North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Gordon Nofs" <gc_nofs@hotmail.com>]

All my apples are very small in Z 5 MI.
  It is because of the cold odd summer. I have had plenty of rain. Pears 
mostly the same.Persimmons were over a month late to bloom as with Pawpaws. 
I don't expect any to ripen. pawpaws all stayed small. Things did very well 
in even near drought and warm years.  Hope for better season next year. Figs 
just started to ripen as of Sept. 1st when we had days in low 80s night in 
the 70s.
Gordon C. Nofs
Flint, MI.




From: "Dan Durica" <dandurica@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [NAFEX] Apple size in a restored orchard
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 13:22:41 -0700

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I have recently taken over stewardship of an antique apple orchard of unknown age (trunks are 1-1.5ft in diam.) with 29 standard trees of unknown varieties in Madison WI Zone 5a.  The orchard probably had not been pruned for 6 or 7 years (I'm guessing), though the trees were not entirely out of control.  Major branches had been pruned to within 10 and 15 ft of the ground years ago.  Since then watersprouts have been growing vigorously, some reaching two or three inches in diameter.  Last spring we did an initial pruning of the orchard, taking out many of the watersprouts and leaving some.  We thinned the lower, older branches to let in more light and air flow.

 

Except for the wet season we've had which led to a lot of scab, the orchard looks healthier than it did when the branches were so crowded.  As well we haven't lost any trees to storms, probably because of the pruning and fruit thinning we did.  We thinned the fruit in the lower branches to one fruit per cluster. 

 

Finally getting to my question--why is there such variation in the size of the fruit this year?  Some look a little bigger than large crabapples and some on the same tree are the size of a softball.  Most of the larger fruit are on the watersprouts, and the smaller fruit is on the lower branches, leading me to believe that the lower wood is not producing well because it's older.  Is this why, or could it be that the lower wood was more shaded out last year, before it was thinned out, and didn't have enough energy stored to produce well this season?

 

I should add that all of the trees had gone into alternate-year bearing, so all the trees fruiting this year didn't last year. 

 

The reason I want to know is I was wondering if we should prune to renew the lower wood, or if this wood will probably produce more next year now that it has more light hitting it.

 

Dan Durica

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