Sorry but ?? Not following you.
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It seems the process occurs in spring for apples for the most part. That is why thinning must be done early, by late spring-early summer it doesn’t or isn’t supposed to have an affect on whether trees bear next season.
I believe it’s more a question about how you prune than when as far as hormonal response. Stub cuts create a hormonal response, thinning cuts not to much. Dormant pruning doesn’t reduce energy harvest as much as pruning when leaves are on the trees. But even that depends on the density of shade in a tree. Less the 30% exposure and a leaf becomes a sink and even shuts down photosynthesis- permanently. That’s one reason I do mid-spring pruning for vigorous, bearing trees. Uprights often shade the leaves that serve the fruit.
Pruning the leader would have no affect on lateral branches at all in my opinion. They behave as independent contractors. The only difference I can think of would be access to light unless there was a lot of wood with secondary branching on the leader you removed, which would mean the rest of the tree would have more roots working for it- more water and more nutrients. Also, more sunlight.
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it’s more a question about how you prune than when as far as hormonal response.
I haven’t seen anyone play around with pruning timing to control hormones/annual/biennial production.
Have you had a lot of luck with it?
The orchards I’ve worked at, due to labor issues and a lack of knowledge of what controls biennial production have opted for dormant pruning until quite recently
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Nothing about the hole or dirt would suggest something was wrong. I have fruit trees to one side that are doing very well. The tree is about 7 1/2’ feet tall. It got a certain height and that was it. No further branching or height gained after about 3 years ago. I keep track of the height of all the trees I have planted. That way I can compare the different heights the different rootstocks reach.
I am done with some of them that have not produced any fruit and no more growth, so out they go. I will re-fertilize them in the spring and add supplements now to the remainder of the M111’s that are producing some fruit but not a lot of it. See if that helps at all. If not I will start getting rid of the very puny apple producers. If they aren’t doing their job they gotta go!
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I can’t know exactly what’s happening hormonally beyond growth response. Most of the apple trees I manage are either on 111 rootstock or are ancient and huge trees on seedling. Most in my own orchard are on 7, 111, or 106.
I don’t do research so my assumptions are based on the research of others and anecdote. In my own orchard a big part of my focus is to assure my two Goldrush trees bear annually and I use a combination of early thinning, starting with even unopened flower buds and three rounds of pruning, in winter, mid-spring and mid-summer. Since employing both I have enjoyed annual production from these trees. They were biennial until I did all of this, even when I did the bud thinning part.
In commercial orchards annual production is usually assured by chemical thinning and dawn to dusk sun (I have years of experience managing orchards with different levels of shade and full sun promotes annual production, as does irrigation during drought), along with keeping trees “unnaturally” open with aggressive dormant pruning. Of course, most of that production is now on bushes with fully dwarfing rootstocks, so essentially it is a different world than the one I work in. I’m a treeman, not a bushman.
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Do you see a big difference in the M111 vs M106 in size, production, or health/growing?
I know M111 can sucker a lot.
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I believe they are close enough to alike for most purposes. M106 bears a little sooner. But also declines it seems earlier than M111. Just be careful as M106 has problems
root rots / collar rot in damp sticky soils…and M111 is forgiving.
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That’s been my experience too with commercial orchards.
About 10 years ago now I was at a convention where in apple trees flower suppression in the following year’s crop was linked to gibberillic acid production in the current year’s crop with the tagline being, ‘Use of Naphthalene acetic acid counteracts gibberillic acid in regards to suppressing the following year’s flower formation.’
I’ve since come to realize there’s multiple ways to manage biennial bearing…qed pruning, proper thinning especially in varieties that notoriously overset, properly managing nutrients (fertilizing correctly)
Also an orchard I worked at had a large crop combined with a high amount of late spring and early summer.
Bingo there were back to back large crops, the idea being the following year being a large crop as well, so it seems like watering adequately especially early in season and apple development is also crucial.
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Please finish that sentence.
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I think that might be a leap. Obviously 111 is more tolerant to excessive water and possibly also more tolerant to drought than 106, but I expect all apple trees I plant here to long outlive me. I’ve no reason from my own experience to believe that 106 is shorter lived than 111 when grown in good conditions, but I have to admit, I don’t pay close attention to what rootstocks are on trees I planted as long as 30 years ago- in my region all semi-dwarfing rootstocks appear long-lived. I don’t think relative longevity of rootstocks is an issue for home growers nor that it is something well researched. I have managed 80 years old trees apparently on M7 that are still quite vigorous. If I counted on the literature I’d think this unlikely.
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Maybe.
My parents planted apples from Stark’s 46 years ago. Just one of the M106 are clinging to life. One M26 turned out to be a standard…half of which broke in a storm and the other half looks to be OK for the next 30 or 40. Since no M111 got planted at that time and location, can’t say if they’d be alive today. (M7 at my place are looking bad at age 33).
Could just be my experience…anyone have side by side M111/M106 plantings over 30 or 40 years old?
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Yes I do- 25 years anyway, and a healthy apple tree tends to remain that way for many decades. My experiences are on many sites but are not really very carefully monitored because I’ve never had a concern about the longevity of any rootstock, so at least in my region 106 may be preferable to 111 if you want earlier fruit and you can consistently provide your trees with good drainage and water through droughts. I can’t remember a single apple tree I’ve ever managed dying in middle age- not even to fire-blight, and I’m not entirely demented.
I’ve heard that in some places the burr knots on 111 can be a problem, particularly by attracting woolly apple aphids but I have never found that to be an issue here.
You are speaking of experience at a single site, so there could be quite a range of reasons why 106 doesn’t do well there but could in a different soil or with different light exposure and so forth. Rootstocks even vary in their susceptibility to nutrient deficiencies, as I understand it.
I meant to say a lot of rain in the late spring and early summer.
I think we all did in the northeast- at least within a couple hundred miles of the ocean.