Caring for Your Fruiting Plants

Peachy Pruning

Stonefruit trees, like apples, peaches, nectarines and apricots that have finished fruiting can be summer-pruned now. This reduces their water requirements over the heat of summer, plus maintains trees at a perfect height for picking next seasons fruit.

Trim back this season’s growth by 30-40%, to keep trees under control and promote plenty of growth for next year’s crop. Always choose a dry day for pruning.

Yates PruneTec is a great solution to prevent Lemon Tree Borer larvae from burrowing into the fresh cuts; this can be disastrous for the health of a tree once borer larvae have penetrated its branches, and can be fatal if larvae enter the trunk. PruneTec also encourages natural healing and forms an elastic, UV-stable barrier that stretches as the plant grows.

 “Passionate” Fruit Anyone?

Passionfruit will love an application of Yates Flower and Fruit Booster Liquid Potash, as they need potassium for prolific flowering and to improve fruit quality. Heavy rainfall can leach important nutrients out of the soil, so they often need to be topped up for a good yield of fruit.

In dry areas, give passionfruit a good deep drink each week, as lack of moisture can result in early fruit drop.

If you have a grafted passionfruit, keep an eye out for 'suckers', which are the spindly growing tips that try to shoot up from below the graft union (this is the bit where the fruiting part of the passionfruit (the scion) joins onto the rootstock). Rootstock is chosen for its vigorous nature, so it can supply the scion generously with nutrients. Given half a chance, this energetic rootstock will produce suckers that rob nutrients from the precious scion, quickly becoming dominant and ruining the passionfruit yield. Suckers should be removed as soon as you see them.

Potted Fruit Trees

Potted fruit trees and plants always require extra care over summer. Plants in pots dry out a lot quicker than in-ground plants, plus they can quickly exhaust their limited supply of nutrients.

Regularly check the moisture levels in your potting mix, by gently pushing your finger into the top few centimetres. If some of the potting mix sticks to your finger, leave the watering for a day or so. But if it feels dry and dusty, it’s time to water!

During summer you can feed and water fruiting plants at the same time with Yates Thrive Flower Fruit Soluble Plant Food. It's a complete fertiliser, with nutrients in just the right proportions to encourage lots of flowers and fruit, along with foliage.

And don’t forget: add mulch onto the top of the potting mix in your pots – this really helps to reduce moisture loss.

Sooty Citrus

Have you noticed a black ashy-looking film on your citrus leaves and stems, or seen ants crawling up and down the tree?

The presence of this black ash (it's sooty mould) or ants are classic signs that the tree is being attacked by sap-sucking insect pests.

Scale insects are sap-suckers that are a special challenge for citrus trees. Scale species can vary quite a lot in appearance; they can resemble small shell-like bumps, or can be covered in a waxy white or pink coating that protects their soft bodies from predators. Scale insects exude ‘honeydew’ as a waste product from feeding on the tree; it's very sugary and sweet, so ants are keen to collect it...sooty mould finds it very attractive to grow on.

Control scale insects by spraying thoroughly using Yates Conqueror Spraying Oil, which smothers and kills sucking insect pests. Once the insects are under control, the sooty mould and the ants won’t have a food source and will gradually disappear.

Watering tip: Don’t forget to deep water citrus trees each week, to maintain adequate soil moisture: they're busy setting fruit for this autumn and winter’s crop.