Larry Smith and the Riverside Gardens team talk all things pots, plants and pruning in their weekly gardening column.
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The first frosts for the year eventually arrived this week and they were welcome after the dreary bleak wet weather we had been having for the first half of winter.
Frosts can sometimes cause damage to some plants in gardens throughout the area, but the beautiful crisp mornings and lovely still sunny days that follow a frosty morning make it worthwhile.
Also, I am sure the deciduous fruit tree orchardists were very glad to see the chilly frosty mornings arrive as their trees depend on this weather.
Deciduous fruit trees require chilly winter mornings to properly reset their biological clocks for them to wake up healthy in the spring.
The chilly mornings gradually break down the natural growth inhibitors that the trees produce in autumn allowing the trees to open their flower and leaf buds in spring.
Inadequate chilly weather can cause the bud not to open on time uniformly, some buds may not open at all, causing sparse weak growth and poor fruit yields.
The chill also triggers the final stages of flower bud development, and when they all open together, it enables a much better pollination rate by the bees.
Different types of deciduous fruit trees and different varieties within those types require different hours of chilly weather for all of this to happen.
You will often see this noted on the back of plant labels stating they are low chill requirements, but they will still need multiple hours of chilly temperatures to grow and set fruit properly.
So, if you live in a deciduous fruit growing area, frosty mornings are something you are going to have to learn to embrace and work with in your garden.
There are numerous ways of protecting your frost tender plants, from frost cloth to frost protectant sprays, so if you are unsure about what suits your needs best, call into the Garden Centre and have a chat to one of the staff.
Because not all plants that you can grow happily in our area are frost hardy, particularly if you are looking for variety, something unusual or unique.
Winter is the best time to plant deciduous fruit trees while they are available as bare rooted stock making them easier to handle, cheaper and the biggest range to choose from.
Over the past 10 years or so, the Garden Centre has increasingly moved towards dwarf varieties of fruit trees as they have become more readily available.
These are going to produce the same sized fruit as their taller growing cousins, but only growing to about three metres high.
They are ideal for the home gardener because most of the fruit can be picked from ground level and the trees are easy to cover to protect the fruit from fruit fly and birds.
Most varieties of fruit trees are now available in the Garden Centre in dwarf form including apples, pears, nectarines, peaches, cherries, plums, persimmons and apricots, but with the high demand and forward orders, some lines are starting to run low.
There are also taller growing varieties of pears, cherries, persimmons, figs, pomegranates and mulberries if you have the space.
Deciduous fruit trees require pruning each year to ensure their best fruit production, it also helps to prevent overcrowding and keep structural strength in the tree.
By keeping the tree more open it allows sunlight into the tree to help ripen the fruit and increase air flow through the branches to dry out wet foliage quicker preventing fungal diseases like powdery mildew and black spot.
With pome fruit like apples, pears and quinces, pruning should be done mid-winter.
While with stone fruit like peaches, nectarines, plums, and cherries there are two schools of thought on the timing.
The first is late winter, just before the trees break dormancy, and the second is late summer or autumn straight after harvest, as it allows pruning wounds to heal more rapidly in dry warm weather, preventing fungal and bacterial infections that stone fruit are prone to.
Late autumn or winter pruning of apricots trees is strongly not recommended as they are highly susceptible to bacterial gummosis and fungal canker, which is prevalent in cold, wet weather.
Pruning techniques also vary with each type of fruit tree, so again, if you are unsure about how to prune your fruit tree, it is best to call in and have one of our staff run through the best practice for your tree.
If you are growing fruit trees in our commercial fruit growing area, it also comes with the responsibility to keep your fruit trees healthy and pest and disease free.
So don’t hesitate to seek advice if you think you have any problems.