Xtremehorticulture

Don’t Forget to Thin Apples and Pears When Fruit are Small

Apples and pears require aggressive thinning particularly if you did not space your bearing limbs far enough apart.You can still do some summer pruning if the canopy is too dense. Try to think your fruit when they are small. Thinning is not required usually for nut tree, apricots and figs but fruit tree production on many trees will benefit from some thinning to very aggressive thinning. Apple fruit cluster before thinning. The fruit here are small, only about an inch in diameter. See the leaf sizes for comparison. Apples and pears require aggressive thinning particularly if you did not space your bearing limbs far enough apart. Thin so that only one, or at the most two, fruit remain per cluster. Remember it takes 60 plus leaves to support the size and sugars needed for fruit to look and taste delicious. Pears are thinned exactly the same way. Asian pears have to be thinned “harder”, remove more fruit, if you want really large-sized fruit.

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Thinning Apple and Pear Fruit is Similar

Apple and pear fruit are produced in clusters of fruit on the tree. Leave only one fruit remaining in each cluster. Remove all but one of the fruit (in the desert we can leave two fruit on if we do not have many insect or disease problems and there are plenty of fruit on the tree). European pear with many small fruits formed in a cluster. Remove all but one of the fruit in the cluster. If there are not that many clusters on the tree, leave two fruits remaining from the cluster. Twist or cut off excess fruit. European pear fruit in clusters before thinning European pear fruit after thinning. Leave one per cluster. Twist or cut off excess fruit. Apples fruits are borne in clusters in spur-type apple trees. If you have a spur-type apple tree then leave one fruit per cluster as you would with European pears as well.

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