This is the second in a series of seasonal articles intended to help you care for your young fruit tree. We will guide you through the next three months, with advice on what you can do each month to support your tree, as well as other things to watch out for in the garden.
July
Fruit tree tasks:
- If the weather is particularly dry, water any young trees or struggling older ones. Monitor the need for irrigation over the summer as this is when young trees will be most at risk. There are various options for irrigating trees – find out more here: Arboricultural Association - Watering Young Trees
- After the June drop, thin remaining fruits where required. Thinning fruits mean you get fewer but larger and better quality fruit. For a guide to fruit thinning click here
- Prop any branches that will have a heavy crop. Even if you thin the fruit, your tree can still have a heavy crop, so it is worth propping up any branches that could be vulnerable to damage. Plum trees can often be heavy cropping which can occasionally cause branches to break under the weight
- Prune established plum trees. Plum trees differ from other fruit trees, and should only be pruned when in leaf, which reduces the chances of infection by silver leaf disease. Young plum trees (up to three years old) are best lightly pruned in spring but pruning of established plum or cherry trees (over three years old) should be undertaken in mid-summer
- Summer prune apple and pear trees. Only young growth is cut in summer, so it isn’t always needed for larger older trees unless they have been recently winter pruned and so have lots of vigorous water-shoot growth. Summer pruning should be done at the end of July/beginning of August, which gives the tree enough time to heal the wounds before winter but not re-grow any shoots from the cuts. Click here to find out more about summer pruning
- Begin to harvest cherries
Elsewhere in the garden:
- Try to avoid cutting back trees, hedges, or groundcover, in areas where birds might be nesting
- Keep an eye out for the rare Noble Chafer beetle. It is only in the adult form for 4-6 weeks and can be seen foraging for nectar a range of umbellifers (plants with clusters of tiny flowers) on sunny days. For more information about the Noble Chafer click here
- July is a good month to look out for moths, as many are now on the wing
- Meadows are now at their midsummer best - look out for Common Spotted Orchids
- Dragonflies and damselflies are out in force in July - Banded Demoiselles favour rivers, while Large Red Damselflies prefer bogs, ditches and ponds
- Long, warm summer evenings are an ideal time to look for bats, watch for them around sunset, as it is around this time that pups emerge to start feeding up before winter
August
Fruit tree tasks:
- Continue to prune established plum trees, apple and pear trees, as above
- Trained pear trees should be pruned in late summer, to restrict their growth and improve fruiting
- Control grass and plant growth under small and young trees. Young trees are faster to establish if they don’t have the competition of grass and other weeds. When they are established this is no longer needed. We recommend that you place a mulch around new trees to aid establishment, reduce competition and reduce irrigation requirements - by preventing drying of the soil surface
- Harvest ripe plums and gages
- Bud graft new trees. You can bud graft to the root-stocks of any failed bench grafts from earlier in the year, or to new rootstock. Unlike whip and tongue grafting you don’t need dormant scion wood to bud graft, but instead you use the buds from the leaf axils of year-wood, which means you can collect it the same day you bud graft. For a full guide to bud grafting click here.
- With some staggered grass cutting you can diversify the structure of your orchard grassland and improve the conditions for plant species richness. A variety of mown and unmown areas of lawn will also provide for more species of beneficial insects
Elsewhere in the garden:
- August is a great month to spot House Martins swooping after insects on the wing. These summer visitors are now well into their breeding season, with each pair raising up to three broods
- August is a good month to spot Green Woodpecker parents out with fledglings on the hunt
- Hedgerow fruits such as elderberry, blackberry, hawthorn, rosehips, and sloes start to ripen
September
Fruit tree tasks:
- Think about employing an integrated pest management system to ‘control’ but not eradicate pests from your orchard. Healthy soils will give the best chance of healthy trees. The more diverse a system we can create, the more resilient it will be. Further guidance can be found here: Pests and diseases - The Orchard Project
- Finish summer pruning of apples and pears
- Pick early apples. Early eating apples don’t tend to be very good storers so make the most of them while they are fresh. Find out more about storing your orchard fruit
- Harvest pears in late September
Elsewhere in the garden:
- Butterflies and other insects feed on windfall fruit, which in turn feed insectivorous birds and bats fattening up before winter
- Blackberry, Elderberry, Hawthorn haws, rosehips and Blackthorn sloes are all coming into season
- September is prime acorn hunting season too, watch out for squirrels and jays harvesting and storing them for the winter months
- Warm(ish) September evenings as dusk falls are a great time to try and spot badger families emerging from their dens on the hunt for berries, nuts, fruit and earthworms
- Migrating Swallows head south for the winter
- With the harvest, come the Harvestmen. They can often be spotted lurking in the corner of your living room as well in gardens and long grass