I suspect this subject has been beat to death. I have 60 trees and have a huge fruit set this year in Eastern PA after an effective off season prune, deer battle and following a spray schedule discussed here over many years. Mustache Trimming scissors, ball bats, chemical thinning? I want to hear how others effectively thin fruit. I do have some trees that can go biennial without thinning, I am going the extra mile this year on my trees. I have spent days thinning and still have more to do. I may need to check myself into an institution at this rate… What do you do to attempt a 6" distance between fruit? I have never had the nerve to thin chemically with carbaryl because I don’t understand the timing and never wanted to take the chance of losing it all. I got through my stone fruits but the pomes are loaded and I am not fond of ladders but do it anyway keeping my tree height at 10’. Feel free to find a post to direct me to. Thanks.
Well, I doubt if I’m going to be of much help to you other than bumping this thread up to the top.
Suggest doing a search by clicking on the magnifying glass in the upper right-hand corner and entering in “Thinning”. I did and I saw posts recommending using some thinning agent other than Sevin and then hand thinning. Seems like a good idea for 60 trees (many more than I have).
I appreciate your opening this thread because it reminded me that I need to thin mine. I noticed a June drop on a Winesap just yesterday. Other trees have not. Good luck.
I appreciate your opening this thread, too, @blackrag. I just came in from spending all morning thinning one thirteen year old Macfree. This is the third pass I have made on this tree and it is still full of golf ball size apples. On my first pass I took out any PC damaged fruit and took out others so that none were touching in the cluster. On subsequent passes, days later, they had grown, so more came out. Now I am to the hard part, where many nice apples are left, usually just one in the original cluster. But there are too many on the branches!
Now how do I make the choice? In the case of two nice apples, one pointing up to the sky and one more hidden, do I leave the hidden one so the birds don’t see it? On a branch, of six nice apples, three inches apart, do I leave the one closest to the end and one more?
So many decisions! During thinning season, I often feel like The Highlander (“There can be only one.”) I should also add that this year I have seven trees that are jam packed with apples. They are all about ten feet, so require ladder work or actually climbing up in the tree.
I use little snips that are really for cutting flowers. They have a nice grip for this tedious job. And tedious it is because I don’t know any way to cut corners on it. Perhaps someone more experienced does. I would be afraid to try chemical thinning.
Thanks all. And Deb, I do know your meaning. I do it similar making at least 3 passes around each tree, keeping moving. Which fruitlet gets it’s chance to win? I usually pick the one that has the most sunlight after disposing the bitten or obvious. Above the branch rather than below the branch hoping my sprays are more effectly reach. Sometimes, I root for one just because and not always the largest. I say, “go ahead baby, make me proud”… You could spend 8 hours being fussy by hand on one tree. Whether gardens or orchards, I have to remind myself that old farmers didn’t coddle like an enthusiast like myself does. Still tough to see thousands of fruitlets on the ground when done.
For fruit trees that don’t adequately self thin I’m a fan on hard shaking. This tends to dislodge the weakest fruit first, but if needed you can keep shaking till some of the excess strong fruit drops too.
The trick to hand thinning is to make it rain. Stop obsessing on which fruit is biggest and simply aim for keeping the larger fruit on the tree while still removing fruit very quickly. If commercial growers can thin peaches with a plastic bat you can at least rake fruit off quickly.
If you have too much to do, get the apples done first, and if you have too many apples just thin one scaffold per tree and go back later. In 6A it’s almost too late to affect cropping next year, but if you get one scaffold thinned early, at least it will likely fruit next year. .
Healthy peach, plums and nects can wait, earlier thinning mostly just helps get better size than later, which is more an issue if you are selling bushel baskets than for the home grower that simply wants exquisite tasting fruit. Most of the sugar benefit from thinning seems to me to be realized in the 3 weeks leading up to ripening. Same deal for apples and pears, but for them you are thinning for annual cropping.
The nearly equal benefit to quality in thinning late compared to early is one of them most important things my trees have ever taught me. I’m managing at least a thousand (maybe two) fruit trees on scores of orchards with only one helper.
Thanks Alan, always appreciate reading your responses, as I still follow your pruning and spray guides after 10+ years. So the answer is, “rip and tear”, enough will remain. I was always concerned about stripping all the spurs. Apples 1st, peaches and plums 2nd as they can wait. I always did it opposite because they bloomed and set 1st. I only have 4 pears so not a big deal.
At this point, I am past the shaking point, might try that earlier next year.
One year I did not thin and it was my best production year ever. Following year we got the late frosts here in the northeast and nothing, though I wonder if my trees needed that year off to recover…
I didn’t mean it’s OK to rip off spurs with the fruit- that would defeat the purpose with apples or pears. Those spurs whose fruit is removed are the ones that will develop fruit next year- they have to make flower buds this year so they are ready to open next spring.
What I meant is don’t get hung up on being too careful about always saving the biggest fruit and that you should push yourself to get fast at it. It is a skill that you have to learn- thinning very quickly without doing too much damage to spurs or leaves. The less time it takes you the less tedious it is.
Got it, understand, always respect the spurs. I am getting faster. I guess if it was easy, we wouldn’t discussing it…
With 60 trees I think you are getting to the point where chemical thinning would be worth trying especially if the trees are tall and wide. You could use what the organic orchards use to chemically thin which is a mixture of lime sulfur and fish oil. You could start small next year and do a few trees to get a feel for how it works.
A thread talking about thinning.
I’ve always been reluctant to try to thin chemically. For one thing, I don’t want Sevin (old formula) in my program because it kills beneficials and sometimes leads to mite and scale outbreaks. I’ve only heard of using fish oils on blooms on the west coast where weather is consistent enough to have some idea how many flower buds you can destroy, where as in the humid region one needs to know the conditions post-petal fall to have some idea about what fruit set will be and how much potential fruit you can spare.
So I’ve never tried it. I’d be interested to hear from people who have used it in the east, however.
Most commercial growers use chemical thinners and then have a crew come back and painstakingly finish up by hand, as I understand it. Different varieties need a different amount of chemical input and every season that amount is different depending on how warm and sunny it is in early to mid-spring. .
Over the years Penn State Ag used to send out reports of carbohydrate numbers based on factors of temp etc… and measurements at their testing facilities. I believe based on application % of carbaryl or sevin. I couldn’t wrap my head around it or feel comfortable.
Everyone has their own fantasy about having an orchard. For me, my English Mastiff and I share an apple every day, my mother cans over 100 quarts of Cortland/Mac applesauce a year, the rest gets pressed fresh as cider for the freezer and guzzled down with each person’s “add-ons” for the holidays. I had 27 gallons one year and it did last until Easter, but I was the cider police.
Some varieties of apples just tend to overset every year they weren’t overloaded the year before if you don’t thin them. Goldrush and Fuji are two that have a strong tendency towards biennial bearing here but Goldrush is one of my two staple apples that I use right into spring (I still have some useable wrinkled ones in my fridge right now).
They way I get it to bear every year is to manually remove entire clusters of flowers leaving spurs free to put energy into next years fruit from April on. Heavily spurring varieties can be managed this way where spurs tend to be crowded about an inch or two apart. I might remove half or 2/3rds of entire flower clusters from spurs well before petal fall starting at about tight cluster.
I just do it until I get bored- maybe an hour a session, and call it recreation throughout early spring. In smallish doses, thinning is highly meditative.
Thinning flowers is much easier than thinning fruit. Still, I always seem to be perpetually behind and wind up thinning fruit in spite of my good intentions to get a jump on things…