Alan Holmes wrote:

: "J Jackson" wrote in message
: ...
: Lynda Thornton wrote:
:
: : Hello
:
: : I've had a terrble fruit harvest this year - first of all my cooking
: : apple tree has less than a dozen apples (large mature tree) and now the
: : victoria plum tree which yielded a good harvest last year is full of
: : brown rot - of the couple of dozen we picked just now, all good size,
: : every single one was affected or starting with brown stuff (some of it
: : hard lumpy patches inside the fruit) rendering them unusable. It made
: : me think how awful it could be for fruit growers if a disease is rife.
: : I don't think we'll get many plums, if any, this year.
:
: Many fruit trees while not being truly bienniel croppers, have good years
: and bad years interspersed - trees are stressed by bearing a large crop
: and will naturall rest up a bit the following year - they might not be as
: vigorous are rebuffing disease too. I'm assuming you feed them regularly?

: One way of correcting the bienniel cropping is, on a good yesr, reemove
: about half of the crop, this should make the tree revert to normal cropping.

Depends on the variety. Some seem to be bienniel in their sap :-)
I have Ashmead's Kernel and I've tried thinning, and feeding bienielly.
The best I managed was when I removed ALL the flowers from one large
branch. This year there is a reasonable crop on that branch (and on
another branch - though the rest of tree is fruitless).

: All I have to do is to try to remember which year the thing
: undercropped!(:-(


: --
: Alan

: Reply to alan (dot) holmes27 (at) virgin (dot) net

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