Anyone use a pruning sealer when pruning multiple fruits?

[Teddy12b]

This spring will start with a big pruning for me. I've got apples, pears, peaches, and cherries. Some are going to get a full prune, some are just going to get winter damage removed. I've been reading that when pruning it's good to put a sealer over any of the fresh cut areas of the trees to keep diseases out. I think it makes sense to cover any wound so that part seems easy enough, but since I'm going to getting after multiple types of fruit trees I'm thinking it makes sense to use the spray, and not using the same brush from tree to tree.

Any thoughts on this?

[applestar]

Unless it's a really major surgery, I worry more about keeping the pruner blades and saw teeth clean. If you schedule pruning to best time for each kind of tree and based on their individual dormant/non-dormant state so that their own defense mechanism is active, I think there is less chance of infection. Sealants could potentially work against their best interests too.

I don't like to use bleach so I spray the blades and especially the crotch of the blades and the saw with alcohol after almost every cut, especially after cutting a questionable branch, and between trees. I sometimes also spray the surface to be cut just in case, though that may or may not be the best thing to do. Usually I do this if I notice fungal infection in the general area and spray the bark surrounding the cut.

[imafan26]

When pruning it is more important to know how to make a proper cut and when and what to cut. Clean sharp tools are essential to prevent disease.

I only used pruning paint on my roses if I made cuts greater than 1/2 inch. It isn't recommended to use pruning paint anymore because it can interfere with the plant's normal healing process and it isn't very pretty. I was told to use the pruning paint on the roses because I was having problems with dieback of the canes and sealing the cut ends with paint stopped that.

[Teddy12b]

I spray the blades and especially the crotch of the blades and the saw with alcohol after almost every cut, especially after cutting a questionable branch, and between trees.

Do you just keep a spray bottle by your side that you keep full of a deluded alcohol mixture?

This spring I'm going to make some very big cuts keeping my fruit trees low with an open vase and then little pruning cuts keeping everything nice and trimmed up. I've got a few big cuts, but it's not very thick in most cases.

Here's the trees that are going to get a pruning:

[ReptileAddiction]

I would not use the cut paint or anything. I never have and have never had any problems.

[tomc]

More than once I have pinched a little dirt between my fingers, place that dirt in the other palm, and spit on it to make some mud. That mud is about all I use on a cut, and that is more for esthetic than disease.

[valley]

Ted, Nice looking country!

Father use to use a tar on large cuts. I think it was nothing more than a roofing tar. He would paint a six inch band around the fig trees, I think stone fruit also. for the ants, I believe. I hated it, it would get all over me when I was after fruit, I was closer to the ground then.

Now when I dig holes to stop water running from the property, the girls hate it, having to worry about riding into them with their bikes or tractors. I Don't see why, the holes are always in the same places.
Richard

[JONA878]

If there is a lot of canker, fire blight or die back around the trees in your garden or near by then it would pay to protect any larger cuts which would be slower to heal over.
If your area is clear of disease then you should be safe.
If you do paint then it should be done as soon as you make the cut. Left for a few hours before getting around to doing the job may mean painting over the damaging spores that have landed on the wound and making the infection all the more harmful.
Stone fruit pruning is best left until there is a good sap run ...early spring etc. as the resulting 'bleeding' will help keep disease spores at bay. Remembering that diseases like Bacterial Canker, which can effect stone fruit so badly, is usually fatal to your tree once it has entered the trees system.

[Teddy12b]

I'm not sure if I'm going to have an insect problem or not. I have little experience in doing what I'm doing, and we've only lived on the property for about a year now. Last year was a bad year for ticks in my area, so I bought 4,000 ladybugs, and a half dozen praying mantis egg nests and scattered them throughout the property. The ladybugs ate the eggs, the praying mantis's ate the ticks, and I never saw another tick last year. I'm planning on doing the same thing again this year, so I'm not really as worried about bugs of any kind other than those.

I haven't even started to look at the fruit tree sprays to keep pests or disease off of them. Looks like I've got some reading to do.

[valley]

Where were you able to buy the mantis pods, and lady bugs, on line or at a store close by?

JONA, Don't know is you recall, we had a exchange about apple trees, couple years back, I moved to the Nevada ranch. They're doing well and love their new home. Thanks for the chit chat and advice.

Re: Canker, haven't seen any sigh of canker in this area, and hope I never do. Shows up now and then off the the mountain, on the California side, in grape growing area.

Richard

[Teddy12b]

Ebay and Amazon have a great selection of ladybugs and praying mantis's. Last year I spent about $20 on each trying to get the most I could from the most organic source I could find. I was surprised at how many people are out there selling bugs, but between $20 towards ladybugs and $20 towards the praying mantis's it was the best $40 I spent in my life. The ladybugs were full grown when released and they went to work as soon as they were hungry. The praying mantis eggs eventually hatched, though I don't know how many of them did and how many didn't. I got six of the mantis eggs and ended up giving one to a neighbor who's an amazing gardener. He took the time and followed the instructions and ran a string through it to hold it upright like they said. The one I gave him never hatched. I took the remaining 5 egg cases and tossed them into thick high weeds at random spaces spread throughout the land. The only reason I know one or more of mine hatched is because I kept coming across praying mantis's on my property a couple months afterwards.

I'm probably going to get twice as many ladybugs this year as I did last year just because they show up as live adults ready to eat/hunt. I'll do a batch in early early spring, and then another batch in late spring. Hopefully that buys the praying mantis's some time to get born and start eating.

All I know for sure is that it was like a light switch with ticks. After I released those bugs the ticks were never seen from again. Maybe it was just luck, and maybe not, but either way for $40 bucks how can I argue with that?

[JONA878]

Where were you able to buy the mantis pods, and lady bugs, on line or at a store close by?

JONA, Don't know is you recall, we had a exchange about apple trees, couple years back, I moved to the Nevada ranch. They're doing well and love their new home. Thanks for the chit chat and advice.

Re: Canker, haven't seen any sigh of canker in this area, and hope I never do. Shows up now and then off the the mountain, on the California side, in grape growing area.

Richard

Hi Richard...glad you got settled down ok in the ranch. Good to hear that the trees are doing well. Look after yourself and keep growing those fruits.
John.

[valley]

Thanks Jona, Actually It was the apple trees that moved not us. We moved the trees from the mountains to the high desert. We spend more time at the mountain ranch which is home base, most of our growing is at the lower ranch, longer season. When we dug up the trees they were still in feet of snow, it was already spring where we moved them, so they woke up and grew more in one season than they had in all the years up here.

Richard