality.

2. Scraping the Trunk

First, remove the old peeling skin. In early spring, promptly scraping off the aging and curled bark on the surface of trees can effectively reduce the base number of overwintering pests and diseases. When scraping the bark, the principle of "exposing the red but not the white" should be followed, that is, only remove the aging and warped bark on the surface of the trunk, avoid touching the wood, so as not to damage the vitality of the tree. The scraped bark should be collected and burned or buried deep outside the garden.

Next, treat the rot spots. While removing the old peeling bark, carefully check the main trunk, large branches, cut and sawed edges, and old rot spots. Once the spots are found, they should be scraped off immediately and thoroughly. When scraping, you should go deep into the wood, but the scraping range should exceed the edge of the lesion by about 1 cm, ensuring that the edge is neat and the blade is smooth to promote wound healing. After scraping, apply 5 to 10 degree Be lime sulfur mixture or 50 times bacteria and virus clear to the wound, then cover it with soil and bandage it with plastic film. Be sure to remove all diseased tissues promptly and strictly disinfect used knives to prevent cross infection.

3. Pest and disease control

After the apple trees have lost their leaves, all diseased branches should be pruned away, and branches affected by rot should be sawn and scraped. At the same time, completely remove the dead branches, fallen leaves and diseased and insect-rotten fruits in the orchard, and take these cleaned materials out of the orchard for burning or deep burial to reduce the overwintering base of pests and diseases. In addition, the entire garden is sprayed with 3 to 5 degrees Baume lime sulfur, fungicides and insecticides to further reduce the number of overwintering pests and diseases.

In terms of orchard cleaning, after pruning, it is necessary to focus on dealing with broken branches, fallen leaves and diseased fruits, and reduce the overwintering density of pathogens and pests by deep burial or burning.

As for the old peeling bark on the tree, since they are the overwintering places for pests and diseases, it is necessary to lay bedding around the tree trunks, collect and remove all the scraped bark and overwintering pests and diseases, and then take them out of the orchard and burn or bury them deeply. The bark scraping process must be thorough, leaving no dead corners, and the tree trunk should be whitewashed after scraping.

When pruning diseased and insect-infested branches, combine it with winter pruning, remove dry and disease-infested branches, and take them out of the orchard for centralized burning. This will help prevent a variety of diseases and pests, reduce their base number, and thus reduce the damage caused by diseases and pests in the coming year.

In short, the focus of apple tree management in different environments will be different. After all, the climate difference between the north and south of my country is quite large, and the different vigor of apple trees will also lead to different management plans.