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| Shenandoah pear with a broken limb. It is the one hanging straight down. You can see the raw wood at the top of the branch. |
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| The pears sized-up rapidly after our last round of rain-storms. |
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| Spigold tree that snapped off at the graft |
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| Close-up of the break with the break in lower-left quadrant of image |
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| I have large crop-loads on many of my trees. This is an Enterprise apple. I hope I don't start losing these trees. I think I would cause more stress putting in additional trunk support at this time. Sometimes you just gotta ride the pony you brung until the end of the trip. |
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| These are the newly transplanted lettuce seedlings that were planted, as seeds, August 4. US Quarter included for size. |
What method do you use to thin your trees?
ReplyDeleteI wait until after the "June drop". Many trees will thin themselves.
DeleteSometime in July I shake the piss out of the branches. I stop shaking when they look about right.
In early August, I walk through with pruning snips and remove any branches where the weight of the fruit dragged the branches down into the Stygian darkness beneath the canopy. No light means no sugar means fruit doesn't taste so great.
One year the lovely Mrs ERJ and I hand-thinned a couple of Liberty trees. Liberty apple has short stems and many apples will push-off the branch as they size-up but before they ripen. I don't know if it was worth the effort but it certainly didn't hurt.
Apple cultivars that are marginally hardy here, like GoldRush over MM106 rootstock can die in the winter after grossly over-cropping. They set too much fruit. The fruit cannot ripen. The fruit is a carbohydrate sink and carbs are what protect the buds from winterkill. Too many fruit starves the tree.