Pest and disease control: Fruit Trees

With a bit of attention and care now for your fruit trees, you will be more than compensated in the warmer months with fruit trees that are healthy, shapely and producing plenty of fruit. Preventative measures taken over winter will help avoid many issues that can result in problems that can be difficult to tackle if left until spring and summer. 
 
Creating a garden full of biodiversity, adding compost and mulch and fertilising at the right time, all help to produce beautiful crops of organic, homegrown produce.

Plant a range of beneficial insect attracting plants near your trees. These not only encourage good bugs into the garden but also encourage bees to pollinate your crop! 

Beneficial insects such as ladybugs, lacewings and hoverflies can now be sourced and purchased online to build up numbers quickly. Attracting small birds into your garden will also help; they love to feed on pesky bugs! Companion planting is another good way to lower the incidence of pest and disease problems. 

If applying a spray use safety equipment, even if what you are using is “natural”- it’s still possible to have a reaction to one of the ingredients. 

If leaf curl or bacterial canker is a problem you will need to spray your tree before bud burst (end of July/start August) with a copper based spray such as Bordeaux and follow up with another spray 2 weeks later. As an alternative, you can try a spray of cold chamomile tea every week for three weeks and remove all affected leaves. 

On your evergreen fruit trees, inspect leaves for pests and diseases such as small eggs or hard scales. These can be rubbed off by hand if only a few or sprayed with white oil or pyrethrum if the infestation is too large. This is very effective for many bugs such as citrus bug (bronze-orange bug), caterpillars, aphids etc. 

Codling moth can be managed by wrapping Hessian or corrugated cardboard (10cm wide) around your tree’s trunk and then regularly removing the hiding bugs. If you know you have a problem with these bugs, hang jars of port topped with oil in your tree from the beginning of spring (you don’t need to use lots of port) and regularly inspect the developing apples for holes (discard these). 

Diatomaceousd Earth is natural and non-toxic and is great to have on hand to deal with many pest problems such as pear and cherry slug, harlequin beetles and slugs. Best used locally and directly on the pests so as not to get rid of beneficial insects. 

Once fruit has begun to form you may need to net your trees to prevent the birds and other wildlife from stealing your crop!

Natural pest and disease control recipes