Image Up Advertising & Design

| LIFE IN SOLERA | AUGUST 2023 | 15 By Richard Crowe Growing Fruitful Fruit Trees This writing covers 20 years of success and failure on growing fruit trees. Different deciduous fruit trees have their own particular requirements for winter thinning of branches and spring thinning of fruit. It is best to consult how-to books, websites, or the experts at Cherry Valley Nursery. Peaches, nectarines, apricots, and plums require heavy pruning to 1) keep the fruit-bearing branches low so you do not have to scale a ladder to pick fruit, and 2) to prevent over production of fruit. Heavy thinning of fruit when they are the size of dimes or quarters is also required. This year I thinned out 1,200 peaches and 400 plums from my two trees. Failure to adequately thin fruit results in small, tasteless fruit. The literature suggests thinning peaches to 6" apart (photo) and plums 3" for best size and flavor. I do not thin fruit from my apricot tree as it tends to self-thin. Pomegranates produce fruit on new (previous year's) branches. Heavy winter pruning of these branches will result in a very small crop the next year. One year my tree produced 250 fruit. That winter I pruned heavy and got only six fruit the next season. Apples and pears require little pruning for thinning and fruit production. They tend to produce fruit in clusters of five to eight fruit. Clusters need to be thinned to about two fruit, each (photo). Another thing about apples and pears is coddling moths (produce wormy fruit). To prevent or minimize this pest, the trees need to be sprayed with malathion or a similar product at the time flower petals begin to fall. My Fuyu Persimmon tree needs little help but raccoons will strip the crop in a blink. This is the only fruit tree (out of 26) in my yard those critters go after. They eat them green or ripe. I live-trap raccoons and let them go later. My nine citrus trees need little pruning (just enough to shape and removed dead twigs). Fertilizing has been my learning curve. A few years ago my citrus trees began to decline: many dead twigs and little fruit. I learned that while standard citrus fertilizers supply nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous, they tend to lack much- needed micro-elements (iron, zinc, boron, copper, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, chlorine, and others) that are also critical to healthy growth and fruit production. Micronutrients are available in garden nurseries. I water all my trees with bubblers, two to three per tree, for 15 to 30 minutes (depending on the heat) about once per week in the summer. In normal rainfall winters, the irrigation is turned off to fruit trees entirely. Deciduous fruit trees require varying amounts of "winter chill" (hours between 320 and 450). For a few years I grew a Bing cherry and an Italian plum that required 700 to 900 hours, each. They never got that many in a winter and failed to fruit from year to year, so I replaced them. In my yard, all the deciduous trees require 500 hours or less. Some places in Solera, however, do get more chill hours than my yard gets. Apples cluster aer thinning Peaches before and aer proper thinning Apples cluster before thinning

• Cover