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Fruit Cages and crop
protection
How To prevent small fruits on your fruit trees
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When most people think of fruit trees,
what comes to mind is usually basic information that's not particularly
interesting or beneficial. But there's a lot more to fruit trees than
just the basics.
The one thing that usually shocks new tree
growers is the fact that the fruits produced by their tree are much
smaller than the ones they’re used to seeing at the grocery store. “What
is wrong with my tree?!”, “My God! What have I done!?” are some cried you
may hear from the disgruntled tree grower. However, small fruits are a
natural occurrence. But while smaller fruits might be what nature
originally intended, it is possible to attain larger fruits without any
genetic altering or added chemicals. It is only through advanced
techniques that the professionals reach such large sizes with their
fruits.
Usually in the early stages of a fruit
trees growing, veterans do something called “fruit thinning”. The theory
behind this process is that with less fruits to pay attention to, the
tree will be able to more efficiently send cells to the leftover fruits.
When there are hundreds of little fruits on one tree, competing for the
available materials necessary for growth, you will most likely just end
up with a bunch of stunted fruits. To take care of this problem, simply
pluck a third of the fruits extremely early on in the process. You should
notice larger fruits that season.
The information about fruit trees
presented here will do one of two things: either it will reinforce what
you know about fruit trees or it will teach you something new. Both are
good outcomes.
On almost any tree, the success of each
individual fruit depends on the spacing. Usually there should not be any
fruits within six to eight inches of each other. During the fruit
thinning process, this is the distance you should generally aim for to
optimize the amount of nutrition that each fruit gets. Any closer and
you’ll find they are crowding each other out. Usually this is the first
mistake that a new tree grower makes. Having tons of fruit starting to
grow is not always a good thing!
Sometimes small fruits are caused by
conditions out of the gardener’s control. During the process of cell
division that all new fruits go through, cool weather can be fatal to the
largeness of your fruits. Likewise, if the weather is particularly cloudy
very early in the season, then fewer carbohydrates will be available to
your plants. Occasionally, if the factors are all against the well being
of your fruit tree, then the fruits will drop to the ground before they
are even ripe. A lack of water or certain nutrients, or excessive pests
and diseases can also damage the growth of fruits. If you notice these
things going on early in the season, you should do more fruit thinning
than normal. Sometimes as much as three fourths of the fruits should come
off, to allow full nutrition to those who remain.
The best way to find out how to gain
larger fruit sizes is to experiment. If your tree has been around for a
while, there is almost nothing you can do to it to cause it to die or
stop producing fruit. Just test different thinning techniques or anything
you can think of to make the fruits larger. You might even head down to
your local nursery and enquire about what they would suggest. They will
be able to give you advice based on your region and specific tree, which
is better than anything I could tell you. So don’t settle with small
fruits. Go out there and find out what exactly you need to do to improve
the size.
Don't limit yourself by refusing to learn
the details about fruit trees. The more you know, the easier it will be
to focus on what's important.
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