Winter care of deciduous plants
During winter, deciduous plants – plants that lose their leaves in the colder weather – are in a state of suspended animation. And, because they’re dormant, winter can be the ideal time to give these plants some extra care.
Here’s a winter checklist for deciduous trees and shrubs:
- Spray Lime Sulphur over deciduous fruit trees and recently pruned roses in July. This will get rid of over-wintering scales, mites and aphids.
- In late winter, prevent leaf curl disease by spraying Yates Leaf Curl Copper Fungicide (Copper oxychloride) onto peach and nectarine trees just before their flower and leaf buds start to swell.
- Apply Leaf Curl Copper Fungicide to apples and pears when buds show green tips. This will control black spot and scab. Or use Yates Fungus Fighter, a modern formulation of copper that mixes readily in water. Old-style copper sprays, such as Bordeaux, can be very difficult to mix. Apricots, too, should be sprayed with Leaf Curl or Fungus Fighter when their flower buds show pink at their tips.
- Yates White Oil is a great clean up treatment for dormant plants. In fact it used to be called Winter Oil, a name which served as a reminder that it needed to be applied at this time of year. A good coating of white oil destroys mites, scales and insect eggs that are lurking in cracks in the bark.
- Remove fruit ‘mummies’ from the trees. Mummies are the shrivelled-up remains of infected fruit from last season’s fungal diseases. If left on the plant they become a carry-over source of fungal infection.
- Winter is the best season to prune most deciduous plants. The exceptions are the summer fruits – these are generally pruned after fruiting – and the spring-flowering blossom trees and shrubs (which should be pruned as soon as their flowers have finished).
- Prune grape vines and train to two main shoots. Pruning must be done in the dead of winter, or the plant can ‘bleed’ and lose an unhealthy amount of sap. Protect grape vines from potential mite damage (blister mite causes disfiguring leaf bubbles) by spraying with Lime Sulphur just before bud burst.
- Check for borers. Poke wire into borer holes or squirt with Yates Pyrethrum in a ready-to-use trigger pack.
- Move plants. Because they’re dormant, quite large specimens can be transplanted in the depths of winter.
- Look for new deciduous plants – the best choice is available in the shops right now. Many are sold bare-rooted (pictured) but others have been recently potted. Hence, don’t be surprised if the potting mix falls off when the plants are taken out because the roots haven’t had time to grow into the mix.
- At the end of winter, feed all deciduous plants just before they make their new growth. Use Dynamic Lifter for Roses for flowering plants and Dynamic Lifter Fruit & Citrus for productive, fruit-bearing varieties.
