Watering young and fruiting trees

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All fruit trees are very demanding on moisture. In the southern regions without watering, growth and high yield of trees are impossible. Especially a lot of moisture is consumed by fruit trees in the first half of the growing season, when there is an increased growth of shoots, the formation and ripening of fruits. But moisture should be in sufficient quantities in autumn and winter, as the drying roots and tissues of trees become less cold-resistant, easily damaged by frost.

Young trees are less sensitive to lack of moisture, and fruiting and old ones are very sensitive. With insufficient moisture in the soil, the ovary crumbles, and in mature trees, fruit can be shed earlier. The roots of trees that grow on poorly moistened soils are usually excessively thick, the diameter of the root system is much larger than the diameter of the crown. If there is enough moisture, the root system is fibrous, well developed, formed within the crown diameter.

But excess moisture is no less harmful to trees. The most serious consequences are growing a garden on stagnant waters. Due to the lack of circulation, such water is poor in oxygen, the root system of the tree rots and dies. If the garden is grown on normally moist soil, but over-irrigated in the second half of the growing season, the growth of the trees is delayed, fruiting is delayed, the trees tolerate frosts worse.

For each type of soil, an optimal moisture regime is needed. To determine it, the concept of field moisture capacity is used. She defines it this way: between particles of soil should be a certain amount of water and air. If we take the amount of water and air together as 100%, then the field moisture capacity on sandy and sandy loamy soils is in the range of 60 - 65%, on clay and loamy - 70 - 80%. This regime of soil moisture should be maintained throughout the growing season. It is not necessary to moisten the soil in such quantities throughout the garden. It is important that it contains the desired percentage of moisture in the root layer. It is extremely rare that trees receive all the amount of water from rainfall. Therefore, from late spring - early summer to late August - early September, trees are watered every 20 to 30 days. In the southern regions, watering ends later than in the northern ones. When watering, you need to make sure that the soil is well moistened to a depth of at least 1 m, since this is where the bulk of the roots are concentrated.

Young trees up to 5-6 years of age are watered according to the diameter of the crown, best of all in holes, spending 5-6 buckets of water for each tree. Fruit trees need to be watered throughout the garden, consuming 8 to 10 buckets of water per square meter. The irrigation rate is adjusted depending on the amount of precipitation and soil moisture.

If the garden is located on a site with a high level of groundwater occurrence, and groundwater contains a large amount of salts, watering is done so that irrigation water does not mix with groundwater. Such mixing can lead to salinization of the soil.

If winter and autumn bring little rainfall in the form of rain and snow, by the spring a sufficient amount of moisture does not accumulate in the soil. In this case, on the eve of a little snowy winter and dry autumn, water-charging irrigation is carried out. Water the soil in late autumn, to frost, in early spring when the soil thaws, and in the case of a warm winter - in winter.

For irrigation, in addition to holes, furrows are used. They are dug to a depth of 20 cm. If the garden is set up on an uneven site or on a slope and it is difficult to distribute moisture when watering, the trees are watered by sprinkling. Water is supplied to the sprinklers installed under the crowns so that the leaves and fruits do not get wet, as this leads to fungal diseases.