Thinning Fruit

After last week's warm up, it got cold again this weekend. It also rained...a lot. My rain gauge showed 3-1/2" of rain. The wind blew over several trees in the area and knocked out our electricity for a few hours Sunday night into Monday morning. No damage to the garden other than a few broken branches on the fruit trees and some of the asparagus is now growing with a slight tilt.

The peach, pear, and apple trees all have lots of fruit. Too much fruit. If the trees were allowed to grow that much fruit, the tree couldn't keep up. The fruit would be small and not very good to eat. Fruit trees need to be thinned to produce big, juicy apples, pears, and peaches.

peaches too close on the branch

The rule of thumb is to have one peach about every 6 inches on a branch. That means most of the fruit has to come off. It took me about 45 minutes to thin two peaches and two pears. I'll work on the apples on another day.

Thinned Peaches

Apples and pears grow fruit in clusters. To thin apples or pears, you leave the biggest fruit in any cluster and remove the rest. The picture is apples. Peaches look exactly the same, just a little more green.

Commercial growers thin fruit in different ways. Most thin flowers since they come off easier than fruit. Fruit tends to hold on for dear life. Flowers are weak. There are big machines that smack the trees with ropes to knock off some of the flowers. I saw one of these in action breaking branches and damaging trees. There are chemicals that will cause flowers to fall off. By being very careful how much you spray, you can only kill a percentage of the flowers. You don't want to mix too much. And some thin flowers by hand, often with toilet brushes. I was worried that frost might get some of my flowers so I waited until there was fruit to thin.

The garden greens are starting to really take off. I planted spinach, lettuce, mixed greens, radishes, carrots, and probably other stuff. I wrote the names in marker on plastic row marker stakes and stuck them in the rows. Apparently I didn't use a permanent marker and now I'm not sure what's growing where. No problem I didn't plan on eating anything green anyway.

garden greens

My wife's seen a groundhog hanging around the garden. It must be eying up the leafy stuff because there isn't anything else to eat yet. Last year she watched him steel tomatoes.

And finally, I've got red strawberries. Most of the berries look like the tiny green ones at the top of this picture but I found two that are getting red. I think I'll have strawberries next week. Finally something from the garden I like.

a lonely red strawberry