Stand Alone Pages

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Don't Forget to Thin Apples and Pears When Fruit are Small

Apples and pears require aggressive thinning particularly if you did not space your bearing limbs far enough apart.You can still do some summer pruning if the canopy is too dense.
Try to think your fruit when they are small. Thinning is not required usually for nut tree, apricots and figs but fruit tree production on many trees will benefit from some thinning to very aggressive thinning.

Apple fruit cluster before thinning. The fruit here are small, only about an inch in diameter. See the leaf sizes for comparison.
Apples and pears require aggressive thinning particularly if you did not space your bearing limbs far enough apart.
Thin so that only one, or at the most two, fruit remain per cluster. Remember it takes 60 plus leaves to support the size and sugars needed for fruit to look and taste delicious.
Pears are thinned exactly the same way. Asian pears have to be thinned "harder", remove more fruit, if you want really large-sized fruit.

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