North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Lucky Pittman <lucky.pittman@murraystate.edu>]

At 09:14 AM 11/30/2006, Tom wrote:
> Sounds like a wound is inflicted on the tree, spurring reproduction
> activities.  This works with many plants.

At the risk of inciting my beloved female NAFEX friends to come after 
me with pitchforks and torches, there's an old saw:

" A dog, a wife(husband), a hickory(or jujube) tree,
The more you beat 'em, the better they be."

Now, I would NEVER advocate beating your dog, or your wife, but 
there's a lot of anecdotal, and some scientific evidence, that 
beating a fruiting tree can incite heavy production.

In some of the old Southern pecan orchards, they bring senescent 
trees back into production while new trees are coming along by 
drastic pruning - shearing off all major limbs on one side, each year 
for 4 consecutive years(north side one year, south the next, east 
next, then west, etc.) - I've even seen some, lately, that were 
sheared back to a single stub, sticking up 10-15 ft in the air.  Not 
pretty, but if they can get 8-10 years worth of production out of the 
old trees while the new ones are reaching bearing age, they can 
maintain some level of cash flow, removing the old trees once the new 
ones come into production.

Lucky