There might be one exception to always leaving the 'king fruit'. I always first
examine the king to see if there are any signs of attack. If so, I will
initially thin down
to the cleanest and best two of the remaining cluster, while the apples are
still quite
small. When they reach about the size of a quarter, I do a final reduction to
just one
fruit. I sometimes leave two fruits on a cluster by examining the total 'load'
on any
given branch and judging if this will overload the energy delivery system. I
can't say
that for all varieties of apple that the king fruit is always much bigger than
one it's
smaller neighbors. I have no scientific backing on this, but base this on
observations.

Sherwin D.

Olin wrote:

----- Original Message ----- From: "Rachel Aitch"

Sent: Friday, November 17, 2006 11:03 AM, Subject: "King Fruit" - why do we
remove it?
I was always taught to thin out fruit during the late spring/early
summer, in order to get fewer but better fruits.
But why do we have to take out the King fruit, the central one? I'm
talking particularly about apples here.
Logically (yes, I'm old enough now to rebel against what I've been
taught!) shouldn't that be the one that stays?
Any theories, anyone?
Rachel Aitch

Apple blossoms occur in groups of five. The first and largest is the king
blossom. We do not remove the king but remove all of the others instead.
The reason is to concentrate the sugars in a single and the largest blossom
so it will produce the largest fruit. If the king is removed and the others
allowed to fruit there will be more, but smaller, apples and it will also be
necesssary to do more thinning.

Olin