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nafex - [NAFEX] no new growth

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  • From: Alan Haigh <alandhaigh@gmail.com>
  • To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [NAFEX] no new growth
  • Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2011 17:31:47 -0600

Some varieties of apples and pears are prone to becoming spur-bound- a
condition where the plant is putting too much energy into flower and fruit
production. People often have difficulty managing spurry varieties because
the literature on home orcharding usually doesn't go into any detail on spur
renewal. Varieties become spur-bound when old spurs are allowed to remain
on the tree past their prime. Spur-bound trees generate insufficient new
shoots to adequately nourish fruit so fruit is small and 1-year shoots are
quite weak and quickly develop flowers that continue the cycle.

The most common cycle for fruiting wood is 4 years although for tip bearers
it can be 2-years and for shoot bearers 3. Tip bearers flower at the tips
of last years shoots and shoot bearers bear on fat flowers that form on the
2-year wood with vegetative one year wood in front of it. Macintosh is a
classic example of this kind of bearing. Shoots that come off of 2 year
wood bear the fruit for varieties incapable of forming fruit on 2-year
wood. These are spur bearers.

Spurs should usually be removed after they bear fruit and new shoots should
be cycled in every year to take the place of removed spurs. Spurs can, of
course, bear fruit for much longer but you should be sure to leave enough
vegetative wood to nourish the spurs and you should always remove spurs once
they become weak and/or shaded.

Removing all the fruit on one side of a spur-bound tree is a method I've
never heard of and not one I like. I simply cut off a half or more of spur
wood on spur-bound trees and generally get a good burst of vegetative
growth. Of course all things that encourage vegetative growth help counter
spur-bind.

http://www.goodfruit.com/Search/index.php?urlprefix=%2F&search=&mod=CoreSearch&query=Bas+van+den+Ende&Search=Search

Here's some articles that are written by my personal pruning guru. A couple
of them touch on what I'm talking about here.




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