First round of thinning Peach done!

General Fruit Growing
#1

We have 3 Red havens and one unknown Nectarine. All were completely covered in 1/4 in to 3/8 in fruits.

Truths and Myths.

It is true thinning is a lot of work. With the leaves out, it is hard to see all those little fruits. To go fast you just can’t second guess yourself. It is also true thinning begins with pruning. You quickly see you have not pruned enough!. That scrappy 10 inch long downward branch with two leaves and 10 small peaches has to go. If you can’t see far in to the tree, it is also likely you have many branches crossing each other and tips that can be cut back to stiffen the branch. Thin with pruners in the pocket ready to snip.Even if you think you are taking to much out, you still have too much.

Myth; It is not an emotional thing to pick all those tiny fruits off. It helps if you keep reminding yourself these crowds of peaches will break all your branches and produce low quality fruit. Also be realistic how much canning/giving fruits away you really want to do? Even with a lower end production, we would have 800 peaches. Think about that as you pluck away.

We plan to thin in stages, not sure if the pro’s agree. I guesstimate we had 10 x the fruits the tree can support. After thinning, We now have 2 x the fruit we need left. We now have 4- to 6 inch spacing. When they are at nickle size and larger, we will thin again.

Thanks to all the posters advice, our first real thinning has been a lot easier

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#2

I always thin in stages, it makes it less overwhelming. Also since I don’t use a bug killer the curculio is active all spring and I need to keep thinning out the fruits they go after … so having extras left is good. Pros want to thin ASAP to not take energy from the fruits that will ultimately stay. For apples it can be a good thing to thin even at the blossom stage to prevent alternate bearing. But I don’t do that myself.

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#3

For me stages means I thought I did good enough and realized later way more need to go.

#4

Robert,

I understand Scott’s reason to leave some on, I did as well. What distance did you “try” to maintain? I know I missed areas. When I walk back through seeing it from a different angle I see more!

#5

It was meant to be more of a joke.

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