INTERESTING NOTE OF HORMONES PRODUCED BY THIS YEAR’S SEEDS AFFECTING NEXT YEARS BLOOM LOAD.
I blocked and copied for quick read but direct link right below here
Thinning Peaches/Nectarines
Top: unthinned peaches; Bottom: thinned to approximately 6 inches apart.[photo]
Dr. Teryl Roper, Pomology Professor at USU, provides the following information for proper peach thinning.
We are past the window for thinning apples and pear trees for 2017. In northern Utah there is still time to thin peaches. Cherries, plums, and apricots are generally not thinned. Fruit set on fruit trees in Utah is spotty. Some trees have good crops while others have light crops as a result of spring frosts and poor weather (cloudy, windy, wet) during flowering. This weather kept honeybees in the hives and reduced pollination. Fruit trees are thinned for several reasons.
1. To increase fruit size. Trees have finite resources and can make fewer large fruit or many small fruit.
Reducing the number of fruit early will increase the size of the remaining fruit.
2. To ensure flowers next year. The developing seeds of fruit are rich sources of plant hormones. These hormones cause the fruit to enlarge. They also interfere with the creation of flower buds that will result in fruit the following year. Reducing the number of fruit on a tree this year will allow flower buds that precede next year’s crop.
3. To avoid limb breakage. When trees are overloaded the weight of the fruit can cause limbs to bend beyond their limits resulting in broken limbs.
4. Fruit quality. When fruit loads are within the ‘carrying capacity’ of a tree the fruit are sweet, juicy, and aromatic (flavorful).
Before thinning you’ll want to assess fruit load and fruit set. Using a sharp knife, cut through several fruit and count the number of seeds that are developing per fruit. Apples and pears with at least 5 seeds are more likely to be retained than fruit with fewer seeds. Peaches should have one developing seed. Fruit that begin to develop without or with few seeds are more likely to drop before maturity. In general, fruit should be thinned as early as fruit set can be ascertained after flowering. If trees are not thinned by 30 days after petal fall most of the benefits of thinning are lost (or at least reduced).
Apples and pears should be thinned to leave only one fruit per flower cluster and clusters should be no closer than 6 inches apart. In apples the center fruit (king fruit) will be the largest and should be retained. Remove the side fruit. In pears the lowest fruit will be the largest and other fruitlets should be removed. Small scissors can help to remove individual fruit. Peaches should be thinned so that individual fruit are no closer than 6 inches apart. Peaches are normally thinned by hand by twisting fruit to be removed. Leave no more that 100 to 150 peaches on mature trees. Young trees will have proportionally fewer fruit.
'It’s an old post, but seems timely now. I spent quite a while today out in my apple trees, with a pair of scissors, thinning apples. Some are not quite far enough along to know if they set, but I think a lot are, including my Gravensteins, Airlie Red Flesh, GoldRush, Rubinette, and some others.
Mostly, I cut off all but one apple per cluster, and thinned to the width of my fist between clusters. I use a kitchen shears that can go into the dishwasher between uses.
On plums, I thin Asian plums too. They ate earlier, bigger, and sweeter if I thin the, to thhe same distance apart.
I also did an experiment. My Brunswick fig almost always drops all of its brebas. This time, I thinned to one breba per branch. Usually the branches have two or three. For several branches, I also tipped the new shoots. I don’t know if those measures will help, but if the brebas stay and ripen, they are worth it.
This is an interesting thread that hasn’t seen a lot of traffic. I found it because I was looking for more information on thinning peaches. This year I had most of my stone fruit killed by late frost, but a few peach trees (Contender mostly) did have a full crop, and I made the rookie mistake of trying to get the most from the trees that do have fruit by leaving a lot more fruit on them. In other words, I didn’t thin very much because I was trying to get more fruit per tree. You can guess the results…I have a whole lot of peaches that are really small (and probably not as sweet). I should know better!!!
I really would be interested to know: if I measured nothing but weight, will i get more pounds this year with the higher count of peaches, even though they are small? Or would I get more pounds of fruit if I had thinned a lot more and gotten much larger fruits. Anyone know? I’m just curious about the result in WEIGHT. I already know that thinning leads to much larger (and probably sweeter) peaches so I won’t do this again, but I’m still not sure if my total yield is more or less when I leave more peaches that end up smaller???
Here is an example of what NOT to do…here is one of my Contender trees this year. I actually did do some thinning, but clearly not close to enough. Taken today, and I fear these peaches are almost as big as they are going to get.
Kevin, I think it is safe to say that more smaller fruit will yield more weight than fewer larger fruit. As you know, quality will suffer with the former and improve with the latter.
I was really curious about that. I suspected the same thing you said. Knowing that, I would think that a lot of the commercial growers who grow peaches that go into prepared foods like yogurt, oats, cookies, and maybe even canned peaches wouldn’t do much thinning. They wouldn’t care much about quality, but would want to maximize the volume of fruit they get.
As for me, I’m already very disappointed in the small size-almost embarassed to give them away- and hope the taste isn’t too much below what it would be. But either way, I’ve learned my lesson and will thin next year even if I only have one tree with fruit. I’d rather have 100 pounds from 80 large peaches than 130 pounds from 120 small ones.
Total weight alone may not be the right parameter to consider
In small fruit the SEED makes up a larger percentage of the weight of each individual fruit.
Remember, the tree is trying to make seeds. The flesh of the fruit is just the attractant for the seed spreaders. And for them the flesh does NOT have to be as plentifull or as flavorful as for us.
The tree will produce the minimum amount of flesh needed to get the seed spreaders to come in for dinner.
We screw with the “seed to flesh” ratio when we prune and select to favor & flesh over seed.
To get the correct measurement you would need to find the weight of the flesh without the pit.
Believe it or not, I actually had thought about this! really. I was thinking that while I might wind up with more pounds of peaches at picking time, what matters is how much weight exists after processing (removing seeds) .
Either way, it sounds like most people agree that flavor suffers and since I eat 90% of my peaches fresh or frozen, sweetness and flavor is critical. That being said, I really look forward to seeing how much flavor and sweetness suffer this year since I didn’t thin as much as usual. The (very good) article posted by @plum suggests the flavor difference might not be that much…we will see.
I’m wondering about cider apples. Do orchardists really thin those varieties? Those I consider to be best suited seem to have a weedy growth habit and set a lot of small, dense clusters of fruit, e.g., Kingston Black, MN1734, and perhaps Milo Gibson. I expect that optimal biomass for cider is achieved without thinning.
Golden Russet has a weepy growth habit. It doesn’t set very heavily, but I always feel I leave too much fruit on the tree because it sags under the load. I’d be happy just not to have to prune it or even be able to avoid all limb positioning if I can be convinced that’s the way to do it.
