Fruit trees should be thinned. What is this for?

"Full of tree flowers, half tree fruit; Half a tree flower, full of fruit. " Thinning flowers and fruits is one of the orchard management measures, that is, manually removing some redundant flowers and young fruits to obtain high-quality fruits and sustainable high yield.

Fruit trees should be thinned. What is this for? Most fruit trees bloom much more than the last fruit. If an adult apple tree has 5% flowers and a peach tree has 15~20% flowers and fruits that mature in a year with many flowers, a bumper harvest can be achieved. Excessive flowers and fruits and insufficient nutrient supply not only affect the normal development of fruits, but also form many small fruits and secondary fruits, and the tree is weakened, vulnerable to freezing injury and infectious diseases, resulting in reduced production in the following year and small years. Therefore, in addition to the adjustment ability of fruit trees, underdeveloped flowers and young fruits naturally fall off, and redundant flowers and fruits need to be removed to meet the production requirements.

It is an important measure to adjust the age and improve the quality of the tree by correctly applying the technology of thinning flowers and fruits, controlling the number of fruit sets and making the tree bear a reasonable burden. It has been widely used in production for a long time, so how to use appropriate methods to thin flowers and thin fruits?

"Fruit thinning is not as good as flower thinning, and flower thinning is not as good as bud thinning". Early bud and flower thinning plays an important role in leaf development, leaf function enhancement and flower bud differentiation. The best time for thinning flowers is bud stage. When there are many flower buds, most of the buds on weak branches, redundant heavy buds on long and medium fruit branches and underdeveloped late flower buds can be thinned out. However, if it is too early, it will be difficult to judge the quality of young fruits because of unpredictable adverse weather such as late frost and strong wind, which will have a certain impact on production. Therefore, in some areas, it is necessary to determine the appropriate time to deal with it according to the specific local conditions, and it must not be generalized.

"Look at the tree to determine the yield, share the seeds and share the fruits equally". Only scientific and reasonable fruit thinning can reduce nutrient consumption, improve fruit setting rate and peach quality. The method of fruit thinning should be carried out according to the principle of "keeping the superior and eliminating the inferior", and the spacing between peaches and fruits on the same branch is about 10- 15 cm. When thinning fruit, first remove abnormal fruit, small fruit and pest fruit, and then keep fruit reasonably according to the load, leave leaf fruit and sparse leaf fruit; Leaf lateral fruit, lower fruit, sparse upper fruit; Keep strong branches and sparse weak branches. The order of fruit thinning should be from inside to outside, from top to bottom, one branch at a time, in order to prevent fruit leakage or damage. In principle, the fruit thinning time should start one week after flowering and be completed within one month at the latest, so as to improve the fruit quality of the year, promote the differentiation of flower buds and make the tree strong.

In addition, in the production practice of thinning flowers and fruits, manual methods are often used. At present, chemicals have been used internationally to dilute flowers and fruits. This technology has been used as a routine measure in fruit tree production in some countries, which can greatly improve labor efficiency. China has not been widely used in production, only some experiments have been carried out on some varieties such as apples and pears, and some results have been achieved. I believe it will be popularized in the near future and will certainly achieve better production benefits.