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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Thinning Peach Fruit
  • Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2010 22:14:53 EDT

> >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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