Winter Wash Application (Video)

How to Apply Winter Wash to Fruit Trees

It's good to apply winter wash to your fruit and ornamental trees in the winter when there are no leaves on the trees (the spray will scorch leaves, so it is only suitable for winter use). Our winter wash is an organic pesticide that works by attacking the waxy compounds that make up insect eggs and carapaces. Take a look at the video below to see how to apply it.

TRANSCRIPT

So this time of the year after you’ve put your grease bands on or your grease and you've cleared everything up, we'll do a winter tree wash, which just cleans the trees up ready for the spring. It's not like tar oil, which used to be used to kill anything and everything. That's gone now! So the winter tree wash that you can get from Ashridge Nurseries website is a blend of natural oils and surfactants, and this will remove insect debris, dust, dirt, and other substances, where the pests have laid their eggs, so it'll wash the eggs off as well. Once you've removed the eggs, nothing will hatch on the tree in the spring, so you won’t get as many problems as you would do if you just left the tree. This also removes some fungal spores as well, which can cause problems in the spring when the leaves are just starting to open.

Apply this on a cool calm day November to February when there're no leaves on the trees. This will clear the tree up ready for the spring.

If you've got a big tree, you'll probably need a knapsack or one of the five-litre sprays, and a set of step ladders, so you can safely climb up to the top of the tree. We're just going do small trees. So we've just got a litre spray bottle. You’ll need to read the instructions on the back. So we've got one litre of water in there and you need 50ml of winter wash to add to the water.

It gives you a little measuring vial there. Take the top off - it's got a childproof lock. Squeeze the bottle and then you'll see the winter wash go up into there. Just squeeze it gently until you get to that 25ml mark there. Now just pour it in. Squeeze it gently again and you’ll see all this coming up the side, so fill it up to 25 ml again and then pour it in the bottle.

So what you’ll want to, is you want to spray the whole tree, so everything all the way up, but just pay particular attention to the little nooks and crannies in here. So this is where the eggs and all the other bugs will be hiding out. So just start at the bottom and work your way up giving it a good coverage.

I’ll place it on the floor. So just kind of aim down and just kind of get it in there. Get in the little nooks and crannies everywhere. Give it a real good soak. That’s it! We should see some improvement in the spring.