Originally Posted by anton

wrote in message
...


To stop the biennial cropping, when you have the good crop, remove at
least half the crop, that gets the tree thinking it's now a normal crop
and will revert to annual cropping every year.

But if you allow it to overcrop one year it will revert to the every
other year cropping.

What actually happens is, one year the tree may be affected by frost and
the crop is small, the next year it says to itself, blimey, last year I
didn't do well and this variety may die out, so I've got to do as well as
I can, so you get a huge crop, the next year it says to itself, I'm very
tired for all that effort I put in last year so I'll have a rest, and it
produces a small crop, the next year it says to itself, bloody hell this
variety might die out so I'll have to produce as much as I can, and so on!


Mm. I guess that biennial bearing is a natural way of reducing losses from
the things that feed on the fruit- bearing the same amount each year would
encourage the parasite population to mop up lots of the fruit, whereas
biennial bearing starves the parasites one year & floods them with too much
food the next, allowing more fruit to perform its purpose {I seem to recall
some tree that bears every 17 years, which is taking things to extremes).

--
Anton