Sunday, March 24, 2002		Garden Life

Prune fruit trees to make them healthy
Satish Narula

LOOK at the fruit trees in flowering. It is an amazing sight. You can feel the fragrance of citrus. Golden yellow, conicle mango blooms have completely covered the trees and you can see the buzzing activities of pollinising insects. Lemon trees have all flower bunches at terminals. The Litchi trees are not far behind. Greenish brown penicles are raising their heads.

Think what will happen to the tree if all the blooms set to form fruit — thousands in numbers. Nature has its own ways. Most blooms fall off as the trees shed them keeping only those that are required or as much a tree can support. There could be other reasons too like diseases and insects. At times, you have to help a tree to give you the fruit of desired quality and for this you have to do thinning of fruit.

Some of the trees, by nature, tend to bear too many blooms. The result is that most of the fruit borne by it is inferior and of poor quality. This may happen in case of peach, plum, kinnow etc. In such cases the overbearing may even lead to decline.

In peach, ‘overbearing’ is common. The casualty is the fruit size. A large number of very small fruit with a poor appearance and a comparatively small number of fruit but of excellent size and quality; which one will you prefer? Otherwise too, in case of too much bearing there is a decline in health to do thinning of the tree. Keep at least 10-15 cm between fruits.

When should thinning be done? The best time is four to five weeks before harvesting. With proper pruning too you can regulate fruiting. But that time is past.

The kinnow tree tends to overbear in the third and fourth year. At times, you can count more than 400 to 500 fruits. If not regulated, this much load of crop may lead to a very fast decline of the tree and it may even die. So as to keep the tree healthy and for sustaining crop over the years, you should practise judicious thinning of fruit in the month of May.