Wouldn’t you love picking fresh fruit from your garden and enjoying these delicious fruit-bearing plants?
Honestly, there’s nothing better than enjoying fresh fruit you cultivated. And, with some knowledge and care, you can grow them too.
Your Fruit-Bearing Plants Deserve The Best Care
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Nothing is better than picking fresh fruit from your garden and enjoying it with your favorite smoothie or baked into a delicious crisp.
If you are looking to start growing your very own fruity harvest in your backyard or garden, this is the article for you.
As you may imagine, caring for fruit-bearing plants is an intricate and delicate task.
Nevertheless, armed with a little know-how and some expert tips from season fruited growers, you can pick fruit off your own tree in no time.
In this article, we will look at what an avid gardener does to care for their fruit-bearing plants to keep them healthy and prosperous.
1 – Splish Splash! It’s All About The Water
Ideally, it’s so important to gain an in-depth understanding of proper watering care for our fruit-bearing plants.
This does require a learning curve about how to water them and exactly how much water they need.
Most commonly, mature fruit trees require period irrigation. As a rule of thumb, you’ll need to moisten the top three feet of soil once every two or three weeks.
However, if you think you may end up forgetting, we highly recommend hooking up with a drip irrigation system or a micro-irrigation system.
These irrigation solutions assist you in watering the tree line of the orchard, unlike other conventional methods that wet the traffic lane between rows.
2 – Pruning is Essential For Fruit-Bearing Plants
Above all, pruning is a key component of growing and caring for healthy fruit-bearing plants.
As you know, pruning is a horticultural process that involves selective removal of certain parts of a plant such as branches or buds that may inhibit its growth and development.
After planting your fruit tree, immediately prune the top to restore the regular ratio of roots to the top.
More so, a large proportion of fruiting trees need pruning whilst they are still lying dormant in the colder months.
If you’re looking to prune your trees yourself, we highly recommend investing in tools such as pruners, clippers, branch cutting loppers, and shrub shears which will make pruning an easy task for you to handle.
Ideally, pruning takes place yearly with the main goal of ensuring your tree maintains its shape and stays healthy.
3 – Don’t Neglect The Importance of Pollination
Pollination is vital when you’re trying to get your fruit trees to produce seeds.
As you know, pollination is a natural process that moves pollen grains from one plant to another.
The natural form of pollination requires you to do nothing at all – in fact, insects and animals such as bees and birds carry pollen from one area to another, naturally spreading seeds around for pollination to occur.
The wind also plays a part in pollination by blowing seeds from one area to another.
In most orchards, fruit tree growers step this up with hand pollination where pollen manually transfers from one plant to the pistil of another.
Additionally, to do this, we recommend a commercial pollen sprayer, a cotton swab or a small brush.
4 – Improve The Fertility of Your Soil
To improve the fertility of your soil to sustain the healthy growth of your fruit-bearing plants, mulching is essential.
Similarly, by applying a layer of material to the top layer of your soil, you can reduce weed growth which often leaches nutrients from the soil.
Furthermore, most mulches are usually organic in nature and can range from grass clippings to shredded bark and wood chips. Some fruit growers also use material such as plastic, rock or old carpet to mulch.
More so, you can use mulch at any time but best used after planting fruit-bearing plants to maintain moisture and integrity of your soil.
5 – Fruit Thinning
Furthermore, the fruit thinning process aims to achieve the appropriate size of fruit that you consider ideal.
The process of fruit thinning involves ridding your tree of immature fruit or flowers which helps to stimulate your next crop.
It also prevents limb damage from fruit that may be too heavy and improves the size, color, and taste of your fruit.
You can simply carry this process out by either manually removing excess fruit or doing so with the assistance of pruners.
Fruit thinning works best when carried out in the early stages of fruit development and after pollination of your fruit-bearing plants.
Lastly, Fertilize Your Fruit-Bearing Plants!
Finally, fertilization is key when caring for fruit-bearing plants. After your first season, chances are your soil is going to be lacking in nitrogen and will require fertilization to get back up to par.
Organic high nitrogen fertilizers are the best option for fruit trees as they contain organic substances such as bone meal, manure and feather meal.
More so, depending on the age of your tree, the amount of fertilizer you need will differ.
Always do your research before fertilizing your fruit-bearing plants in order to maintain the optimal health of your fruit-bearing plants.
Enjoy Your Healthy Fruit-Bearing Plants!
In conclusion, growing your own fruit is one of the most rewarding and exciting things that a gardener can experience.
With a little know-how and tender loving care, the rewards are buckets and buckets of fruit that you can share with your friends and family for years to come.
We hope that this article gives you some insightful information when it comes to caring for fruit-bearing plants.
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