I have trouble thinning enough. I don’t like doing it. I make excuses (wait until the June drop, leave some extras for bird damage or predation, see how well the codling moth spray program is working before taking too many).
But I make an effort to follow my own advice. which I freely give even if I don’t like taking it myself. And the last few days I’ve seen how many apples I’m still asking that poor tree to carry, and so today I got into it an started in again. I mourn every one I nip off, and I probably still haven’t gotten enough. And I waited way, way too long. But I’m doing it.
I guess you’re a softy. It doesn’t bother me. What’s left is in a better situation and the tree is clearly better off. Think more about the tree and fruit quality and less about the losses. It’s actually addition by subtraction.
I just do 20 or 50 each time I’m out in the orchard, but only got the ones I can reach from the ground. Goldrush way oversets, and in spite of thinning the bottom half, the top half looks ridiculous.
I’m kinda the same. I only have a couple of small branches of Goldrush and haven’t experienced it oversetting, but it has been precocious. Liberty oversets, as do Calville Blanc and Karmijn de Sonnaville. State Fair is prone to it.
Mine aren’t ripe enough to attract the squirrels yet, and lately I’m not seeing much squirrel activity. I wonder if they’ve been lured off by something else somewhere. I did notice that a neighbor discarded a squirrel feeding station. I’m sure they’ll be back once they smell the plums and pears ripening.
When apple fruitlets were small, I had no qualms thinning them. Since thinning apples (for me, takes a couple more rounds, the last round a couple of days ago, had sized up. It was harder to take perfectly looking ping pong ball-sized apples off the trees.
Hi Mark
This year I am trying the bug zapper each night to help alleviate the codling moths. So far there’s a good pile of them under the zapper! Also use surround to ward off Apple fly maggot and codlings. Have you tried these?
Last year my Chehalis was badly damaged by moths because my surround was not staying on very well. So this year I will be able to evaluate the zapper
Dennis
Kent wa
I did try surround one year and didn’t like using it -didn’t like the way the tree looked, what it felt like to be working in it, what the apples were like with the surround on them.
Made the mistake one year of bagging the apples in footies and then spraying surround. That was pretty gross looking. I don’t think to use a zapper. I might try that. I’d have to stretch an extension cord over the sidewalk, though.
Right now Spectracide/Spinosad mixed is working well. After my July spray I’ll switch to just Spinosad.
This is the first time that I’ve had enough to thin. There was plenty of damaged fruit to pull off so I didn’t feel awful doing it. Plus my daughter has an adorable obsession with “baby apples” so I got her involved and made an event of of it. Hopefully what is left makes it to harvest. Last year the squirrels relieved me of what little I still had in the trees.
I’d be ok with that. Hopefully I get a good enough handle on the ins and outs of it to teach her and her sister vs learning on their own. Maybe it will open paths to them that were not there for me.
My niece asked me to thin her standard-sized Transparent (!) which is maybe 20 days away from harvest. To save straining branches and increase the size of fruit (also whack some branches that previous owners neglected) turns into several sessions of work and banter with her daughter. Being supervised by a three-year-old takes the chore out of home-grown fruit care.
