North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[edforest55@hotmail.com]

Lon,
You wrote about pulling the leaves off to let in light to the actual 
grapes, apparently Lon, you don't think that loss of leaves near the 
clusters will result in any significant loss of sugar being sent to 
those grapes in its immediate proximity. Can you tell me which leaves 
supply most of the sugar to the fruits, that is how close do the 
leaves have to be to the fruit to be able to send sugar to them? Or, 
lets say that there were only one fruit on a tree, then all of the 
leaves were defoliated on that side of the tree, would the leaves on 
the other side be able to transport the sugar across the tree to that 
fruit? Would they be able to transport them from a near branch? Or 
even closer, say from just a few feet from the fruit on the same 
branch? I remember Ed Fackler saying that the amount of sunshine on 
the leaves in spring determine how many blossoms there will be the 
following spring. And that one can foliar feed the leaves right near 
a fruit with nitrogen to increase its size and ability to manufacture 
sugar and I guess that this gave me the impression that there are 
just a few leaves near the fruit that supply the sugars to that 
particular fruit. I've always been unclear on this. (I do understand 
that the tree has carbohydrate "sinks" and that the carbos go to the 
sink that is most in need at certain times, but I guess the question 
is how flexible is the tree to send carbos across the branches, up, 
up and down, down only, across, across on just one branch, from 
branch to branch, (boy this guy asks a lot of questions) 
Kevin B

 
". . . do some leaf pulling - pick off
> leaves just around the fruit clusters to let more light to them.  
This
> doesn't really help them sweeten any more, but it can help them dry 
off
> after rain to reduce the likelyhood of disease."
> -Lon Rombough



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