To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] no new growth
Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2011 18:40:37 -0500
On Mar 7, 2011, at 6:31 PM, Alan Haigh wrote:
> 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.
Oh goodie. My Jonathan has been nicely "trimmed" to remove "excess" spurs by
the rabbits this winter. The tree was half buried in a snowbank, and they
got to all sorts of places they usually can't reach. So I suppose it may go
nuts with vegetative growth this year. Not what I am looking for!
Of course, the rabbits also completely stripped the bark off a promising
scaffold, so perhaps some of that vigor will go towards replacing it.