Mc Laren
Flat
Perry's
Fruit & Nut Nursery
Newsletter
It's Fruit Tree Time
Our sand beds are packed with newly dug, dormant, deciduous trees ready for you to plant. We hold the trees in sand to stop the roots from drying out. The branches stay cool and moist in the winter rain. We assist you to choose your trees by size, shape and variety. The selected trees are pulled from the sand and pruned. They are wrapped in shavings to keep them moist. This is the best way to handle dormant fruit trees.
Our Green Footprint
Our nursery is a complex mixture of plant species, mostly fruits and nuts, but also native and ornamental species. Over the course of the season these plants are visited by quite a large number of different insects. Some of these have a chew or a suck on an odd leaf. Others chew on the chewer (predators) or lay eggs in the eggs or bodies of the chewers (parasites). There is plenty going on and most of the time we let it take its course. An odd hole in an odd leaf does not worry us. But sometimes the chewers do more damage than we can tolerate. Then we apply sprays that are carefully targeted at the problem insects with effective but safe insecticides. For example Yates Success is great for hairy caterpillars when they attack apple or pistachio trees. At other times we control sucking pests such as aphids and miners such as citrus leaf miner with Confidor. Our policy is not to blanket spray and to target the pest with the most efficient and safe insecticide. We do have two serious pests that need to be controlled very regularly during the warm months. Light Brown Apple Moth attacks every plant in the nursery and can do a lot of damage. We have controlled it for many years without chemicals by releasing a wasp parasite that lays its eggs in the eggs of the pest. This works very well. Two Spotted Mite is a pest with a more limited range of hosts. However, its numbers can explode in the summer and devastate trees like peaches, apples and chestnuts. Every warm month we release another mite species that feeds voraciously on the pest mite and keeps it from doing significant damage.
Little Trees - Productive Orchard
While growing your own fruit is more important today then ever, space is in short supply like never before. Most of us have to keep our trees small. What is small? Small is human sized, compact enough to allow picking and pruning from the ground. Your fruit should be carried below reach height, which is less than 2.5m. Remember that the new growth that happens in spring will increase tree size. Thus, the framework (permanent branching) must be kept below the final required height. Fruit trees kept small will often yield more high quality fruit than larger trees. This is because pruning leads to fewer, bigger fruit and these can be saved from the birds by smart netting. Also, well pruned trees tend to be generally better watered, fed and sprayed so that the work is honoured by a bounteous crop.
These are just a sample of the many informative articles from the pages of our full colour Harvest - Winter 2010 Newsletter. Download the newsletter now via the link on this page or subscribe to our mailing list and we will send it out along with other seasonal and informative newsletters.
Our sand beds are packed with newly dug, dormant, deciduous trees ready for you to plant. We hold the trees in sand to stop the roots from drying out. The branches stay cool and moist in the winter rain. We assist you to choose your trees by size, shape and variety. The selected trees are pulled from the sand and pruned. They are wrapped in shavings to keep them moist. This is the best way to handle dormant fruit trees.
Our Green Footprint
Our nursery is a complex mixture of plant species, mostly fruits and nuts, but also native and ornamental species. Over the course of the season these plants are visited by quite a large number of different insects. Some of these have a chew or a suck on an odd leaf. Others chew on the chewer (predators) or lay eggs in the eggs or bodies of the chewers (parasites). There is plenty going on and most of the time we let it take its course. An odd hole in an odd leaf does not worry us. But sometimes the chewers do more damage than we can tolerate. Then we apply sprays that are carefully targeted at the problem insects with effective but safe insecticides. For example Yates Success is great for hairy caterpillars when they attack apple or pistachio trees. At other times we control sucking pests such as aphids and miners such as citrus leaf miner with Confidor. Our policy is not to blanket spray and to target the pest with the most efficient and safe insecticide. We do have two serious pests that need to be controlled very regularly during the warm months. Light Brown Apple Moth attacks every plant in the nursery and can do a lot of damage. We have controlled it for many years without chemicals by releasing a wasp parasite that lays its eggs in the eggs of the pest. This works very well. Two Spotted Mite is a pest with a more limited range of hosts. However, its numbers can explode in the summer and devastate trees like peaches, apples and chestnuts. Every warm month we release another mite species that feeds voraciously on the pest mite and keeps it from doing significant damage.
Little Trees - Productive Orchard
While growing your own fruit is more important today then ever, space is in short supply like never before. Most of us have to keep our trees small. What is small? Small is human sized, compact enough to allow picking and pruning from the ground. Your fruit should be carried below reach height, which is less than 2.5m. Remember that the new growth that happens in spring will increase tree size. Thus, the framework (permanent branching) must be kept below the final required height. Fruit trees kept small will often yield more high quality fruit than larger trees. This is because pruning leads to fewer, bigger fruit and these can be saved from the birds by smart netting. Also, well pruned trees tend to be generally better watered, fed and sprayed so that the work is honoured by a bounteous crop.
These are just a sample of the many informative articles from the pages of our full colour Harvest - Winter 2010 Newsletter. Download the newsletter now via the link on this page or subscribe to our mailing list and we will send it out along with other seasonal and informative newsletters.
Harvest
Newsletter - Winter 2010
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