At this time of year, most fruit trees should be bursting with ripening fruit and thriving with minimal effort, but many gardeners do more harm than good by over-tending them. Katie Rushworth, a gardener known for her work on Love Your Garden, has warned the biggest mistake people make with fruit trees deciding to prune them in autumn.
She said: “It might seem tempting at this time of year to treat your fruit trees like roses and other plants – and give them a good old haircut. However, please don’t reach for the shears just yet. Pruning can encourage the growth of tender new shoots, which would be killed off by a winter frost and leave an open wound vulnerable to disease.”
September is when most of the garden need a light pruning to tidy them up after summer and remove any wilting leaves or flowers.
This gives lots of plants like roses or hydrangeas more energy as they are not wasting their energy on dying foliage and instead focus on staying healthy to survive the cold weather.
However, pruning now will not help fruit trees as wood takes ages to heal, so cutting them will leave a wound that makes if very vulnerable to infection and diseases like silver leaf.
Cut wood is also more susceptible to cold damage as water or frost will enter the wound, which further damages it and will greatly weaken the tree.
Pruning a fruit tree in autumn is one of the most common ways gardeners kill them, so make sure to simply leave it alone and instead leave cutting it to late spring.
If you want to help fruit trees in autumn then the absolute best thing to do is clean up around them by picking up any rotting fruit or fallen leaves on the ground.
Decaying leaves or fruit can attract pests and disease, so keeping the area around trees tidy is the most efficient way to keep them healthy at this time of year.
It can also help to mulch trees, which is the simple gardening method of adding organic material around a plant, as this helps improve the soil around a tree to help them grow.
Katie said: “Mulching acts as a way of improving the soil structure, conserve moisture and protect the ground from nutrient-stealing weeds and grass.”
Organic mulch like manure or compost helps protect roots from the temperature fluctuations in autumn, which protect a fruit trees long-term health so it stays strong throughout the colder seasons.