For good fruiting and a normal yield, it is enough if stone trees, such as cherries, cherries and plums, yield only 20-30% of the fruit.On the other hand, in pome trees, that is, apple and pear trees, it is enough for about 10-15% of the flowers to turn into fruit. Often, however, trees still have too much fruit.
On a shoot, even several or a dozen fruits may grow from one place. The fruits, growing very close to each other, do not grow to normal size and often fall off even before they are ripe. This is because, by increasing their weight, the fruit does not have enough space and is pushed out.
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In the case of plums that grow too densely, they often shade each other.In insufficient sun, they color poorly, contain less sugar and, as a result, also have a worse taste.Another factor in thinning the fruit is also improving its he alth and facilitating the fight against diseases that cause rotting.
In the year of fruit-bearing abundance, seeing that there are too many fruit on the tree, our intervention will be necessary. For this, we perform manual thinning of the buds.Removing some of the fruit is a beneficial procedure for the tree, because the plants are not overloaded with yielding. On the other hand, this simple treatment improves the quality of the fruit.
Plum thinning techniques
1. Shaking - Works fine for younger trees. We shake the trunk quite strongly so that some of the fruit falls.
2. Manual Thinning - This is the most precise method of thinning.Remove excess fruit, leaving a gap of several centimeters between them.The faster, but also less accurate way is to vigorously drag the open palm across the branch with your fingers, which will remove some of the buds.
3. Thinning with secateurs - we use small secateurs designed specifically for cutting off the excess buds.Similarly to manual thinning, we only cover single-growing fruits.
Interestingly, if we remove some fruit, the remaining fruit will grow larger and, as a result, we will collect the same mass of fruit from the tree.The fruit will therefore be smaller, but it will be bigger and sweeter.Thinning the plums is quite a simple procedure.
Fruits should be evenly distributed on individual branches. So we thin out those places where there is an excess of fruit.It is generally assumed that one fruit should be 2-6 centimeters away from the other, depending on the variety.Particularly in trees that begin fruiting, be very careful, as leaving too many fruits may cause breaking off of young branches.
