Questions of thinning the fruitlets

[IL847]

My peach and nectarine tree is loaded with fruitlets, I am wondering should I just wait for the june drop or should I thin them, which approach is better?

More question for peach, If I have to thin the peach fruitlets,
1)how far apart of each fruitlets?
2)Some fruitlet is facing up wards , some downwards , which ones should I thin out?
3) most fruitlets grow on last years branches, but some grow on main scaffold ( the year before last year branches), does it make differences ( taste, size etc.) for peaches to grow on which years’ branches?

More question for Asian pear:

1. How many pears per cluster should I keep, 1? 2? 3? 4? all? this is 5 years, 4-in-1 pear tree.
2. My pear tree does not seem grow a lot, 3 inches the most per year. What might be the problem and how to correct it? Don’t tell me to prune it. there is not a lot branches to prune off with this kind of growth rate! But the tree otherwise, looks healthy in decent ground.
3. I put some general purpose 10-10-10 fertilize in early spring, should I give more fertilizer to make the tree grow bigger? Or will the fertilizer make the tree grow longer branches?
4. Not fruit thin related, well, maybe kind of… I noticed that some animals were picking off my pear flowers, and later picking off pear fruitlets, do you think it might be birds??

More question for Apricot, second leaf:

1. It looks like that Apricot will thin itself, my first year of having Apricot fruitlets so my statement is only based on my observation of my young fruit tree. For the remaining fruitlets, should I further thin them, or just leave it as is?
2. How far apart for each fruitlets?
3. If I have all the fruitlets thinned with good distance between each other, but only have on branch that have more dense fruitlets space, will this arrangement affect the fruits size of the whole tree or only affect the fruits size of that branch only?

Since I am asking the thinning question, I might get some answers for my J. plum as well.
More questions for J. plum

1. how far apart for each fruitlet? How many per cluster?
2. My J, plum seems like to grow vertical branches. Should I just bend the branches down, or cut them off and wait for more horizontalish branches to grow out?

questions for sweet cherry

1. does sweet cherry need to be thinned? how many per cluster?

Thanks in advance

[mamuang]

IL,
Let me try to answer you.
Peach - any length from one fruit every 6-8". Mark, the peach man, thin his up to 12" per peach.
I get rid of

• “twin peaches”
• damaged ones
• peaches that smaller than others nearby
• peaches that have no leaves next to them
• peaches on small branches which cannot support them if they grew bigger.

I try to keep clean, bigger fruitlets that get good sun exposure (when possible).

A. pear:
keep 2 per cluster on average. If a tree is young, I may not keep any. If I want to taste it, I keep one.

• Pear usually grows like crazy. If you want to concentrate on help your tree grow, you may not want to keep the fruit. Fertilize it. For vegetative growth, people may use urea/nitrogen fertilizer. I use either 10-10-10, Plant Tone or Tree Tone
• could be birds. Some birds do so.

Apricot - I have not grown so no first hand experience

Plum :
Some J plum that overset like Shiro, I was told to thin to about 4-6" per fruit. I follow the same rule of peach thinning.
Some plum that does not set very much - no need to thin
I bend all my plum branches. I just use rocks (grow abundantly in the Northeast ) as weight.
The two J plum I have Shiro and Satsuma have thrown out long branches. They are all bent to almost horizontally. Make the trees low, perfect for me.

Sweet cherry : Never prune. Have lot of cherries. They all grow up to full size. Black Gold and Vandalay. Birds are faster than me most years. Brown rot and cracking are the issues, not thinning.

Others may have better ideas for you. I hope this help.

[Olpea]

Mamunag is right about the peach thinning. Try to keep the biggest fruitlets. They have a higher cell count which generally translates into larger peaches.

It doesn’t matter which direction the peachlet is orientated. It can be upwards, downwards, or sideways, just make sure it is not too close to the crotch angle. I’ve noticed slightly less bird pecks on peaches located on the bottom side of the branch (I think it’s a bit harder for the birds to peck those) but it’s not a big enough deal to try to thin all the top peaches off of the branches.

Peaches only set fruit on year old wood. Sometimes it appears as though peaches are growing on two year wood, but this is only because the one year wood was very vigorous the prior season which caused it to grow a lot and produce lots of secondary shoots. Nevertheless, the wood is only a year old. Many times this very vigorous larger diameter one year wood will produce slightly smaller fruit.

[IL847]

Thank you both mamuang and Olpea for the clear directions and tips. I will go back and thin more. I have picked more than half the fruitlets, the ground is covered by little peaches. Yet, every time I looked at the branches, the fruitlets still look too close to each other… 4-6" apart that is about 10- 20% of total fruitlets left.

[fruitnut]

If they look too thick now they’ll look way too thick when they reach full size. At that spacing remove half again. That’s usually what I conclude. If I think I’m close I need to remove another half.

[mamuang]

I always say thinning fruitlets is an emotional matter. I’ve done it for the past 4 years. It really does not get much better emotionally. :

I’ve thinned in rounds; at least 2, usually 3 or sometimes more. Thin all at once is not risky as you never know if bugs will attack the remaining fruit or something could happen to them.

This year, I have too many fruit spurs set on Honey Crisp apple. I thinned a lot sooner. I thinned out many flower clusters long before fruit setting. Apple can go biennial if not thinned enough.

To me, biennial is not a peach issue. If peaches are not thinned, poor fruit quality and breakage of branches are the issues

[IL847]

mamuang, you are soooo right about emotional matter. I did not thin them in one day, I pick off a few every day. At certain point, I told myself, maybe just let God decide which one to keep. Now the easy decision had already made, the peaches are getting bigger, looking better everyday . Thinning is even tougher…

[alan]

Before you even begin the thinning process, I suggest you prune out small wood that is shaded. This is especially true of peaches. There are always a lot of branchletts that are excessively crowding each other on trees I’ve pruned earlier- the picture becomes clear at thinning time. Also, the weight of developing fruit changes the structure and what had sun may no longer.

There is no point in producing fruit in the shady parts of a tree and any leaves receiving less than 30% light exposure are said to be energy sinks, even when they aren’t serving fruit.

It takes less time to remove the wood than to thin the fruit from it.

Finally, for those who have more thinning to do than time to do it, thin apples that tend to biennial bearing first, because after about 4 weeks from petal fall it is too late to change the trees mind about producing flowers for the following year (according to literature I’ve read on the subject,although I don’t believe it to be absolutely true).

Go from early to later bearing varieties of peaches and plums. Plums will often get up good sugar even when excessively crowded, but I find peaches only have good quality when adequately thinned.

[marknmt]

I’ve heard differing views on which apple to leave. Some recommend leaving the king apple, others recommend removing it. In either event one thins to just one apple per cluster and leaving no two apples within a hand of each other.

Clarifications appreciated!

[mamuang]

I also remove small branches because they are too small to carry even one mature peach.

[tonyOmahaz5]

I bagged the King apple which is the largest in the cluster and thinned the rest of the cluster at the same time. Save a little time.

Tony

[alan]

Mark, that’s the first I’ve heard of anyone recommending removing the king apple. I only recall ever reading the advice to leave it to get the largest possible apple- unless it has been injured.

It has often crossed my mind that by leaving only kings you may be reducing your spread of harvest as the king is the first flower to open. I wonder about other fruit as well. When we leave the biggest peaches we are probably picking the ones that formed first. The smaller peaches just might ripen later.

[marknmt]

Thanks. It seemed to me to be logical to keep the king- it has the biggest stem and the pipeline is working for it.

Wish I could remember where I read that contrary advice. I always leave the king, but hadn’t thought about the spreading the harvest viewpoint.

To me having an apple get very large isn’t necessarily a good thing, so I don’t know how much it matters to me in real life, but are there other advantages working in favor of the king?

(On the injury note we took a fairly good hammering from hail two nights ago, and there are lots of dents, dern it. Oh well … )

[alan]

I could imagine that some varieties that suffer from rots like Honeycrisp or Spygold might be better served by selecting down in size- very large size can be a liability when the fruit can’t draw enough calcium to meet its needs.

I’m not sure they have a king flower though- not all varieties do.

[mamuang]

HC do have king fruit. I left most of king fruit on. I do leave a few two-apple per cluster to lower the size. I will see if there will be any issue with rot on my HC this year.

[alan]

I should have said Goldrush and not HC. I don’t really have it sorted out but some trees have clusters of equal sized fruit, Baldwin often has two large fruit with smaller ones in the cluster. Honeycrisp does have a lot of clusters with a couple of big fruit for me as well, and I’ve seen it recommended that they be thinned to two per cluster and the removal of entire clusters to get the count of apples you want.

[marknmt]

Honeycrisp does have a lot of clusters with a couple of big fruit for me as well, and I’ve seen it recommended that they be thinned to two per cluster and the removal of entire clusters to get the count of apples you want.

I see this on some of my Liberty clusters, but these require such heavy thinning that I almost never leave two/cluster, and generally remove all the fruit from many clusters. But it is uncommon for me to get very large fruit from this tree in any event.

[AngelOreo]

I just use rocks (grow abundantly in the Northeast )

This made me LOL for real!! #fact