Gardeners consider the pear to be a capricious tree, so it must be carefully prepared for winter, with the utmost care and patience. For such an attitude towards herself, she will definitely reward with a good harvest in the coming warm season. The preparation of this fruit tree for winter consists of several main stages.
How to prepare a pear for winter
Site cleaning
Cleaning begins by collecting all the fruits remaining on the branches and under the tree. It is imperative to clear the area from volunteers, fallen leaves, mulch. All this material can become an excellent organic fertilizer after a special procedure and a certain period of time. If you leave all this in the area between the trees, then there is a danger of a large number of pests and various infectious diseases.
After cleaning the garden area, it is recommended to renew the mulch layer in the pear tree trunks. Any organic matter, except chopped straw, can be used for these purposes, as it can become an attractive habitat for field mice.
Pruning
After thorough cleaning, you can proceed to pruning fruit trees. Autumn is a good time to remove all damaged and dried branches that will no longer bring any benefit to the culture and will not be able to bear fruit in the new season.
Preventive measures
Scab is a fungal disease that affects leaves and fruits. You can protect the pear from it with the help of preventive autumn spraying with a urea solution (5%) or special chemicals. It is necessary to spray the entire crown of the tree and its trunk.
If painful growths have formed on the bark of the pear, then they need to be cleaned, washed with an antiseptic solution (for example, copper sulfate), and then the cleaned areas must be treated with garden varnish.
Fertilization
Top dressing with phosphorus and potassium content, introduced in the autumn period, will increase the frost resistance of the pear and stimulate its wood to ripen. But it is not recommended to use nitrogen-containing fertilizers in the fall, since nitrogen promotes the appearance of new shoots, and they simply will not survive the winter period. For weakened trees, this top dressing will only do harm.
Timely application of fertilizer to the near-stem circles of fruit trees helps them start flowering a little faster and bring abundant high-quality harvests.
For each fruit tree, in particular for the pear, a mixture of superphosphate and potassium sulfate fertilizers is recommended. One square meter of land will require one tablespoon of each drug. This dry mixture must be poured into prepared holes (about 20 cm deep), watered abundantly and covered with soil.
Watering
Abundant watering is especially necessary for trees before wintering, if the summer was dry and hot, and autumn - with minimal rainfall. Each adult pear should receive about one hundred buckets of water.
Pest control
Harmful insects mainly harm trees in the spring and summer, but in winter mice and hares love to feast on the tender and tasty bark of pears. After their "meal" the trees get sick and may die. The most reliable protective material against rodents is spruce branches, plastic mesh with small cells, burlap or a specially prepared mixture for coating the trunks of fruit trees. The composition of the deterrent mixture: water and equal proportions of mullein and clay. A thick "whitewash" is applied to the trunks of pears and frightens off uninvited visitors with its unpleasant, pungent aroma.
