Bob Flowerdew: this is how to get better apples and pears, says Bob
Want to grow the best-quality, large-fruited apples and pears? The secret’s in thinning out now, as Bob explains
RIGHT now, our apple and pear trees are likely showing the June drop, which is when a massive set of tiny fruitlets is naturally shed, and hundreds of ‘chats’ lie under each tree.
The trees ‘know’ roughly how many fruits they have reserves to ripen, so drop the surplus before these get any bigger. The important point is that this is the tree’s estimate: it wants to ripen the maximum number of seeds, and the number of fruits is almost irrelevant.
However, we want to eat the fruits, not the seeds – we don’t want lots of small seedy fruits, which is the tree’s preference. So what we do is thin the remainder heavily – this leads to far fewer fruits, and equally fewer seeds.
The bit we want is the sugary pulp, which is simple for the tree to make, so the number of fruits will drop but the total weight remains much the same. Seeds are actually the main draw on the tree’s resources, as these are packed full of dense nutrients, especially fats, proteins and minerals. So when we thin fruits, we ripen fewer, bigger fruits and exhaust the tree less, ripening fewer seeds.
But it gets even better. As we thin, we remove the damaged, misshapen, infected and infested fruits. By destroying these, we are reducing both this year’s and next year’s problems. Then we remove the congested fruits, leaving the rest further apart and more evenly spaced, with fewer in the shade and most in full sun.
The greatest advantage of thinning is that it’s not really much extra work. You either pick the fruits to thin them now, and pick the reminder later when they are huge and at their peak – or don’t thin, and leave them all on to then pick them all as many poorer fruits later. It’s really a no-brainer!
“Thinning leads to fewer but bigger fruits”