The season for harvesting fruit from your trees may be over for another year, but there is one more vital task to do in fall that keeps your trees healthy and preserves next year's fruit. It won’t take long to do, but it helps to prepare them for next spring.

That key job is to remove any rotten fruit, whether it is on the floor or in the canopy. Clearing away debris, fruits, and mummies ensures that no pathogens or fungi can overwinter on or around the tree and infect your fruit trees next year. It is an important task to add to your fall gardening checklist.

I have looked after fruit trees for many years and also spoken with two experts about the dangers of leaving fruit rotting on trees. When preparing fruit trees for winter, clear away fallen fruit and then mulch. Use an organic mulch, like compost (like this organic compost at Amazon), leaf mold, or bark, to protect fruit trees from frost.

Always Clean Around the Fruit Tree

Fruit falls from the trees for many reasons over the season – it can be natural summer fruit thinning, the result of strong winds or a lack of water, or due to pests and diseases. Some people prefer to leave some of this fallen fruit in situ to feed local wildlife.

However, there are problems that stem from leaving fallen fruit, and it is better to remove it rather than leave rotting fruit around the base of trees.

Cleaning up around the base of your fruit trees includes both removing fallen fruit and leaves. This important fall gardening job helps keep the tree healthy and preserve your future harvests.

Fruit trees often succumb to diseases during the season, and this can show on the leaves or fruits. Leaving disease-ridden leaves or fruit makes the tree and next year’s crop susceptible to the same disease.

‘If you leave the leaves and fruits on the ground, some diseases can overwinter and come back the following year. And sometimes they'll come back with a vengeance,’ says Susan Poizner, fruit tree expert and founder of Orchard People.

‘For instance, let's say there is brown rot on your peach trees,’ adds the fruit tree expert. ‘This causes the fruit to rot and shrivel up, and sometimes it falls to the ground. If you leave it on the ground, in the spring the fungus can produce spores that will infect the blossoms and eventually the fruit.’

Never Leave Fruit Rotting on Trees

Clear all the fruit from the orchard floor, then focus on removing old fruit from the tree itself. These old fruits, known as mummies, pose the same risk as fallen fruit.

‘Mummies are fruits that have dried on the plant, many of which succumbed to fungus, disease, or insects earlier in the year,’ explains Matt Bunch, a horticulturist at The Giving Grove.

‘These pests can still be in the mummied fruits, and if the fruits are not removed, this can lead to re-infection the next growing season. This is most often seen with brown rot and stone fruits, but is also true of scab and black rot in apples, and other pests.’

Scour the tree’s canopy for mummies during fall, when they should stand out against the bare branches once the foliage drops. You can use a fruit picker (available at Walmart) or pole pruner to knock the old fruit from the branch and collect it, whether it lands in the picker’s basket or needs to be picked up off the orchard floor.

What to Do With Old Fruit

It is best to throw away the old fruit or send it to a municipal compost facility, rather than using it to make homemade compost. Many people do add fallen or rotten fruit to a compost pile, but it comes with risks.

‘The hope is that the pathogens or pests will somehow decompose in the compost, but that's not necessarily the case,’ warns Susan Poizner. ‘Often these pathogens or pests can survive in a home compost pile, especially if it doesn't get hot enough to kill them. They may just overwinter and find your fruit trees the following year.’

Matt Bunch claims an active compost pile needs to reach 140°F to kill most pathogens and diseases. A pile needs regular turning, the right ratio of brown and green ingredients, and moisture to heat up to that level – which you can check with a compost thermometer (available at Amazon).

When your compost is not heating up, it is more often than not due to one of those factors not being right. If you wish to be able to compost fallen fruit without the worries, you can try hot composting to generate more heat, kill pathogens and weed seeds, and speed up the process. You can get a 26-gallon hot composter bin at Wayfair.

What to Shop

When you grow fruit trees in pots, another crucial fall task is to move tender fruit trees to a protected spot well ahead of winter. After removing any fruit rotting on trees, keep an eye on the weather forecast so you can overwinter fruit trees in pots when the nighttime temperatures start dropping to 50°F.

This guidance applies to any tender fruit trees, like citrus, olives, peaches, and avocados. While the likes of apples and pears are traditionally hardy, any trees are less hardy in containers than when in the ground. Consider moving pots together for winter against a wall to create a warmer microclimate.

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