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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> >I always thin mine, and it definitely improves fruit quality. I wait 
> until
> they're about golfball sized to do it, though - and thin to each a hand's
> width apart

I was going to say, Rob, don't get in too big of a hurry.  Even though  
there are hundreds of tiny fruit not, the tree will prune many of them off 
by 
itself.  The tree is much wiser about these things than we are.  True, left 
to its own devices it will try to mature far too many fruit for those 
large, 
high quality fruits (which is not its goal anyway, it's our goal but not 
the 
tree's).  But many of those fruit are imperfect, infected with fungus and 
bacteria, traumatized, and even insect bitten.  We can't tell which when 
they 
are the size of your little finger nail.  As the season goes one watch them 
and remove the odd shaped ones, off color ones, those that are weeping and 
those with holes.  During that time you will notice that the tree removes a 
lot of them itself.

Peaches set heavily here too.  This is not peach country so one year out of 
three or for is our lot.  I decimated the tent caterpillars and from the 
trees today.  The pear trees are also heavily set with tiny fruit and so 
far 
no sign of fire blight.  Apple trees haven't bloomed yet.

After ten years of the yellow raspberries scowling at me (and laughing at 
me) I moved them to a different location two years ago.  A neighbor told me 
that the wild black raspberries carried a virus that the red and yellow 
ones 
are very suceptible to.  In my misguided logic, I'd planted them near the 
wild ones with the idea that it's where raspberries did well.  This year 
the 
canes are comming up like a jungle!

I'm going to have to put on one of those storm trooper suits and scythe 
down more than half the gooseberries.  It's an unbelievably large patch 
from 
those tiny rootlings twenty years ago.  

All the cherry trees set heavily too and no sign of that thrice cursed 
canker on them (so far).  All the fruit besides the apples are past the 
frost 
danger now.  The immature fruit can handle nearly 20 degrees but there's 
not 
even any sign of that on the horizon.


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