Hold the water, more sugar please

Canopy position can affect fruit quality esp for apricots IME. But generally my nectarines are good even on the hangers under the canopy. But my trees have much less heavily shaded areas than what I’m thinking yours have. Better light, more thinning?, and smaller trees.

Even my outside trees are about like this. And this is a heavy crop load for me:

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Whereas on a season like this, trees tend to be extremely vigorous here- I’m summer pruning my peach trees every other week and my clients will mostly be pruned at least twice. As I posted on this forum previously, I found it very exciting that it was discovered that shaded apple tree leaves experience an irrecoverable loss of the ability to photosynthesize when shaded for a period of time, although the researcher didn’t say exactly what that period was- I figure somewhere between 2-6 weeks. Outlying leaves do not feed the spur leaves or fruit below adequately, which was the reason this affect was noted. It seems more than possible that most species of trees experience the same thing.

I actually removed a lot of vegetative shoots from apple trees everywhere I thinned in mid to late spring to keep light were it does good. Interestingly, at many sites, leafhoppers prevent much shoot growth by summer if I don’t keep poisoning them, so they may actually serve my purposes by allowing the light to get where I want it. Hopefully the carbs they pull from the tree are only contributing to vegetative growth- outcomes suggest they are.

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In his book Home Grown Nourishment, Beddoe presents an interesting idea. He says if the soil phosphates to nitrogen ratio is out of balance, then the brix will be unstable and easily affected by weather.

Interesting if it is bolstered by some data, which should be relatively easy to acquire if a researcher found it interesting. Otherwise,maybe not so much.

Isn’t Beddoe’s doctorate in dentistry? Are you teasing me Anne? You know where these conversations go with us.:wink:

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LOL If you begin with scoffing, this will go the way our other conversations have gone. :blush:
But this idea certainly provides some fodder for experimentation which is better, IMHO, than just being subject to weather for food quality when one may not need to be if these ratios provide stability in brix. BTW, brix is not just a measure of sugars but also of the nutritional value of any food.
As far as dentistry is concerned, in a similar path as Weston Price (check out his foundation) Beddoe also saw dental problems were related to nutrition problems, which brings us back to the soil and the name of his book.

I saw an MSU video on cherries, and they mentioned the number of leaves needed to supply a cherry cluster. What they were talking about was heading branches on Gisela as the dwarf rootstock causes too many cherries at the end of branches, and to clip these branches down to where the leaf bud to fruit bud ratio is better. So I think you’re correct. The idea was to produce bigger,sweeter cherries.

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There are already so many knowns and research based possibilities to factor into fruit tree management that growing fruit is complicated enough without throwing in the ideas of people that are selling books based on their personal hunches- hardly a platform likely to inspire objectivity. I doubt this man has spent a 20th of the time in fruit trees as a serious grower. I’m just not a believer in these individual “geniuses” that develop rococo “theories” out of thin air- although I have to confess to going to a chiropractor for treatment from time to time although I’ve never been able to find research that supports the methodology which was founded by another one of these “geniuses” of intuition.

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