Topic: apples

[adeymoo]

Reading previous posts about apple varieties I thought I should use this enthusiasm to answer a conundrum. I have apple and other fruit trees on the lottie which have been in the ground just over a year and they are bursting with ickle fruit. Do I remove the fruit to develop new leaf and branch growth? I want to train the trees as Spindlebush and fans.

[Vinlander]

Well, bit of a grey area... removing fruit will release vigour into the tree, so more leaves and longer branches, but it won't specifically increase the number or spread of branches - and new branches are usually what you want when you are trying to produce a specific shape.

New branches are produced by the buds activated by winter pruning, so that's a job for after December 2010.

In the meantime removing the fruit will help a small tree get bigger, or if it is actually big enough, then thinning them might be enough to get a small crop without interfering with the development of the tree.

I'd recommend thinning all the clusters to a single fruit, then the June drop will remove some more and then you can decide how many you really need.

Summer pruning involves shortening this year's growth in order to encourage fruit buds for next year. It's possible that this might move your plans forward if you can identify any growth that you will want to be still there but shorter and more productive in the new scheme.

[jennym]

Removing the apples won't necessarily force the tree to develop new leaf and branch growth, but it may help to divert the tree's energies from fruit development.
If you are going to train the trees into shapes, you do need to start as soon as possible. I guess you have several locations for apple trees, as you wouldn't normally mix fan and spindle bush in one location. To be honest, I don't think apples fruit as well when they are fan trained as they do when trained as espaliers or spindle bush - it seems to me that the spur bearing apple responds better to horizontal branch training than any other. A lot depends on whether they are spur or tip bearing types of apple tree, I grow spur bearing as espalier and tip bearing as an open centre bush shape, but I'd say spindle bush is more suited to spur bearing types as the branches are trained more horizontally.

[valmarg]

I would wait until after the 'June drop' before taking any fruitlets off.

valmarg

[goodlife]

You can wait for the June drop or take them off..it doesn't matter..but I would not let single fruit to develop any further this year..wether training for shape or not my trees never get bearing fruit untill their 3rd year..I'll let them flower and after that they are off....
And I have some cracking trees that do so well as they have been allowed to grow and develop decent frame work to carry all that crop ;)
But it is not all about the the "woodwork" though...if you trees haven't made good enough rootgrowth it is not able to carry all the nutrients and water to able to produce worth while fruit..so by allowing it to fruit early and getting dissapointing fruit is been waist of energy for the tree..
But it is what you want...I keep the 3rd year rule as a safe rule for trees sake, some cases it has taken longer untill tree has looked strong enough for the job..
...that works for me... ;)

[Robert_Brenchley]

Works for me as well. I had several trees that produced a few apples and didn't grow. I think the roots are being weakened by waterlogging. I started taking the fruit off, and they started growing.

[adeymoo]

Thanks for the excellent advise. I have to admit the spindlebush is for apple / pear training and the plums / greengages are for fan training. The books say fruit trees will take a number of years to start producing fruit, and yet the Czar plum produced fruit almost as it went in the ground. Just over a year later it looks like the best thing for training is de-fruiting: my 5 year old will be gutted but I may just one or two to grow on the Beth Pear.