It is more important to whitewash trees in the garden in the fall, not in the spring, so have time to do it before the cold weather
The garden near your home requires constant care and maintenance. If you do not take care of trees, then they will not please with harvests. Therefore, every autumn you need to pay attention to apple trees, pears, plums and other inhabitants of our gardens.
Remove overgrowth at the foot of the trunk, scoop up fallen leaves, cut out excess branches from young trees. And, what is very important - to whitewash the tree trunks before the onset of cold weather.
Why whitewash trees in autumn?
The usual picture of people whitewashing garden trees in spring is almost meaningless from the point of view of the safety of the garden. Of course, whitewashed trees look aesthetically pleasing, beautiful and neat. But whitewashing is intended to fulfill not so much an aesthetic as a protective role. And this role consists of three points:
1. Whitewashing protects tree trunks from sunburn. But the fact is that in the summer the trunks are perfectly protected by the crown. Therefore, the sun's rays are not scary. But in winter and early spring, when white snow acts as a mirror, sunburn for dark wood is much more dangerous. But you cannot whitewash at this time, because it is still cold. How to be? There is only one way out - you need to whitewash the trees in the fall, before the first severe cold weather. This whitewash is fully preserved until spring, protecting from the bright March sun.
2. Rescue from frostbites. In the spring during the day it is warm, dark wood from the sunny side heats up, ice melts on it, water is formed, penetrating under the bark and into the cracks of the trunk. And at night frost suddenly hit. And these water droplets, turning into ice, expand. As a result of expansion, they tear the tissue of the tree and form deep cracks - frost cracks. Large frosts can destroy the plant. It suffers, does not bear fruit well, it takes more than a year for it to recover.
But the autumn whitewashing can save the bark from heating, because some of the lime is still preserved.
3. Destruction of pests. Lime itself has the ability to destroy pests that have settled down to winter under the bark. But, besides this, if you add to it some drugs that are insecticides, then this effect is multiplied many times.
The ideal option would be a mixture of lime and copper sulfate. For 5 liters of water, you need to take 1.5 kg of lime and 100 grams of copper sulfate. First, dissolve lime in water and mix thoroughly. Dissolve the copper sulfate separately in a little water. After complete dissolution of both solutions, you need to mix them.
After that, you can whiten. If you have a spray gun, it will be faster, but more mixture will go away. Can be whitened with a brush, brush, by any means. The main thing is to carefully spill all cracks and forks where pests can hide with a lime solution.
Before whitewashing, the leaves can not be removed, but then they can be collected together with the spilled liquid and destroyed. There are a lot of pests and diseases in these leaves. Therefore, it is not recommended to put them in compost.
This is the kind of work that needs to be done in October.