The only thing harder than waiting years for fruit trees to, well come to fruition is to thin the fruit. I'm making a effort to leave 6" of space between each piece of fruit on our peach, apricot, almond and apple trees. If we get any fruit I'd rather have it be juicy and large. This should also avoid the situation where branches brake off from too much fruit on any single limb. Next up will be pomegranate and jujube.
Any tips from other orchard owners?
3 comments:
Oh goodness, is there anything as difficult as pulling off a tiny fruit from a tree you so lovingly planted?
This time of year I'm also vigilant looking for leaf curl in my peaches and nectarines (I pull off the leaves and dispose of them off-site). I keep an eye out for ant activity - our local Argentine ant population loves to farm aphids and scale on fruit trees.
And every time I visit the trees, I scan the trunk from the ground to the canopy, looking for sucker growth so I can pinch it while it's still soft and easily removable.
I like to thin very early, when the petals have dropped and you can tell which ovaries are good, but the trees haven't put too much energy into them.
Of course, this year, a late frost did our work for us and thinned *every single fruit* off the trees. Drat!
@Anna:
Thinning early is smart. We let the tree put too much energy into the fruit we just pull and throw on the ground.
We get crazy spring winds of 70mph sometimes for days that just destroys the blossoms and sometimes fruits. This turned out to be a mild year, but last year I was used to walking outside and seing 30 baby peaches hit the ground each day.
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