Thread: Fruit, Nut, and Vine Grafting, Tree Propagation, Tree Care

I looked around at our Pecan trees and noticed it's time to feed them the Zinc they need to uptake fertilizer. Pecans are tricky. They have to have enough carbohydrates stored before leafing out or they will not produce a single nut. What I mean by tricky is the Leaflets will form well, your tree will green up, and you think "this is going to be the year" but you notice no pecans form on the Terminal Tips of the limbs. This happens because unless your tree is feeling really good about the energy stored it will not flower. The tree will look fine but no flowers. It actually will not push out a single flower unless it has a lot of energy previously stored. By the time the Terminal Buds break the tree has to already have the energy stored. Zinc deficiency = NO NUTS. Pecans need Zinc to even uptake the Fertilizer. I teach people I help to fertilize in November, January, & March. This pre-loads the tree with energy. Now to help the tree uptake the food Zinc is required. Well it can not be applied once it gets hot. Really low 80's is about max or you run the risk of burning the Leaflets. Once the Terminals are 6 inches long 3 applications of Zinc, once weekly will take care of each tree. You spray directly on the new growth.



5 Tablespoons to 15 gallons of water is what I use. I pre-mix in a 5 gallon bucket using a paint mixer on a drill before adding the Zinc solution to the tank.



This is a Harbor Freight tank with a higher pressure pump from Northern Hydraulics. I had to drill the tip of the Wand out a bit larger to keep the pump from cycling. This rig sprays about 25ft into the trees, plenty of reach to supplement the trees's nutrition.



I have a Optima Red Top battery installed under the hood to power the winch so I tapped off of that for a receptacle to plug the pump into when spraying. I remove the tank when it's not needed.



Here are a few example photos of the Terminal length to start your Zinc program. The last photo it's a bit hard to see the terminal length. Off the 3 little trees here we harvested 140 pounds of pecans last year. You must Zinc treat to boost your chances of a good harvest of pecans.