Thanks JM, On the topic of thinning mature trees for fruit production reasons, you answered another question I was saving for a couple years from now as I have no mature trees yet: What I noticed is, the king bud is easy to find at flower stage, but at thinning size/time, the king fruit that came from that bud is not easy to recognize. I read a while back that, the king fruit is the one you want to keep when thinning. Removing the non-king flowers would solve that issue. I expect no frost here after flowering in all but the most atypical year, not so much rain, however wind would be my biggest issue.
This is good to understand the benefits of letting the fruit set in production years in a small orchard. Thanks for spelling out the problems, and I don't expect I'll ever become the scissor artist that would be required to get to the base without damaging the one I want to keep. Thanks, Rye Hefley Future Farmers Marketer So. Cal. -----Original Message----- From: Jourdain Jean-Marc <jourd...@ctifl.fr> To: Apple-crop discussion list <apple-crop@virtualorchard.net> Sent: Mon, Mar 14, 2011 1:19 am Subject: Re: [apple-crop] Manually dropping fruit from young trees Hi Rye We are working hard on these topics. You will find here after a link to a pdf file (sorry Frenchspeaking) were you can see a picture of a “Darwin” system workingat full bloom a short English summary, and some tables that you can understand… http://www.fruits-et-legumes.net/revue_en_ligne/infos_ctifl/infospdf/infos%20251/251p32-36.pdf Thinning at flowering time is fast, can be hand made (with astick) or with a hand held electric tool that we are developing on stone fruit (“Effleureuse”)or heavier mechanization like “Darwin” device or more… Early thinning is good for next year bud fruit set. The effecton size of fruit (compared to standard thinning) is controversial in ourtrials. So were are the problems. 1/ if you thin at flowering time then you are trusting good weatherconditions and not expecting any frost or wind or wet weather or…everything else that may have adverse effect on fruit set. When you thin on smallfruit you can adapt your thinning intensity. 2/ thinning at flowering time is a blind thinning, you can’tchoose the quality of fruit since you cannot see it. Thinning on small fruit givesyou the opportunity to eliminate damaged fruits, give a better place toremaining fruits… if done by hand 3/on species like peach (general behavior) were production is onone year old wood, removing buds is not a problem, but removing flower buds onapple trees, you not only diminish flower number but also you diminish thenumber of shoots, giving the remaining shoots more power, and globallyweakening the tree… 4/ for apple specific case, some variety are requiring toachieve a one fruit per corymb (eg. short stem varieties), of course flower thinningis done on a bud base (apart you are a scissors artist) not at flower level, thusyou are facing a new thinning work at small fruit stage… But with increasing pressure on chemical thinning, theincreasing costs of hand thinning labor, we are in the process of implementingthese tools in our strategies… Best regards JM Jourdain Ctifl France De :apple-crop-boun...@virtualorchard.net[mailto:apple-crop-boun...@virtualorchard.net] De la part de Rye Envoyé : samedi 12 mars 2011 02:30 À : apple-crop@virtualorchard.net Objet : [apple-crop] Manually dropping fruit from young trees Why is it customary to allow fruit to form and then drop it whenit is small, rather than removing flowers so the tree doesn't "waste"energy forming any fruit at all? Curious if tree growth can be increasedwithout harmful effects by removing flowers before they form fruit. Thanks, Rye Hefley Future Farmers Marketer So. Cal. _______________________________________________ apple-crop mailing list apple-crop@virtualorchard.net http://virtualorchard.net/mailman/listinfo/apple-crop
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