North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[dwoodard@becon.org]

I read in a British book years ago that people growing for home use 
faced with one tree of a cultivar the biennial bearing of which could 
not be controlled were able by thinning some scaffold limbs and not 
others, to induce some scaffold limbs to assume a different cycle of 
off and on years from others. Then they would have fruit from one 
tree every year, if perhaps not in the largest quantities. Apparently 
scaffold limbs are largely fed by their own roots on their own side 
of the tree, and apple trees function to a considerable degree in 
independent sectors. 

I seem to recall that taking the petals off with a broom has also 
been used to prevent fruiting in a given year, or at least to make 
thinning or fruit removal less tedious; apparently petal-less flowers 
are not very attractive to bees and the loss of petals is thought by 
some to affect to some degree the ability of the flower to become 
fertilized.

Douglas Woodard


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