Gardeners advised: remove rotting fruit from trees to protect next year's harvest
An expert recommends collecting rotting fruit from trees and the ground, warning that leftover fruit can spread disease and harm next year's crop. The advice is especially relevant for small gardens that don't use chemical treatments.
As summer progresses, rotting fruit begins to appear on trees, and fruit growers are reminding gardeners not to ignore it. When fruit rots while still on the tree, the priority task is to remove it so the fungi causing the decay don't spread further.
What to do
Fruit on lower branches can simply be picked off by hand, while damaged fruit higher up should be knocked down using a stick or similar tool. If rotten fruit is left hanging through winter, disease-causing spores overwinter inside it and can damage the harvest again the following year.
According to consultant Juris Vende, a fruit grower at the farm "Rūķīši," such preventive steps are particularly important in small gardens and allotments, where chemical treatments are typically not used to fight plant diseases. As a result, manually removing damaged fruit becomes the main way to limit the spread of infection.
Disposing of collected fruit
Rotten or pest-damaged fruit should also be gathered from the ground. Small quantities can be thrown out with household waste, while larger amounts are better burned. The expert warns against putting such fruit into a compost pile — this is only advisable if the compost is built correctly, reaching a temperature high enough to destroy disease-causing organisms. Otherwise, the infection can survive in the compost and later return to the garden.
