April 1st 2011 Issue

Thinning for larger fruit

Conserving the larger fruit during hand thinning results in larger fruit at harvest.

One way to get consistent crops of large, high quality apples is to hand thin to size. So if you need to thin by hand, the best idea is to instruct workers about how many apples you want per tree and tell them to take off the smallest ones. That’s not the way most growers do it, says Steve McArtney, the southeast apple specialist at the Mountain Horticultural Crops Research and Extension Center in Mills River, North Carolina. After actually measuring the size of the apples on the ground compared to the size of those still on the trees after […]

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April 1, 2011

Production, Apples, Richard Lehnert

Richard Lehnert

After growing up on a Michigan dairy farm, Richard Lehnert began writing about farming in 1962, while still a junior studying journalism at Michigan State University. He worked at newspapers for a year before joining the staff of Michigan Farmer, where he spent 26 years, the last 15 as chief editor. He was a member of the staff of Good Fruit Grower from 2010 until 2015. Read his stories: Story Index

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