Garden Basics with Farmer Fred
Tips for beginning and experienced gardeners. New episodes arrive every Friday. Fred Hoffman has been a U.C. Certified Master Gardener since 1982 and writes a weekly garden column for the Lodi News-Sentinel in Lodi, CA. A four-decade fixture in Sacramento radio, he hosted three radio shows for Northern California gardeners and farmers: The KFBK Garden Show, Get Growing with Farmer Fred, and the KSTE Farm Hour. Episode Website: https://gardenbasics.net
Garden Basics with Farmer Fred
323 Gold Medal Plant Winners. Thin Your Fruit Trees Now!
Each year the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society puts out its list of Gold Medal winning Plants. Usually these plants are chosen for their adaptability to the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. This year, the chosen plants have a much wider range of possible success, including USDA Zone 9 and possibly up to Zone 10, and down to Zone 3.
Also: Now is the time in warmer places of the nation to get outside and thin the fruit from many of your deciduous fruit trees, as the fruit is beginning to form right after flowering.
It’s all in Episode 323 of today’s Garden Basics with Farmer Fred - Gold Medal Plant Winners, and Why You Should Thin the Fruit on Your Fruit Trees Now!
We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory, it’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Let’s go!
Previous episodes, show notes, links, product information, and transcripts at the home site for Garden Basics with Farmer Fred, GardenBasics.net.
Pictured: Magnolia “Genie”, a 2024 PHS Gold Medal Plant Winner
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2024 PHS Gold Medal Plants:
Florida Anise tree, Illicium ‘Woodland Ruby’
Buttonbush, Cephalanthus occidentalis ‘Sugar Shack’
The Japanese Roof Iris, Iris tectorum
Foamflower, Tiarella cordifolia ‘Brandywine’
Fruit Thinning Tips (UCANR)
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323 TRANSCRIPT GOLD MEDAL PLANTS, THIN FRUIT NOW
Farmer Fred 0:00
Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by Smart Pots, the original lightweight, long lasting fabric plant container. It's made in the USA. Visit SmartPots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount, that's SmartPots.com/Fred.
Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, you've come to the right spot.
Farmer Fred
Each year the Pennsylvania Horticutural Society puts out its list of Gold Medal winning Plants. Usually these plants are chosen for their adaptability to the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. This year, the chosen plants have a much wider range of possible success, including USDA Zone 9 and possibly Zone 10, down to Zone 3. So listen closely Los Angeles, San Diego, Tampa and Orlando, we just might have an intriguing new plant for you to try. And you, too, Bismarck and Fargo.
Also: Now is the time in warmer places of the nation to get outside and thin the fruit from many of your deciduous fruit trees, as the fruit is beginning to form right after flowering. Why is that so important? We’ll tell you!
It’s all in Episode 323 of today’s Garden Basics with Farmer Fred - Gold Medal Plant Winners, and Why You Should Thin the Fruit on Your Fruit Trees Now!
We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory, it’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Let’s go!
GOLD MEDAL PLANT WINNERS
Farmer Fred
The 2024 Gold Medal Plant Winners are out. The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society has its list of plants that are now available to the public through most garden retailers. The Gold Medal Plant program was created by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society back in 1979. To celebrate and showcase beautiful easy to grow plant species that are ideal for home gardening. A committee of horticulture experts convenes to assess trees and shrubs and perennials on various criteria, including their suitability for home gardens, primarily for the Mid Atlantic region. But a lot of these plants that are on the gold medal list have a much wider territory than just zones four through eight. They're known for their ease of cultivation, commercial availability, wildlife value, weather tolerance, and pest resistance. We are talking with Andrew Bunting. He is the vice president of horticulture for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. Andrew, have you recovered from the Philadelphia Flower Show yet?
Andrew Bunting 2:51
Yeah, I think so. I could probably use a little vacation. But you know, it's it's also spring, so no time for resting at this point.
Farmer Fred 3:01
How did the show go?
Andrew Bunting 3:02
It was good. It was good. It was an improvement on the previous year, we had lots of crowds, we enjoyed lots of bus tours. And our numbers were where we wanted them to be. So you know, kind of post COVID, we were still kind of rebuilding our approach. But things are on track at the show.
Farmer Fred 3:25
What was the exhibit or the plants that garnered the most interest as you wandered through the show?
Andrew Bunting 3:32
We do a main entrance garden every year. And this is designed and installed by the horticultural society and that featured our biggest indoor water display to date. So the biggest pond that we've ever had indoors at the flower show is actually a series of several rectilinear ponds, and it was surrounded by 1000s of bulbs. So that was heavy on the flowers and the visitors seem to really enjoy the water in combination with the flowers. Best of Show in the landscape division was Apiairy Studio, which is a little boutique design/build firm here in Philadelphia, in Germantown. And they focused on what you might see along the roadside and anywhere North America; and that really focused on native plants as well. Kelly Norris's display, he’s a designer from Des Moines, Iowa. His focus was also on native plants and was interesting to the public even though these aren't your real super showy plants. They really resonated with the public and those turned out to be two of the most popular exhibits.
Farmer Fred 4:55
That sounds great. All right, let's talk about some of these gold medal plants. You have six of them this year, the one that kind of got my interest was the edible one, the asparagus ‘millennium’.
Andrew Bunting 5:12
So this is the first year that we've featured a hearty edible. And a good part of what PHS does is increasing people's access to fresh food, sharing produce, growing produce. So we thought it was important for us to add a category to the gold medal plants. We added an edible category. And we also added a couple of experts to the panel who really their knowledge base is in the edibles. So the way a plant makes it to the list is it has to be nominated, then the committee answers a survey monkey survey. And whichever ones go to the top of the list, this being one of them, are then considered against other kind of top nominees. And so asparagus Millennium got in. it's an asparagus that is really good for production, good taste, easy to grow. You know, In general, asparagus is relatively easy to grow. It's a crop that people don't often grow, because it takes a while for it to mature and get to a state where you can have an appreciable harvest.
Farmer Fred 6:30
And this winner has a wide range too. it's not just for the Mid Atlantic area,
Andrew Bunting 6:34
Almost anywhere in the United States,
Farmer Fred 6:37
even though it was developed in Canada. Right?
Andrew Bunting 6:41
It's pretty hardy, obviously. But yeah, I think you can grow this in almost every state in the United States.
Farmer Fred 6:47
This Millennium asparagus, too, is primarily male plants. And it didn't dawn on me until I was reading about it. And it makes sense. A male plant is going to send most of its energy into developing asparagus shoots, for example, instead of berries, which just saps the energy from stalk growth. So you're gonna get more of a harvest out of this.
Andrew Bunting 7:11
Yeah, yeah, that's for sure. Yeah, people don't think about asparagus much as to what it actually is. What you're eating are the stems before they turn into kind of the leafy growth. But then they also do produce, as you said, a berry. So if it's a female plant, the production or the energy is going to go into the berry and not into the so much the stem production.
Farmer Fred 7:38
Yeah, generally, when it comes to growing asparagus, you grow it and harvest it until the spears are thinner than a pencil. Right? And sometimes that can happen after the first crop or two. But with Millennium, you're gonna get more. That's right. I noticed that researchers in Michigan have basically said Millennium might be slower to attain high yields when compared to the more well known Jersey and Jersey giant varieties. But Millenium later showed superior and heavy yields over a 15 year lifespan and planting showed greater vigor and survival. One of the reasons I think for its survival in colder climates is the fact that it goes dormant sooner in the fall, which can protect it more during really cold winters. And another benefit of going dormant earlier, it's easier to control a pest like the asparagus beetle, because they don't have any place to overwinter.
Andrew Bunting 8:34
Right. If it goes dormant earlier, it's less vulnerable to drops in cold temperatures in the fall. And you probably saw in the press release, It's hardy to USDA zone three, which is Canada and North Dakota and places like that.
Farmer Fred 8:52
And the University of North Dakota did chime in about the millennium asparagus. and they really like it there. They had sort of a snotty remark about California. But being that my mother's family's from North Dakota, I'll allow this one. North Dakota University says hybrids developed in California do not have the hardiness and vigor we need in North Dakota.
Andrew Bunting 9:10
Yeah, that could be true. Now, I could see that.
Farmer Fred 9:15
Yeah, so the Millennium though this solves that problem. So that and it's widely available. Can you grow it from seed?
Andrew Bunting 9:21
I think you'd have to grow it from vegetative starts because from seed it probably would not come genetically true.
Farmer Fred 9:28
Okay. All right. So be looking for Millennium asparagus. If one of your bugaboos about asparagus is the fact that's a lot of work for one or two harvests. You might want to try the Millennium, but I still think that asparagus is sort of a back 40 crop, because the ferns that you mentioned pop up after when the spears are allowed to grow out. The ferns can get three to five feet tall and you don't really want that at the front of your garden.
Andrew Bunting 9:53
No no. I have asparagus at the end of my vegetable garden and I let some of the shoots go into the leafy form and I actually enjoy that texture in the garden.
Farmer Fred 10:06
Another of your 2024 Pennsylvania Horticultural Society Gold Medal plants is a an Anise tree, so it smells like licorice, I guess. And this one Illicium ‘Woodland Ruby’.
Andrew Bunting 10:20
Yes. So the Illiciums are a plant that 15 years ago, hardly anybody knew about them. There's some Mexican natives, but this one is derived from a Florida native and it's a broadleaved, evergreen, that reaches, five to 10 feet tall. As you said, the leaves smell like like anise and because of that, the deer don't like them. This is truly deer resistant. There are many plants you can make that claim with, but Illicium Woodland Ruby is one of them. And then it also has kind of a bloom sporadically early summer and through the fall. It produces these interesting kind of spider-like flowers with red, reddish strap-like flowers. And that adds to the ornament of this plant. I have Illiciums at home. I have different cultivars, and they're also very tolerant of dry shade. So they are at the back of my property, near the big, tall row of Norway Spruce trees, at the base of them. It's extremely dry and illicium seem to be pretty tolerant of those conditions.
Farmer Fred 11:42
But I imagine with a little bit of moist soil, though, it does probably perform highly.
Andrew Bunting 11:48
Yeah, a little bit of moisture and actually a little bit of sunlight. Like where I have them. It's also pretty shady. And still they're pretty good performers. But yeah, a little bit more moisture and a little bit more sunlight and they'll do even better.
Farmer Fred 12:03
The University of North Carolina, their extension Gardener Program, has this warning about the illicium woodland Ruby, it says this plant has high severity poison characteristics.
Andrew Bunting 12:14
What? Maybe the leaves are poisonous, maybe that's why deer don't eat them. I haven't heard about any other aspects of this, being of concern to planting, if the leaves are poisonous, or if the flowers are poisonous. They're not as if something a human would eat them for any reason. So yeah, I wonder what the poisonous aspect is and what the concern might be.
Farmer Fred 12:43
The University of North Carolina talks about its fruits, leaves and seeds being the poisonous part. And the toxic principle - and I'm going to mangle this name - sesquiterpene lactones - and I have no idea what that is. But you know, I grew up around oleanders and I lived.
Andrew Bunting 13:04
exactly. and I grow Castor beans in my backyard which produce the deadly poison, ricin. And I've never had an issue.
Farmer Fred 13:13
Castor Bean plant is one of the most gorgeous plants around. the castor bean plant is just absolutely fabulous. My neighbor has one growing out front and I just want to go over there and take some cuttings of it. I just have no place to put it, that's all.
Andrew Bunting 13:26
Yeah, yeah, I think that , there's lots of poisonous plants that we we grow, things like foxglove and monkshood, which is very poisonous. But unless people or pets ingest them, the leaves or fruits or flowers, then they're essentially not not an issue to grow in a cultivated garden.
Farmer Fred 13:48
And gardeners should know the eating habits of their pets and children and would avoid such plants.
Andrew Bunting 13:55
Yes, yeah, for sure.
Farmer Fred 13:56
All right. Another plant on the Gold Medal list is one that I've been hearing about from listeners to the podcast, and they really like it. It's a magnolia called ‘Genie’, like genie in the bottle. And this particular Magnolia, I guess, is a cross of a soulangiana, a Saucer magnolia.
Andrew Bunting 14:15
Yeah, its real claim to fame is that it's fairly diminutive in its stature. It only gets about 12 feet tall at maturity. It does have, soulangiana, or kind of saucer Magnolia like flowers. However, they're pretty intense, deep, dark, purple. So that's a little bit of a departure from your typical saucer magnolias for somebody who's looking for something that has a strong kind of Magnolia-like flower power, but doesn't have the room for some of these bigger flowering magnolias, then Genie is perfect. It'd be perfect for like a courtyard garden. Perfect for a city, a city dweller, that maybe has a small backyard but still wants to have a Magnolia. Then you know this is a good choice.
Farmer Fred 15:07
I know that Monrovia grows that plant here in California and they say that it's good from USDA zones four through nine. And I've heard from enough people in USDA zone nine that I know it does well and looks fabulous here. And like you say, it is diminutive, maybe 10 to 13 feet tall and five feet wide.
Andrew Bunting 15:29
Yeah, I'd say it has a broad range, as far as hardiness in other places. I have a colleague that lives in Tallahassee, Florida that grows a lot of these magnolias. And like in California, they'll just bloom earlier. The typical Magnolia season in Tallahassee is January, February, and I know the same is true in Southern California. So those regions you'll get earlier bloom. Here, or in Boston or Chicago, Magnolia bloom season with the Genie is probably going to be more mid-April, late April, even early May, depending on how far north you live.
Farmer Fred 16:13
And like a true saucer magnolia, you see the flowers before the leaves come out, which makes it a fabulous show in late winter or early spring. It's like a deep maroon purple bud opening to lightly fragrant pink flowers on those bare branches.
Andrew Bunting 16:30
It has the flower power of the saucer Magnolia, which in my opinion is the best of the magnolias. But this has all that, but just a smaller plant.
Farmer Fred 16:45
Alright, by the way, we will have more information about these plants in today's show notes. And in this week's “Beyond the Garden Basics” newsletter, which comes out Friday, we'll go into more detail about these plants as well, to give you a better understanding of what they are and who they are for. Now, another plant on the Pennsylvania horticultural society’s Gold Medal plant list for 2024 is a buttonbush shrub, called Sugar Shack. Not to be confused with the Jimmy Gilmer and Fireballs hit song of 1963.
Andrew Bunting 17:21
Yeah, so this, I think, is a great one to have on the list. You know, I think if we can, anytime we can have a native plant, that's a benefit that if people aren't familiar with a button Bush. You'll find it all throughout the east and southeast, often growing in standing water. So not only is it a good native, it's a good plant for marshy or wet areas in the yard. So there are many plants that can actually thrive in actual standing water. This is one of them. It's also produces these really interesting white, Globe-Like orb -like flowers that are fragrant. Great for attracting pollinators, especially butterflies. And it's a real magnet for swallowtail butterflies, monarchs, etc. Also really hardy, so this could grow anywhere on the east coast, but also into the Midwest and upper midwest, as well. And then it gets a decent fall color, a burgundy fall color also.
Farmer Fred 18:40
And like you say, it does need a wet environment to grow best.
Andrew Bunting 18:46
Yeah, it doesn't have to. It can grow in just kind of marshy areas, or standing water like on the edge of a pond or lake. But it can also grow in just normal garden soils as well. So it's not incumbent that there be heavy moisture for it to thrive.
Farmer Fred 19:06
It is on the Proven Winners plant list, the Sugar Shack buttonbush. And of course, being that they're in the business of selling plants, they claim the hardiness zones go from zone four through zone 10. I don't know about that.
Andrew Bunting 19:19
Yeah, I could see it definitely going into northern to Central Florida, which would be zone 10. I think that it does have good heat tolerance. So I wouldn't see an issue with it, growing all throughout the lower coastal plain of the southeastern United States. It's interesting. You mentioned Proven Winners. I was giving a lecture just maybe 10 days ago in Wooster, Ohio and one of the speakers was Tim Wood. He is from Spring Meadow nurseries, and they're the ones to produce all the woody plants, the hardy woody plant shrubs, in particular, for the Proven Winners program. And Sugar Shack is one of his selections. So he was excited that it also made the Gold Medal list and I know Tim. He and I were actually interns together in 1984 at the Chicago Botanic gardens. So I know that he has spent a lot of time over his career really selecting shrubs for the Proven Winners program, plants that are tried and true, that have actually gone through fairly rigorous planning evaluation and trials. So if he feels like Sugar Shack is an exceptional form of the native buttonbush, then I'm going to guess that he saw attributes in this plant that were different or superior to the straight species.
Farmer Fred 21:00
I had to look up the term Sugar Shack to see where it came from, other than being, of course, the Jimmy Gilmer and the Fireballs song of 1963 which was a song about a beatnik coffee shop. But a sugar shack, if you're live in an area where you grow maple trees and you harvest the sap, the Sugar Shack is where you boil the 40 gallons of sap into one gallon of maple syrup.
Andrew Bunting 21:24
Yeah, I thought it had a maple syrup reference. I wasn't exactly sure what it was. But now I know. Thank you
Farmer Fred 21:36
Another plant on the 2024 PHS gold medal plant list is an iris, the iris tectorum, a Japanese roof Iris.
Andrew Bunting 21:48
Yes. So this is literally an iris grown on a roof. there's a gardener, I live in a town Swarthmore, Pennsylvania which is in southeastern Pennsylvania just south of Philadelphia. There's a famous liberal arts college there, Swarthmore College. But in the town, there's a nationally known gardener, Charles Cresson. And he has a little roof over his front porch, a little slate roof. And on his roof grows this iris, so it's an iris that can grow in virtually, essentially, no soil. So either gravelly areas, rocky areas, it can grow in regular garden soils, as well. But if you have a site where it's totally impoverished soil or soilless, like a roof, it can grow in those conditions. So it's kind of odd, you walk up to the front of his house, and he has this little outdoor porch with a roof. And growing on the roof is an iris that grows 12 to 18 inches tall, too. Kind of an oddity.
Farmer Fred 23:00
And I guess because they're rhizomes, they can spread fairly easily. So it might be good for naturalizing.
Andrew Bunting 23:08
Yeah, it makes it great. In the garden, it grows really well in areas where there's really heavy roots from shrubs and trees. So if there's, a tree that has really dense shallow roots like a Norway maple or something like that, and you have difficulty growing some other ground covers, you might consider this because it can colonize in areas where there's essentially no soil. So it's really good for that. Yeah, but like many other irises this kind has fleshy rhizomes, and that's how it spreads as well. And it's also really easy to divide. So if you want to share it with someone else, you just kind of pop off a piece of the rhizome, and that's a good way to generate a new plant.
Farmer Fred 23:57
And supposedly, according to the PHS, it's already in zone six through nine. And some other sources would spread that out a little bit more to zones four through nine.
Andrew Bunting 24:09
I think when I was at the Chicago Botanic Garden, we had Iris tectorum. And that's typically zone five. There's parts of Chicago that might be in zone six, but I'd say mostly a solid zone five.
Farmer Fred 24:22
Alright, so it's an iris, the Iris tectorum, with beautiful showy flowers and shades of lavender blue blush, violet and blue lilac. That sounds gorgeous.
Andrew Bunting 24:32
Yeah, there's a white form to it.
Farmer Fred 24:37
Oh, that's right. Yeah. Yeah, I saw a nice picture of the white one, and that is a nice one. All right. And finally, the Tiarella cordifolia Brandywine which is a foam flower.
Andrew Bunting 24:47
Yeah, I love the foam flowers. It's one of my most favorite spring flowering plants. Tiarella cordifolia is an East Coast native, and Brandywine was a clump forming perennial with these little spikes resembling white bottlebrush. Flowers in April, May, maybe into May, the leaves are kind of rounded, slightly scalloped and have kind of red and bronzy color in the fall. It’s great for colonizing and shady spots. It can also take a little part sun as well. So it's a fairly versatile and long lived perennial whether you use it in the woodland garden or kind of an accent in a in a shade garden.
Farmer Fred 25:41
Sounds like it would pair well with a huechera.
Andrew Bunting 25:45
Yeah, I think they're both Saxifragiae family members, so that it kind of looks like a smaller version of a heuchera, it could pair well with the heuchera, I think It pairs well, really with almost any fern, like a Christmas fern, or maidenhair Fern or New York fern, because this has kind of even though it's small and still has fall foliage, so it really makes a nice juxtaposition against something finer in texture like a fern.
Farmer Fred 26:18
And it is herbaceous.
Andrew Bunting 26:21
It is herbaceous. However, I have some Tiarella in my backyard and the foliage really doesn't die back until the winter gets really, really cold. So I would say it's semi evergreen, probably until Christmas at least.
Farmer Fred 26:36
Okay. And I noticed that the Missouri Botanical Garden states that it's adaptable from zones four through nine, which means it has a chance here in California in the shade.
Andrew Bunting 26:48
Yeah, yeah, I would think as long as you give it moisture during the summer, which I assume you probably have to do with lots of things and anyways, yeah, as long as you you give it summer moisture, I think in probably most parts of California again, probably northern Florida, it will be okay. Probably most of the southeastern US it's fairly hardy. So, you know, places like Chicago, Indianapolis, some of the Midwestern cities should not be a problem either.
Farmer Fred 27:23
Again, it's the Tiarella cordifolia ‘Brandywine’, so it was developed there in Pennsylvania.
Andrew Bunting 27:31
Yeah, so there was a nurseryman, Sinclair Adams and he had a specialty nursery, Dunvegan nursery, and he introduced other foam flowers but he named this one Brandywine in honor of the Brandywine River or the Brandywine Valley, that's kind of Andrew Wyatt country, the famous painter Jamie Wyeth. So you know, that's an important historical geographic area, near Philadelphia.
Farmer Fred 28:03
So there you go. You got a foamflower, an iris, a buttonbush, asparagus, Florida anise tree, and a magnolia. That six plants that are part of the 2024 Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, Gold Medal plants, and again, we'll have links to information about these plants in today's show notes. And then in the “beyond the garden basics” newsletter that will be out on Friday, along with this episode, we will talk more about these gold medal plants. Andrew Bunting has been our guest. He is the vice president of horticulture for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. You can certainly visit their website if you would like; he would enjoy that. PHSonline.org. Where I imagine you will have, I bet, already have information posted about the next Philadelphia Flower Show.
Andrew Bunting 28:52
We're already planning for the next one in 2025. So I believe it's going to be March 1 through the ninth, 2025.
Farmer Fred 29:01
Always a pleasure talking with you, Andrew, best of luck, and we'll do it again.
Andrew Bunting 29:05
Great. Thanks for having me.
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THIN FRUIT TREES NOW (OR SOON)
Farmer Fred
Currently here in USDA zone nine, and soon appearing at a USDA zone near you: It'll be time for fruit tree thinning. Why is that important? The late Sacramento County farm advisor and all around good guy Chuck Engels wrote a very complete report about why thinning young fruit is so important.
Fruit trees, after all, set more fruit than they can support or develop adequately, especially if the trees were not properly pruned during the previous season. That excessive fruit compete with each other for carbohydrates and stored energy and remains small. This carbohydrate drain - or a sink as it's sometimes called - can also weaken the tree and make it more susceptible to pests and sunburn damage.
Leaving too much fruit on a tree can also lead to alternate bearing. And that's a cycle in which the tree bears excessively in one year, and then little or none the following year. That can also lead to limb breakage. Thinning the fruit helps prevent these problems from developing and the time to do it is when the fruit is really small, like less than an inch across.
Thinning immature fruit at the appropriate time allows each remaining fruit to develop to its maximum size, with little reduction of tree vigor. Less crowded fruit receives more sunlight, so you get more fruit color and more flavor. Fruit thinning also reduces alternate bearing. Reducing the fruit load through proper pruning and fruit thinning, especially near the ends of the branches, lessens the chances of limb breakage.
To make thinning fruit easier, prune the trees from when planted to begin with, to keep them small and lower to the ground. It eases the process. As we're fond of saying here, try to keep your fruit trees about seven feet tall, or no taller than you can reach without standing on a ladder. Any fruit above that? It's for the birds.
Fruit thinning can also help reduce the spread of some diseases. For example, if the fruit are touching each other, brown rot can quickly spread from one fruit to another.
Unfortunately, just before harvest, air movement around tightly clustered fruit is minimal. So, the surface of unthinned fruit doesn't dry quickly, and that allows disease organisms to multiply and spread.
Now, you may see some fruit falling to the ground. Well, that's fairly natural. Flowers and fruits naturally thin themselves, often at distinct time periods. Blossoms that were not pollinated turn yellow and drop off just after flowering. Small immature fruits often dropped naturally here in California during what is known as June drop, which usually occurs in May here in the Golden State. Fruits that are diseased may be infested with insects. Apples or pears can be infested with codling moths, as well. They may drop prematurely.
In some types of trees that natural thinning is sufficient. Other species need additional thinning to produce high quality fruit. Cherries, figs, persimmons, pomegranates, citrus and nut trees do not usually require thinning.
However, the branches of persimmon trees can break from the weight of a heavy crop and may benefit from some fruit thinning, as I found in my own experience. Yeah, it pays to go in there and thin your persimmon trees, your Fuyu persimmons, because they can get loaded with fruit ,causing those branches to droop precipitously and may break.
All stone fruits - peaches, apricots, nectarines, cherries, and plums - require thinning. Of the pome fruits, all apples and Asian pears, as well as most of European pears, require thinning. Bartlett pears often thin themselves.
Harvesting larger fruit early, usually in late June or early July in California, allows the smaller fruit to increase in size for a second pick one to two weeks later.
Fruit should be thinned when they're fairly small, typically here in California that would be from early April for early ripening fruit, to mid May for late ripening fruit. It may be later in your area.
So what do you look for? Stone fruits are thinned when they are about three quarters to one inch across. Pome fruits, the apples and pears, are thinned when even smaller, one half to one inch, or within about 30 to 45 days after full bloom.
However, thinning to early can result in split pits in some stone fruits, especially peaches. But thinning too late? That reduces the chances that the fruit size will increase.
So how much fruit do you take off? The amount of fruit to thin depends on the species and the overall fruit load on the tree. For example, stone fruits such as apricots and plums are fairly small, so they should be thinned to be about two to four inches apart on the branch; peaches and nectarines should be thinned, as well, to about three to five inches apart.
If spring conditions for pollination were ideal, excessive fruit may have been set requiring even more thinning.
Unlike stone fruits, which produce about one fruit per bud, the pom fruits - apples and pears - produce a cluster of flowers and fruit can spring from each flower bud. Thin these to no more than one to two fruit per cluster, depending on the total fruit set and growing conditions.
So which ones do you choose to thin? Keep the largest fruit whenever possible. When the crop is heavy, fruits should be spaced no less than six to eight inches apart.
There are two main ways to thin by hand or by pole. Thinning by hand is more thorough and more accurate than the pole method. But obviously, it is much slower.
So again, watch your fruit trees, especially after flowering. When you see that tiny fruit start to develop. Get set to thin your deciduous stone fruit trees. We'll have the full report on thinning young fruit trees written by Chuck Engels in today's show notes.
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Farmer Fred 36:58
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