284. Thinning top fruit . . .

It's a bit late for thinning fruit even up here in the North of England; late June / early July after the 'June-drop' is better.

But I came across the reason for thinning (the underlying reason) and I thought it was so interesting I wanted to blog it.

Thinning involves removing some of the excess fruit; for apples, the advice is usually to thin to one per cluster and 1 or 2 fruit every 10 cm apart. More space for culinary apples which grow larger. Less space for pears.

The reasons for thinning include:-
  • the remaining fruit should be larger and better quality
  • to lessen the chance of biennial cropping by saving the tree some energy
  • to reduce the risk of branches breaking
  • to reduce the risk of some diseases, including brown rot
  • to allow more sunlight to reach fruit and improve ripening and taste
Now to the underlying reason! The reason (thanks to Bob Flowerdew) is that the tree produces fruit for different reasons to us. The tree produces fruit for the seeds and for reproduction whereas we are interested in the seed cases ie the flesh of the apples (or pears or whatever). It takes more of the tree's energy to create the seeds because they require a greater array of nutrients including minerals and fats as opposed to the simple sugars and water needed for the flesh of the fruit. Therefore, if the number of pips is reduced, then the tree can and will use some of the saved energy to produce larger apples.

Fascinating!




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

285. Been thinking about my last blog . . .

Image
. . . even if no-one else has. One of the implications of much of an apple's goodness (minerals and vitamins) being in its seeds is that to benefit they have to be eaten. And not just eaten but chewed up as apple seeds tend simply to be passed. I then remembered something about apple pips containing cyanide. I began to look into all this . . . There are hundreds and hundreds of web snippets on the benefits of eating apples, an apple a day keeps the doctor away and all that. But quite difficult to shore it up with trusted sources. A medium-sized apple weighs 150g - 200g and contains half that number of calories. 80% is water, 10% is carbohydrate, 0.5% protein and 4% minerals and vitamins. Half the minerals and vitamins and fibre are in the peel and the core. Apple pips contain amygdalin which can release cyanide when coming contact with digestive enzymes. According to the http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/contact-us/about-us/  (Cambridge University group) about
Read more

319. We've got a dog!

Image
I know, I know . . . but I've kind of always wanted one . . . . . . from when I was very young, before I joined the Job, when I was thinking about joining the Job. I had a dream (I must have been 13 or 14, and I had lots of posters of dogs on my bedroom walls) about becoming a bearded-batchelor police dog-handler. In my dream I called the dog Wolfram . And guess what? We've called our dog  Wolfram ! He's so cute. He is, of course, an Alsatian and a good guard-dog. Which will be good because this is a big place and Sarah's away a lot. (The door-bell went off in the middle of the night last week, no-one there, turned out it was half-pressed in, but it didn't half freak me out.) Anyway, Wolfram is a new type of dog. Specially bred for people like me. He's a veggie. Eats like a horse of course, but and this is the point, he eats just like a horse. CRUCIALLY, he shits like a horse too. So, no smelly piles all around the garden but just the sweet
Read more

73. Stuck for something to read?

Try a William Boyd novel. They hook you from the start, have interesting and original plots and are not overly long. What's more there are lots of them, and relatively easy to find in second-hand bookshops. Perfect for a holiday read, if you are stuck on a difficult novel or just want something a bit different. His books sometimes feel like he has written them with the aid of a special book-kaleidoscope: twist it again, 10 bizarre plot-lines fall out and Boyd glues them together in 300 pages. Try one!
Read more