Are you trying to give the right care, but your plants are getting sick, suffering from bad weather, and occasional crop failures? As a beginning gardener, you may be making the most common mistakes. In this Bubgo article, we've compiled 7 gardening mistakes in fall care and 3 major mistakes when grafting fruit trees. Learn what mistakes to avoid to ensure that all maintenance practices are successful and that grafting is successful and taking root.
Fall care is an important time in a gardener's life. It is during this time that plants mostly prepare for the worst tests of the year - cold, snow, rodents, and bright sun. That's why it's very important not to make any mistakes, or you could end up with no crop the following year.
Painting garden trees white too early is a common gardening mistake. Wait until the air temperature reaches 41-50 °F (5-10°C) for the fall rains to wash away all the whitewash. Young trees should not be whitewashed either. It is not only the trunks that suffer from frostbite and sunburn but also the skeletal branches, so they should also be protected with lime or garden paint.
2.1. Cherry trees, plum trees, and young saplings should have their branches tied up so that they do not break due to the weight of snow during thawing.
2.2. Protect the trunk and lower branches from rodents with rope nets (wrapped in several layers) or plastic nets.
Damage to trees and shrubs in autumn can do more harm than good to plants. They will not have time to prepare for winter.
3.1. The best time for pruning is in early spring.
3.2. In autumn, limit sanitary work to removing broken and diseased branches.
3.3. Treat wounds with disinfectants.
This is a gathering place for pests and diseases after the leaves fall. Fallen diseased leaves should be burned, weeds should be removed, and the root zone should be loosened and mulched: in nature, it is always covered.
Seedlings of heat-loving and stone fruit crops should be planted in the spring. This is when they will take root better and germinate.
Today, more and more gardeners are giving up digging and replanting the soil with green manure after the harvest. They are left in the flower beds over the winter without being incorporated into the soil.
6.1. It is important for beneficial microorganisms and bacteria that the soil remains covered and untilled.
6.2. The fact is that the beneficial bacteria responsible for fertility formation live in different layers of the soil (top or bottom).
6.3. When you dig them out, they exchange places and the microorganisms die, falling into conditions incompatible with life.
Once the soil has worked hard and given up on the harvest, it needs to be fertilized. The absorption will be better if fertilizers, especially organic ones, are applied in the fall.
7.1. Mineral preference for phosphorus and potassium.
7.2. Compost and humus (4 kg/m2) in organic matter.
Many amateur gardeners try to learn how to graft fruit trees. And the truth is that this is not successful, even though they have learned in theory the techniques and other conditions. But they do not know what problems can arise and how to avoid them. What factors must be considered before grafting fruit trees?
1. Budding
Eye grafting is a procedure of asexual propagation carried out in high summer.
2. Grafting from cuttings
An asexual propagation procedure is carried out in spring, during the first wave of the sap flow.
3. Asexual propagation
A process of asexual propagation, usually artificial, results in plants that retain all the cultural characteristics inherent to the species.
Three main mistakes are usually made during vaccination.
Amateur gardeners tend to think that the grafting knife is sharp enough, which is the first mistake. The knife must not crush but cut through the veins of the plant, otherwise, it will not heal properly. Therefore, it must be as sharp as a razor. But the razor itself has no benefit for this.
In order to obtain this sharpness, the knife must be
1. take a long time to sharpen at first on fine gravel.
2. then straightened on a donkey.
3. then finished with a leather strap.
A well-sharpened blade should behave as a narrow black stripe. If there are areas that sparkle, then the knife is not properly sharpened where you can see it.
Check for sharpness - A well-sharpened knife should be able to cut through a piece of writing paper held vertically in your left hand, or scrape a hair off your wrist.
You can use this knife for about 100 vaccinations, after which the knife must be sharpened.
The inexperienced gardener is too slow when grafting. Also, discard the plugs after only 1-1.5 minutes: they will not root because their tissues at the slices are already dry, weathered, and oxidized.
In order to make the grafting successful, you can prepare it in as much time as you like. However, the actual cutting, insertion of the plugs, and tying should be done very quickly, in no more than 20-30 seconds.
This quick work requires skill, i.e. prior training, preferably on low-value wood species (willow, poplar, etc.).
If rootstock and rootstock tissue are loosely tied together, voids are created in which callus (connective tissue) cannot form and the cuttings die.
Even if tight bindings eventually lead to overstretching, they are less dangerous than loose bindings; they simply need to be removed after 2-3 weeks and reapplied immediately to make them looser.
Bundling is now done with a variety of plastic materials that stretch so well that there is hardly any overstretching.
Vaccinations performed with the above mistakes in mind will be successful.
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