Budburst and Your Fruit Tree

 Budburst and Your Fruit Tree- What's it all about?

 Spring is just around the corner come August in SEQ. It’s the month when we hear talk of budburst. What the heck is it though? Take a close look at your deciduous trees like the white weeping King Shahtoot Mulberry, the tropical  stone fruit or even your grapes. The bare stems and branches are starting to swell with the promise of new leaves or flowers. Joyous flowering will just be a short few days or weeks away.

A ginormous (is that a word?) burst of energy from the stone fruit tree will produce flowers from these swollen buds. These when pollinated, form your fruit. The leaves follow after the flowers.

Our beloved white mulberry  is producing  tiny swollen leaf buds now and the citrus including the finger limes, are developing flowers in profusion.

What’s so important about bud burst? Well, let’s see. The tree needs to be in perfect health for the best potential harvest . Most will take a fertilise with organic manures and compost at this stage. A liquid feed with Total Cover (available from Linda) to the root zone will provide selenium and many other essential nutrients for high performance plant growth.

Older gardeners will remember the use of dormant sprays. These are applied to the tree well before bud burst to avoid the risk of damaging new foliage or flower and to attack the pest at its vulnerable time. Sprays used included Dormant Oil for scale and red spider mite; Lime sulphur to remove lichen and treat blister mites and Bordeaux for leaf curl at bud swell on stone fruit.

In an organic garden, lime and Bordeaux can be used. Take care with repeated applications of copper sprays like Bordeaux as copper can build up in the soil. Lime sulphur is a potent fungicide with low toxicity to animals and can kill the over-wintering eggs of scale and spider mites on your deciduous fruit trees. If your grapes get blister mite, lime sulphur should be sprayed now too.