Yes, go ahead and thin out the fruit. Fruit trees will often drop excess
fruit on their own when the fruit is still small (the "June drop"), but in a
"good" year they can still overproduce. Not only is this a physical strain
on the branches, but it can contribute to an alternate year bearing habit,
where the tree uses up a lot of resources one year on a heavy crop, then
bears very lightly the next. Commercial orchards sometimes use sprays
designed to thin the crop; the obvious way to do it at home is to just clip
out the extras. One guideline I've read is that you should be able to fit
your fist in-between the individual fruits. If you're still worried about
the strain on a particular branch, you can devise a prop or crutch for it
until after harvest, but that's not usually necessary.

Just as an interesting aside, I've read that nut trees such as pecans bear
heavily over longer cycles, three or four years, and it serves to manage the
squirrel population, by building up their numbers then crashing them down in
a lean year, with the effect being that more nuts get a chance to germinate.

Cheers,
Sue

Zone 6, Southcentral PA

"evilpaul13" wrote in message
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(evilpaul13) wrote in message
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Hello,
I've got two nectarine trees growing planted two to three years ago.
One is pretty large maybe 9-11 feet high and the other which I think
gets a lot less sun is only about 6 feet. Both (particularly the large
one) get fruit, but in past years bugs and the local wildlife have
mostly gotten it. This year I'm going to spray shortly, so hopefully
some of the fruit will get to mature.

My question is with the larger tree one of the longer branches appears
to be bending under the weight of the fruit which is larger than a
quarter at this point and great in number. (It's also been very rainy
so that could be why?) There's probably 25 of the little things on a 4
foot branch. Should I pluck half or so of them off? I'm worried that
the branch might actually snap, and that the great number of fruit
might keep the tree from producing any that are normal sized. They are
starting to turn red, so I'm guessing I should act quickly?

Anyone?