It looks like I will need to do some heavy fruit thinning. My questions:
When to thin (based on time after bloom or fruit size)? We are having a lot of rain now, is it an impediment to thinning (due to the risk of bacterial canker or any other reason)?
I start thinning at that stage and thin to about 6 inch spacing. I’m more concerned about quality than yield. Others thin less. But they always look way thicker at full size than now. A good rule is thin what you think is right and then remove another 50%.
After all these years of trying to get it right, I still somehow manage to only error (when I er) on the side of under thinning. In these many seasons, I’ve never harvested a tree where I regretted having thinned so many fruit.
When the fruit is small it is hard to visualize how much room each one will take. For peaches you probably want about 35 leaves per. I suppose for cots 20 would be adequate. Not that anyone actually counts leaves as they thin, but it is still a useful guideline.
Yes, for apricot 20 leaves per fruit is the minimum I would have said as well.
I’ve probably over thinned but really can’t remember when. What I do remember is hauling 5 gallon buckets of full size apricots out of my greenhouse because I under thinned. At that point it was really too late to help the remaining fruit. That’s after 40 yrs of thinning fruit.
The beginner who over thins will be about as rare as flying pigs.
