The Latest Hawthorn Planting Techniques and Methods Tutorial

Hawthorn, also known as red fruit, sour plum fruit, etc. The fruit is used as medicine and has the functions of promoting digestion and resolving food stagnation, and dispersing blood stasis and relieving pain. It mainly treats meat food stagnation, indigestion, infantile malnutrition, bacillary dysentery, enteritis, postpartum abdominal pain, dysmenorrhea, hyperlipidemia, hypertension, coronary heart disease, tapeworm disease, etc. Modern pharmacological studies show that hawthorn has anti-aging and anti-cancer effects. The main producing areas include Jilin, Liaoning, Heilongjiang, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Shandong, Henan, Jiangsu, Anhui, Zhejiang, Sichuan, Yunnan and other provinces and regions.

Morphological Characteristics

It is a deciduous shrub of the Rosaceae family, about 1~1.5 m tall; the branches often have thorns 5~8 mm long, the young branches are covered with soft hairs, and the old branches are hairless. The leaves are alternate, with stipules, the leaf blade is papery and slightly leathery, broadly obovate or oblong-obovate, 3~7 shallowly lobed, the underside initially sparsely covered with soft hairs, later becoming bald; the petiole is winged, 4~15 mm long. The flowers open in summer, white, about 1.5 cm in diameter, arranged in terminal corymbs, the peduncle and pedicels are both covered with soft hairs; the petals are nearly round or slightly flattened round; the pistils are multiple, and the filaments are united at the base. The pome is spherical or flattened spherical, 1.5~2 cm in diameter, red or yellow, with reflexed persistent calyx lobes attached at the top, containing 4~5 smooth small stones.

Growth Habits

Hawthorn prefers a cool and humid environment. It is cold-resistant and can endure low temperatures of -36°C. It is heat-resistant and can endure high temperatures of 43°C. It has no strict requirements for soil, but deep, loose and fertile neutral or slightly acidic soil is preferable. Low-lying land, saline-alkali land and heavy clay soil are not suitable for planting.

Land Preparation and Fertilization

Choose a field with high terrain and good drainage, and carry out intensive cultivation. In combination with land preparation, apply sufficient base fertilizer: apply 3000 kg of farmyard manure, 20 kg of urea, and 50 kg of phosphorus and potassium fertilizer per mu. And make wide raised beds of 1.3, waiting for planting.

Hawthorn Planting

Hawthorn is propagated by seeds, and in production, grafted seedlings are mostly used for cultivation. To increase yield. The sowing period includes spring sowing and autumn sowing.

1. Sowing: Before sowing, treat the seeds first; that is, after exposing the hawthorn seeds to the sun for 3~4 days, soak them in a 10% sodium carbonate solution for 24 hours, remove and wash them, then expose them to the sun again for 2~3 days, then soak them in fresh human urine for 3~4 days, take them out and wash them with clean water, then dry them for 3~5 hours, and when most of the seed coats have cracked, evenly scatter the seeds on the prepared bed surface at a row spacing of 30 cm. The sowing rate is 100 kg per mu. After the hawthorn seedlings emerge uniformly, strengthen field management, and grafting can be carried out after autumn.

2. Grafting: In the autumn of the same year or before germination in the spring of the following year, use bud grafting and scion grafting methods to graft the hawthorn seedlings. After the graft survives, cultivate for one year, and then transplanting can be carried out.

3. Transplanting: From after leaf fall in winter to before germination in early spring, plant the well-cultivated grafted seedlings on the prepared bed surface at a row and plant spacing of 4×3 m (55 plants/mu), water to preserve soil moisture, so as to facilitate survival.

Field Management

After the hawthorn seedlings emerge uniformly or after transplanting survives, attention should be paid to cultivating and weeding. Water immediately in dry weather. Attention should be paid to drainage in rainy weather. Topdress once every spring, each time applying 10 kg of urea and 5 kg of potassium dihydrogen phosphate. Spread a layer of farmyard manure every winter. Before and after flowering, and during the full fruit stage, spray a 50 ppm gibberellin solution to prevent flower and fruit drop. In addition, in order to achieve the goal of high yield, the hawthorn trees must also be pruned: change the tree shape into a sparse stratified high-yield tree shape.

Pest and Disease Control

The main disease of hawthorn is powdery mildew, which can be controlled with triadimefon in the early stage of the disease. For damping-off, comprehensive control measures can be adopted: 1. During land preparation, apply 2.5~4 kg of 70% quintozene per mu into the soil for soil disinfection treatment. 2. In the early stage of the disease, spray with a 1000-fold solution of 70% dexon for control. The main pest is the damage caused by longhorn beetle larvae, which can be killed by pouring phoxim mixed with pyrethroid pesticides into the tree holes.

Harvesting and Processing

Hawthorn is generally picked after autumn, once the fruit turns red and ripens. The picked hawthorn fruits can be sun-dried or oven-dried, and then sold as medicine. Hawthorn generally bears fruit in 3~4 years, enters the full fruit stage around 10 years, and a 50~70-year-old plant can produce up to 100 kg, while a large tree can yield as much as 300 kg.