Fruit trees look kinda static, but they’re super dynamic! Hormones, enzymes, sugars – much goes on as they constantly adapt to the wet, dry, windy, hot, cold, pest, pathogens – add to that their innate push to grow you some delicious fruits and there’s a lot going on! Fermented stinging nettle and comfrey tea is a well timed December assist. I’ll walk you through how, in detail below.
Have a quick refresh through Novembers fruit tree to do’s – they all apply to December, especially thinning fruits!, so I wont repeat them here.
Get bird net on at the first sign the birds are getting into your fruits. It’s great to leave the net as long as poss to reduce the amount of shoots that grow through it.
Improve your berry crop
Berries have a small window of perfection – grab them at their best with a daily harvest and you’ll not only be scoring the fruit in it’s prime but also increasing the crop by stimulating new flowers AND (capitals because it’s so cool) breaking cycles of disease and pest. Believe it or not – harvesting is your number one pest management strategy.
Picking a ripe berry with a tiny hole is a small victory. Left another day that tiny hole becomes several and now you’ve invited in a whole new guild of pest. Perhaps begun by a shield bug, taken over by earwigs then fruit flies = berries full of worms.
It’s tempting to harvest only the good and ignore the not so good, but its important to pick them all. Leaving the over ripe, holey, mouldy, funky ones leaves food and nesting sites for pests, and if disease is present – it’ll harbour that as well. I harvest with 2 bowls – one for the chooks and one for me.
Simple huh. Best health and you get to max out on this incredible crop – homegrown, organic, fresh picked berries = super food! Get out every morning and pick, especially if wet weather is forecast.
Stinging nettle and comfrey tea
Fermented herbal teas are the kind of solution I love – easily made at home, deceptively potent and no negative fallout. At this time of year there are 2 in particular that come to the fore – nettle and comfrey, tag teaming to strengthen the foliage which in turn improves disease resilience by strengthening the leaf coating (cuticle).
Leaf cuticle, is a point of entry for pathogens, all of whom arrive in various ways. Some dissolve the cuticle with enzymes and sneak in that way, others are opportunistic – using openings created by wind/ pest/human.
Strengthening the foliage is simply done with the wunderkind duo of stinging nettle (urtica dioica) and comfrey (symphytum x uplandicum).
- Right about now, nettle is gearing up to seed and is at its peak silica content. Fancy silica being the mineral needed for this very job, at this very time. Nature aligns!
- Comfrey brings calcium (amongst other things), a key ingredient for fruit production. Adding it regularly from now on in, greatly reduces the stress that comes with low calcium levels.
Add a cup or 2 of your homemade fermented nettle and/ or comfrey tea, to your regular biological sprays or just use it on it’s own. Monthly if all is well, or as much as weekly if your trees are stressed in any way.
If you have none to hand, never fear – make a brew today. Tis super quick and easy and will be ready in about a week if weather is warm.
Make no mistake, these sprays aren’t the saving grace, rather the cherry on the top of your diverse, living garden. Trees themselves, are equipped with an almighty defence mechanism that kicks into action when pathogens come knocking, as long as the tree’s immunity is in peak condition.
Herbal sprays and other gentle inputs don’t have an instant visible impact, but they do add to steadily building and improving your overall system. Shift your focus in this direction with a few gentle, well timed nudges. That’s all your fruit trees need.
Citrus health check
How are your citrus trees looking? Healthy shows up as a goodly sized canopy of flat, dark green foliage, a strong frame and a lush vibe. Their health has a lot to do with how well you’ve chosen where they live and how well you’ve looked after the soil at their feet.
Can you see fungal threads throughout the mulch, and smell an enticing earthiness? Responding to poorly looking trees with bags of fert or loads of manure only brings sugar rich growths that seduce sucking insects and break the soil web.
If the pest pressure is beginning to build you have many natural options.
Stay keyed in on the action. If you choose to intervene, do so in as gentle a way as you can.
Check young trees
Test the soil beneath 1 and 2 year old trees, and water as required. This is such an important time in their lives – they can dry out as adults, but not as youngsters. Let this happen and risk a poorly adult.
Saying that it’s useful to let them dry out a tad between waterings. This encourages their roots to go wide. (I use my calendar to help me remember when I last watered) A lovely woody mulch will help them go the distance, as will leaving the grass to grow up around them.
