Thinning the Fruit on the Fruit Trees

This morning, the kids and I thinned the fruit on the fruit trees.  The girls and I looked for big groups of fruit and pulled off the smallest ones, leaving only 2 per group.  My 7yo isn’t quite tall enough to pick off the fruit, so he carried the bucket to collect the discarded fruit.  The girls got to calling him “bucket boy” when they needed to dump their hands of fruit.

Here’s a picture of a group of fruit before thinning.  This is the same group after thinning.

We thin the fruit for 3 reasons.

1.  If the trees produce a lot of fruit one year, they will produce a very small amount the following year.

2.  If the branches have too much fruit on them, they will sag and sometimes break.

3.  If you have less fruit on your trees, they end up being bigger.  I’d rather have fewer big apples than lots of small ones.