How to grow hawthorn for high yields? A detailed guide to cultivation techniques

Hawthorn, also known as red fruit, sour plum fruit, etc. The fruit is used as medicine; it has the functions of promoting digestion and resolving food stagnation, and dispersing blood stasis and relieving pain. It mainly treats meat-induced 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 bear thorns 5-8 mm long, young branches are covered with soft hairs, and old branches are hairless. Leaves are alternate, with stipules; the leaf blade is papery and slightly leathery, broadly obovate or oblong-obovate, 3-7 shallowly lobed, initially sparsely covered with soft hairs on the underside, later becoming glabrous; the petiole is winged, 4-15 mm long. Flowers open in summer, white, about 1.5 cm in diameter, arranged in terminal corymbs; both the peduncle and pedicels are covered with soft hairs; petals are nearly round or slightly flattened round; pistils are multiple, and the bases of the filaments are united. The pome is spherical or oblate, 1.5-2 cm in diameter, red or yellow, with reflexed persistent sepal lobes attached at the top, containing 4-5 smooth small stones.

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

II. Land preparation and fertilization: Choose a field with high terrain and good drainage, and plow and harrow carefully. In combination with land preparation, apply enough base fertilizer: 3000 kg of farmyard manure, 20 kg of urea and 50 kg of phosphate and potash fertilizer per mu. Make wide raised beds 1.3 m wide and wait for planting.

III. Planting: Hawthorn is propagated by seed, but in production, grafted seedlings are mostly used for cultivation. To increase yield. There are spring sowing and autumn sowing. Sowing: Treat the seeds before sowing; that is, after exposing 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 for another 2-3 days, then soak them in fresh human urine for 3-4 days, take them out and wash them with clean water, then sun-dry them for 3-5 hours, and when most of the seed coats have cracked, evenly sow 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 evenly, strengthen field management, and grafting can be done after autumn. Grafting: In the autumn of the same year or before budding in the following spring, use budding or scion grafting to graft the hawthorn seedling stock. After the graft survives, cultivate it for one year, then it can be transplanted. Transplanting: From after leaf fall in winter to before budding in early spring, plant the 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 and promote survival.

IV. Field management: After the hawthorn seedlings emerge evenly or after transplanting survives, attention should be paid to intertillage and weeding. Water immediately in dry weather. Pay attention to drainage in rainy weather. Topdress once every spring, each time applying 10 kg of urea and 5 kg of monopotassium 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 high yield, the hawthorn tree must also be pruned: change the tree shape into a sparse stratified high-yield tree shape.

V. Pest and disease control: The main disease of hawthorn is powdery mildew, which can be controlled with triadimefon at 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% pentachloronitrobenzene per mu into the soil for soil disinfection. 2. At the early stage of the disease, spray with a 1000-fold dilution of 70% dexon for control. The main pest is longhorn beetle larvae; phoxim combined with pyrethroid pesticides can be poured into the tree holes to kill them.

VI. Harvesting and processing: Hawthorn is generally picked after autumn, when the fruit turns red and ripens. Dry or oven-dry the harvested hawthorn fruit, and it can be 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 tree can produce up to 100 kg per plant, with large trees yielding as much as 300 kg.