Winter Clean-up Spraying

In winter don’t ignore your garden. It may look like nothing is happening in the garden but lurking among the leaf litter, bark, dead twigs and branches are the spores of diseases and the over-wintering eggs of insect pests. You can ensure your garden explodes with vital health in spring by taking a little time now to protect your trees and shrubs from these pests and diseases.

Here is what you should do:

• Clear up leaf litter and dead material on the ground. This can be disposed of in your organics bin, burned or composted. If composting, make sure the compost is not used for at least 6 months to ensure any disease spores and pest eggs are killed.
• For plants that need their roots protected from frost you can add fresh clean sterilised mulch from your garden supplier.
• In frost free weather prune and destroy dead, damaged and diseased parts of trees and shrubs. Then protect them from disease and pests using winter protectants. First use McGregor’s Copper Oxychloride then apply McGregor’s Spraying Oil. These products can be mixed but you will get the best results from applying them a few days apart. The copper kills disease organisms and spores and the oil suffocates eggs and overwintering pest insects.
• To protect from fungal disease and a range of pests spray your fruit trees, roses and ornamentals with sulphur; first after leaf fall and again in late winter before new growth appears. DO NOT mix sulphur products with other garden sprays. Ideally apply the sulphur a month after the Spraying Oil.
• Winter clean-up sprays are best applied in still, dry, cool, dull weather, in late autumn and through winter.
• Tender trees and shrubs should be protected from wind and frost, so move them into sheltered positions or wrap them in wind and frost protection garden windbreak.

Winter gardens can be pleasant places to spend time. And because you will have fewer pests and diseases to deal with in spring and summer, the work done protecting your plants now, will give you more time to enjoy your garden.