Key Technical Points for Autumn and Winter Management of Mulberry Trees, Tea Trees and Fruit Trees

I. Winter Management of Mulberry Fields Doing a good job of winter management of mulberry fields lays a solid foundation for the growth of mulberry trees in the coming year, and is also an important measure for improving the yield and quality of mulberry fields.

1. Clearing the field: After the mulberry leaves fall, collect all the residual leaves and weeds in the mulberry field to make compost or burn them, so as to eliminate pathogenic bacteria and overwintering pests hidden in the mulberry leaves and weeds.

2. Bundling: Before winter plowing, bundle the mulberry branches together with rice straw, which not only facilitates winter plowing and fertilizing, but also lures pests to hide in the bundled straw to overwinter, making it easier to capture and kill them.

3. Winter plowing: Keep the plowing depth at about 20 cm. After plowing, do not break up the clods, but let them weather naturally, which helps improve the physical and chemical properties and increases soil fertility.

4. Winter fertilizer: Organic fertilizer, preferably household mixed fertilizer, is best; apply it by trenching or hole application.

5. Tip pruning: Tip pruning can increase the germination rate, reduce flowers and fruits and diseases, and increase mulberry leaf yield. Carry out tip pruning from late December to early January, preferably by horizontal tip pruning, cutting off 1/4-1/5 of the branch length.

6. Branch training: Before sap flow begins, prune off pest- and disease-damaged branches, thin and weak branches, dead knuckles and dead stubs from the mulberry trees, and burn them to prevent pests and diseases from lurking and spreading.

II. Winter Management of Tea Trees

1. Spray the whole tea tree with 0.4-0.5 degrees Baume lime-sulfur mixture to close the garden.

2. Apply 150 kg of decomposed cake fertilizer by hole or strip trenching, or 100 kg of special compound fertilizer for tea, and finish applying the base fertilizer within November.

3. Along with fertilization, clear weeds inside and around the garden to reduce overwintering habitats for pests.

4. For newly established tea gardens, select good improved varieties, deeply plow strip trenches in the tea garden, apply base fertilizer deeply, adopt double-row single-plant planting, low-hole cultivation and low-position pruning, and strive to complete planting in the coming winter and spring.

III. Autumn and Winter Management of Fruit Trees At present, peaches, pears and grapes are in the leaf-fall period, and fruit growers should strengthen orchard management.

1. Carry out a comprehensive cleanup of the orchard, clean the old bark on the trunks, repair large wounds, prune diseased and pest-damaged branches, diseased and pest-damaged fruit, immature branches and dead branches once, and take them out of the orchard to bury deeply or burn centrally. Apply whitewash to the main trunk and spray the branches and trunk once with "Bibei" and the like to sterilize and repel insects, so as to reduce the base number of orchard pests and diseases the following year. The fallen leaves can be properly gathered and buried in the orchard as fertilizer. For compacted orchard plots with heavy clay soil that were not improved or fertilized in September-October, apply fertilizer as much as possible before freezing (that is, before the end of November). Loosening materials (rice husk, sawdust, etc.) plus decomposed organic fertilizer (such as Lijiang brand organic fertilizer) can be turned into the soil; take care to minimize damage to the fruit tree root system, and irrigate promptly after fertilizing. In addition, ditch clearing and reconstruction should also be strengthened.

2. For orchards with vigorously growing trees and dense planting, thinning should be strengthened. If they are trellised grapes, they can be changed to a horizontal overhead trellis, so as to avoid excessive pruning causing the fruit trees to continue growing vigorously the next year. Fruit growers should establish the idea of reducing yield to seek quality. The yield of high-quality fruit should be determined by the effective leaf area per unit (that is, the leaf area capable of photosynthesis), not by how many fruit trees there are per mu.

3. Winter pruning of fruit trees should follow the basic principles of fruit tree pruning: clear primary and secondary structure, clear main branches and leading branches, reasonable arrangement of side branches and fruiting branch groups, even distribution and appropriate spacing. The degree of pruning depends on tree vigor. Vigorous trees should be pruned lightly and left to extend, opening up the tree shape, reducing the amount of pruning and moderating tree vigor. Old and weak trees should be renewal-pruned to rejuvenate tree vigor. The aim is to achieve a balance between tree vigor and fruiting.