Winterizing Temperature Sensitive Fruit Trees
We have ~40 fruit trees and shrubs on our property. Most are not mature fruit bearing trees yet. We add a few more to our collection every spring. Of the trees we currently have, only a few are sensitive to the extreme cold weather. Our fig trees flourish in the spring and summer, but they never seem to survive well enough during the winter. In the spring, they start all over from the roots again. We planted an olive tree spring of 2016. That tree did not survive the following winter. Spring of 2017, we planted 2 more. In the spring of 2016 we also planted 2 pomegranate shrubs. They did like our fig trees, in spring of 2017, they came back up from the root.
I'm hoping that in spring of 2018 we will have a different result with these trees.
This winter I am covering them to help protect them. Our winters are not very brutal and we usually only have 1-2 snow and ice events during the winter season. If these trees do well with this type of covering during the winter, I will continue to cover them this way until they are well established.
Here is how I covered my trees to protect them.
You will need:
- Fencing - can be scraps, chicken wire, hardware cloth
- A Bag of Mulch
- Burlap Cloth
- Wire Cutters
- Tomato Stakes - or anything else you have that you can use to keep your cage in place
- Zip Ties
- Scissors
- Gloves
- Plastic Drop Cloth
- Leaves, Hay or Straw
- Bucket or Empty Planter - large enough to place over the cage
First, I laid mulch, one inch deep, around the base of the tree.
Next, I wrapped the tree with burlap and used zip ties to hold the burlap in place. I did not put zip ties around any part of the tree. I simply put the zip ties through the burlap.
Then, I cut the fencing. I cut it long enough to fit around the tree and made the height about 3 inches higher than the tree.
I used zip ties to make a cage with the fencing.
Next, I placed the wire cage around the tree.
I used tomato stakes to hold the cage in place. I went deep with the stakes so that it would hold up better against strong winds.
Next, I used the plastic drop cloth to cover the outside of the cage and used zip ties to attach the plastic to the cage.
Lastly, I filled the cage with leaves to insulate it.
During the event of snow and ice, I will cover the cage with a bucket to keep the frozen precipitation off the tree.
Thank you for viewing! Upvoting, commenting, following, and resteeming are all welcomed and appreciated!
Great idea! We have some frigid temps coming up tomorrow night. I was wondering if I should cover my cold hardy kiwi and figs. I have blackberries as well, all one year old plants.
Thank you. The cold has not been kind to the fig trees we have, so this has been working well. However, I don't think we could kill the blackberries if we tried.
At least they didn't die all the way, before you covered them. It's a long wait til spring to see how it goes, for me. I put a bunch of leaves on them and put a five gallon bucket over the top.
I've seen people wrap their trees in burlap before but the leaf insulation and plastic barrier is a new idea I have not seen yet. I am interested to see how it turns out for you.
Do you know what growing zone you are in and the hardiness of the tree?
We are in zone 7 and we only purchase trees for our zone. However, our weather can go from one extreme to the next in 24 hours and I think that change affects the trees. So if they are wrapped and insulated, the drastic change in temperature will not affect them as much.
Yeah that makes sense. Wild temperature swings are not good for wintering trees. Also snow cover can help a lot. (If it stays all winter)
That's mad, I've never seen anyone do that to a tree before! Seems like it works though so fair dues! Nothing worse than losing a young fruit tree. Upvoted and followed :) Kate
I agree @kate-m, it's a lot of work, but it's worth it if it helps the tree survive and get established.
Well here's hoping, figs, olives and pomegranates aren't exactly cold-lovers, so fingers crossed.
What an interesting and unique way to "mulch" a young tree through the winter. It looks solid and well thought out. Thanks for sharing! I look forward to see how it turns out.
@sagescrub Thank you for the kind words. Are the seeds you're collecting all edible plants?
Yes for the most part! Edible perennials, herbs, weeds, veggies. I gave all my seeds from my garden before I started travelling, now 1 1/2 years later I have a huge tub full of seeds. If you would like any wild plum seeds of many flavors or delicious italian plum seeds I collected quite a few to share. And then my partner is collecting flower seeds of many types as she is a flower farmer :)
That is far too kind of you! I'm good on most seeds at the moment, but we have a ton of fruit trees and wild fruit trees. We also do a garden every year. If there's any seeds you need me to save, let me know. Also, I see you're posting to the gardening tags, but you may want to check out the homesteading ones too. There are seed giveaways and exchanges I've seen on there. I think @beatitudes8 is doing seed giveaway contests.
Wow that's great to know, I will keep an eye on #homesteading :) what kind of wild fruit trees are growing on your land, I'm curious?
As far as what we have found growing, we have wild plum, persimmon, and pecan. We also found some edible vines growing such as Japanese Honeysuckle and Passion fruit vines which appear to be invasive.
Wow that's incredible! How amazing to have all that good food growing all on it's own.
I would love to get some fruit trees. one day perhaps! Thanks for the ideas for protecting them through the winter. We live in Indiana and it can get bad! I think I upvoted you. Still trying to get the hang of this! Of course I’m following!
Thanks @tincupchalice. Following you too!
Great advice.
Thank you!
I've seen someone use bubblewrap around their fruit trees during winter, but your leaf mulch looks much more envirnomentally-friendly that's for sure.
I am trying to grow citrus here, but have had the (young) plants inside all winter and only put them all outside last week (almost summer); and that was because one of them was being constantly picked on by aphids.
I was also given a large-ish fig tree last year, which has established with success, but I am looking to put up a permanent windbreak of some sort, to protect it from the fiercer winds we can get. I think creating microclimates is the best way to approach those more delicate plants sometimes.
I hope to see your plants once spring rolls back around, to check out how they survived. :)
I'm very glad your fig tree established well. We don't eat a lot of citrus fruits at my house, otherwise I would probably be attempting to grow them as well. Once we build a greenhouse, we might attempt to grow a miracle fruit tree. I will definitely post an update in spring when I uncover these trees.
It would be wonderful if it workes and you could grow whatever you wanted. I would love to be able to plant citrus anything.
Yes, I've always wanted to try growing miracle fruit, but heard you have to take it in during the winter.
That's some useful information out there. Great that you shared this.
I appreciate the kind words!
With so many trees, how many do you have grafted?
Hey Benjamin, we have personally not grafted any of our trees. Many our trees are wild such as plum, persimmon, pecan, etc.. and many we purchased such as mayhaw, pomegranate, apple, fig, pawpaw, pear, cherry, etc.. I'm sure we have a couple fruit trees that were grafted when we purchased them. Have you had good experience with grafting?
I have indeed! We have a stone fruit tree that has Nectaplum, Two varieties of apricots, two varieties of peach and burgundy plum, a multi grafted mango and a multi grafted avocado.
Not sure if it's something you would be interested in making, but we would be really interested in seeing a walk through for your grafting process and the results!