Applying Grease To Fruit Trees (Video)

How to Apply Grease to Fruit Trees to Protect them against Moths

Applying fruit tree grease from November onwards is used to trap a wide variety of winter moths before they can lay their eggs and preventing caterpillars eating the leaves and fruit. In the video below, we show you how to apply the grease to protect your fruit trees.

You will need our Vitax Fruit Tree Grease and an old paint brush.

TRANSCRIPT

We’re going to apply some grease to the base of an old cherry tree that we have here on the nursery. So this'll protect it against the winter months and March moths, which crawl up the stem and then lay their eggs in the crevices around here, and then they just kind of hatch out and the larvae just kind of get into the buds, get into the fruit, everything like that. So that's what we want to stop.

So we're going to apply a thick layer of grease about two feet from the base. So that's right about there. Give the stem a quick rub. We want to apply a thick layer of grease around there.

What you'll need is an old paint brush and the pot of the fruit tree grease. So each pot should be enough to do between one and two mature trees. So you’ll probably get two trees out of that pot for this size. Dip your paintbrush in, it's quite gloopy and then just work it in. It doesn't have to be pretty, but just put plenty on and get into all the crevices.

Six to seven inches of wide strip around the tree. What you'll see if you’ve got any winter or March moths, the moths will climb here and they’ll get stuck in here. You can do this in early Autumn and again in the winter. So if you do this in the spring as well, this can also stop ear wigs climbing up the tree.

That's what you do. It doesn’t look pretty, but it's going to stop you getting any problems with moth damage over the winter and early in the spring. Just to be clear the fruit tree grease is fully organic. The grease contains rapeseed oil and there's no pesticides. Anybody can use them including organic gardeners.