My semi-dwarf apples seem to thin themselves. Only the king flower sets fruit in most of the clusters. Some clusters will set 2 or none. It’s rare to see 3 or more in a cluster. The giant seedling apples will set about 2-3 per clusters on average, but they can support a higher apple density.
Lately, several of my apricot dropped for no reason. One one branch, all 6-7 of them dropped. These were full size apricots that are waiting to turn color. Have you or anyone experienced that?
@scottfsmith, @BobVance, @mrsg47, Are these normal? I can’t figure out why. This is my first year of apricots. At this rate of dropping, I may not have any left. Yikes!!!
Same happened to my tree which I think dropped ~50% of its load, and that was after thinning to 4-6” apart. In my case I assumed it is because of spraying with copper a few days earlier. My tree suffered from shot hole before, that’s why I sprayed it together with the nectarines that are susceptible to bacterial spot. The apricot tree seemed much more sensitive to copper as I saw phytotoxicity symptoms on the leaves more severe than the nectarines. The nectarines did not drop a single fruit after spraying. My theory is that the apricot tree went through a state of shock after the spray and couldn’t support that many fruits on it.
I’ve never sprayed copper during growing season. Only one spray at dormant. I think it should not effect my case re. copper spray.
How big were your apricots that dropped? Were they dropped right after copper spray? I did spray fungicide and pesticide.
It could be June drop, its June after all 
I always have some apricots drop for no reason but don’t recall having half of them drop; maybe on a young tree more can drop.
You did cut some open and check for PC I presume. Once the seed hardens squirrels can cause drop in the process of grabbing some fruits but its a bit early for you on that one.
They were about one third to one half the size of mature apricots. They started dropping a couple of days after I sprayed, which was three weeks ago, and continued for about two weeks. I also sprayed Captan together with the copper, which the CA label prohibits spraying on cot trees after shuck split, not sure why (could be that apricot fruits are sensitive to it). I was not aware of the CA rule when I sprayed, otherwise I would have followed it.
Also, my tree is a third leaf tree, quite healthy and vigorous. It had north of a couple hundred fruits before the copper spray.
No PC signs inside or outside, and no squirrels- I have been very active trapping them, and I rarely see any near my trees.
I also forgot to mention that some of the apricots developed a light brown discoloration and some even had wrinkled skin, so I think that the fruits too are sensitive to the copper, not only the leaves. In the case of peaches, the literature says fruits are much more tolerant of copper than foliage.
Your tree sounds like it had too big a load for its age so it shed a bunch. Thats not uncommon in fruit trees, my cots haven’t done that in my memory but peaches have done it often. If the leaves still look completely healthy I doubt the sprays had any effect. Apricot leaves start to curl when they get unhappy from a spray.
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No, the leaves did not look healthy after spraying, they looked wilted and developed some pale brown spots.
P.S. I edited my last comment above.
Ah. Indeed that doesn’t sound good at all. Apricots do seem more chemical sensitive. I haven’t sprayed mine with anything for almost a month now for that reason. I probably erred in the other direction though as I am seeing peach scab on some varieties.
It happened to me last year. All dropped but one. How old is your tree. My tree is hanging on to ten this year. It gets netted today! My other two apricot trees dropped all of their fruit and blossoms this year.
Yes, I get a lot of dropping from apricots
And what the June drop don’t get, the squirrel do!
We are just about done thinning. We have some flat peach trees to get through then done with the peaches. I left the flat peaches till last because they want to split on the bottom side. Thought maybe leaving them to thin last might prevent some of the splits. I don’t know that it did, but we have been able to thin off all the splits. Takes a ton of time because you have to look at the bottom of just about every peach to see if it needs thinned off.
We don’t pick up any fruit, but I probably would if I had less trees. Some of the early varieties still have too much fruit, so we will have to go through those again. Still haven’t touched any apples or pears, or plums.
I don’t feel like we’ve worked long hours, but I’m exhausted. I wake up exhausted. Trying to move through the trees fast and crawling around under the trees to thin/prune is hard on an old man.
Re:$25/hr.
Around here you can hire labor from a temp service for around $14, which includes workers comp and all other employer fees (but I’m sure the East Coast would be higher). If you don’t like the way one of the workers works, you don’t have to invite them back the next day.
I hope I don’t sound racist, but I’ve been told Hispanic women are generally the best fruit thinners, from temp services.
I’ve used high school kids before, but you have to work to keep them off their phones.
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Thank you, Scott and everyone for your input. I don’t have a tree. I have several apricots grafted on to my peach and nectarine trees. Most grafts were done in 2016 and a couple in 2017. Most flowered and set fruit this spring. Many fruit have dropped as recently as two days ago.
I sprayed apricot three times with pesticide + insecticide and Surround. The last spray was with Indar and Spinosad, two days ago. Does this mean I should expect more dropped?
With anecdotes from all of you, it seems if I look at apricots the wrong way or stare at them too long, they drop. What a sensitive fruit it is!!!
Mark,
I have to crawl around my apples and A pear trees to pick up all the dropped/thinned off fruit. I empathize with you about aching body after such a task.
I think around here, people still pay $10-12 an hour for babysitting. I work in human services, particularly with people with developmental disabilities. The pay for direct care staff is so low that we cannot keep good staff. They are paid about $12 an hour. But I digress.
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Thanks for a reminder. I went out to check my Saturn. The one with a split bottom was the largest one, of course. I have only one branch of Saturn that is also at a pedestrian height so checking and thinning them is not as such a back breaking task.
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Last round of thinning peaches and a few nectarines. Some on higher branches escaped the first couple of rounds so they were a thumb size now.
I saw a few insect damage on fruit and flagging of shoots from OFM. This is after 3 rounds of sprays a week apart. Anyone in high pest pressure who spray every 10-14 days may be disappointed.
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It seems that we’ve had a lot of gray rainy weather this spring. I wonder if the lack of sun has made the usual June drop worse, as the trees recognize that there is too much fruit for them. I was out thinning peaches in the last few days and it didn’t seem like the fruit was as overloaded as I remember from the past. I only had to take off about half. in the past, I would have left 90% of it on and had to tie up the tree to prevent broken branches…
Maybe Mamung had it figured out, but I’ve been going out with a little bucket. I guess I haven’t thinned enough for it to strike me how inefficient I’m being. It’s a fairly slow process anyway, as I agonize not only about which is largest, the best way to pack in the most fruit with a given spacing, up vs down, and most importantly, which fruits have bug bites (annoying as I need to check all sides). Even though I’ve been spraying the last two years, I think I built up quite a population of PC before that.
Interestingly, there seems to be a fairly limited damage range. The trees that have just started bearing, while less than 50 feet from the older trees, are seeing far fewer PC hits. I wonder if they just climb up the tree they fell from the previous year. Or at least start there and then die after biting a few sprayed fruits, before they have a chance to fly 50ft to the newer tree.
A little pair of spring loaded mini scissors is good for this too. I also used them to cut up blossoms (cutting petals off and for harvesting pollen) when attempting controlled crosses.
Clearly you need to start investing in land, maybe a small farm in the rolling hills so you can truly indulge in your obsession with the conditions to produce the highest quality fruit- dawn to dusk sun in fast draining soil.