Author Topic: Thin apples in June  (Read 1932 times)

davholla

  • Hectare
  • *****
  • Posts: 880
Thin apples in June
« on: June 14, 2018, 15:09:19 »
Does anyone do this?  Any advice or thoughts?

squeezyjohn

  • Hectare
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,022
  • Oxfordshire - Sandy loam on top of clay
Re: Thin apples in June
« Reply #1 on: June 14, 2018, 15:36:34 »
I did this last year after the June drop and the quality of the fruit I left was so much better than it had been in previous years  It seems counter-intuitive and I'm not sure you have to do it unless the fruit is too numerous for the tree to support - but only allowing one apple every two or three inches on every branch and favouring the ones with the best air-flow or sunny positions is what I did.

tricia

  • Hectare
  • *****
  • Posts: 2,230
  • Torbay, Devon
Re: Thin apples in June
« Reply #2 on: June 14, 2018, 17:53:47 »
I wish I had some to thin  :BangHead:. After an extraordinarily bumper harvest last year I have no apples at all. Still got some frozen though, so apple pies and crumbles are still on the menu :icon_cheers:.

Tricia :wave:

Tee Gee

  • Hectare
  • *****
  • Posts: 6,932
  • Huddersfield - Light humus rich soil
    • The Gardener's Almanac
Re: Thin apples in June
« Reply #3 on: June 14, 2018, 19:17:12 »
I would guess storm Hector has thinned my crop for me today! :icon_cheers:

Beersmith

  • Hectare
  • *****
  • Posts: 892
  • Duston, Northampton. Loam / sand.
Re: Thin apples in June
« Reply #4 on: June 14, 2018, 20:47:27 »
Well worth doing. Lots of advantages if done carefully, although obviously not taken to extremes.

1. Overloaded branches can bend or break damaging the tree.
2. It avoids a crop made up of just very tiny apples.
3. Allowing an excessively  heavy crop to mature can trigger an apple tree to a biennial fruiting pattern, so is best avoided.
4. If you inspect the tiny apples you will see a proportion that already carry a blemish or imperfection. These will never produce good mature apples so eliminate them early and let the tree put its energy into the best.
5. Same argument applies to small apples that are poorly positioned under foliage so will never get much sunshine and will not ripen to their best.
Not mad, just out to mulch!

Paulh

  • Hectare
  • *****
  • Posts: 605
Re: Thin apples in June
« Reply #5 on: June 14, 2018, 21:26:53 »
Good advice, but a prerequisite is to have some developing apples on your trees, unfortunately!

saddad

  • Hectare
  • *****
  • Posts: 17,903
  • Derby, Derbyshire (Strange, but true!)
Re: Thin apples in June
« Reply #6 on: June 15, 2018, 08:03:43 »
Beersmith has it right but I can never be bothered... I'm with Tee Gee.. but then I have trees that shed branches, go biennial and lots of small mis-shapes.

lezelle

  • Acre
  • ****
  • Posts: 402
Re: Thin apples in June
« Reply #7 on: June 15, 2018, 08:50:59 »
Hi Ya, My tree's go biannual anyway. They still produce fruit every year but not as much as if they are resting. I have a large Bramley cooking apple tree and apart from winter pruning it's left to it's own devices. I will pick off diseased fruit and I did notice this morning a lot of small apples around the base of the tree. I was always told the June drop is the tree regulating itself. I see why you would thin fruit on smaller trees and I may try myself but my large tree well established, it's been in the garden 20 years that we have lived there and it was established when we moved in. I am trying some more modern varieties so they could do with thinning and also explain why they have not produced a real good size in the 3 years I've had them. There was an abundance of flowers on all the trees this year. Will have to revisit this now as my thoughts have been set in motion and got me wondering. Cheers

Vinlander

  • Hectare
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,759
  • North London - heavy but fertile clay
Re: Thin apples in June
« Reply #8 on: June 19, 2018, 14:11:38 »
Well worth doing. Lots of advantages if done carefully, although obviously not taken to extremes.

1. Overloaded branches can bend or break damaging the tree.
2. It avoids a crop made up of just very tiny apples.
3. Allowing an excessively  heavy crop to mature can trigger an apple tree to a biennial fruiting pattern, so is best avoided.
4. If you inspect the tiny apples you will see a proportion that already carry a blemish or imperfection. These will never produce good mature apples so eliminate them early and let the tree put its energy into the best.
5. Same argument applies to small apples that are poorly positioned under foliage so will never get much sunshine and will not ripen to their best.

I have a few apples (such as the lovely Pitmaston Pineapple) that will always produce clusters of small fruit (or rather even smaller ones in the case of PP).

One of the things I've noticed is that the point where they touch is a favourite point-of-entry for maggots (presumably they see them as a place to hide).

By thinning in June I try to reduce these points of contact by making sure that when I leave two or more apples in a cluster I've tried to leave the ones that are furthest apart. On PP I tend to go for one per cluster unless clusters are very few - on an old tree it's the only way to get the "standard" size ones.

If any touch later on as they swell I check them again and remove whichever apple looks worst hit - or both if there's a third unblemished one.

It's a bit of extra work but nothing is worse than finding two otherwise perfect fruit with a single hole going through both.

Another reason for only growing varieties that are better than anything in the shops - otherwise what's the point?

Anyone who hasn't got Ashmeads Kernel, PP and William Crump (the only absolutely first rate red one) is missing out (and I could recommend a dozen others that are better than "peoples favourites" like James Grieve - it's just barely OK).

IMHO anyone who wastes their time and effort growing Gala or Elstar needs their head examining (the mushy sweetness, that bitter skin) - though it's understandable if they were brought up to prefer a supermarket apple pie to a good fresh apple...

Cheers.

PS. Policymakers at Brogdale please take note of the above - I and many of my friends stopped making that long trip to visit when the numbers of specialist fruit on offer for tasting and buying started to be swamped by horrible varieties like Gala or Elstar that  presumably grow like weeds.
« Last Edit: June 19, 2018, 14:20:15 by Vinlander »
With a microholding you always get too much or bugger-all. (I'm fed up calling it an allotment garden - it just encourages the tidy-police).

The simple/complex split is more & more important: Simple fertilisers Poor, complex ones Good. Simple (old) poisons predictable, others (new) the opposite.

ACE

  • Hectare
  • *****
  • Posts: 7,429
Re: Thin apples in June
« Reply #9 on: June 20, 2018, 18:34:35 »
Don't forget to render all those thinnings down to make pectin.

 

anything
SimplePortal 2.3.5 © 2008-2012, SimplePortal