Allan Griffin
That all sounds good, right? It seems like it’s about time for those trees to start rewarding me with some fruit, but I’ve never had a blossom. Nothing in the 5 years we’ve had them. I did do a little research, Google of course, and yep sure enough after 5 years the trees should be producing fruit, and blossoming long before that.
So I said to my hubby if those trees don’t blossom this year I’m pulling them out, I don’t need the extra work. Now if I’d planted them for ornamental reasons that would be another story but I didn’t. My full intention for them was to produce pesticide free fruit for my family to eat. Hubby agreed with me that they would be cut down if nothing happened this year.
I was at Grama Reds house helping my cousin prune the apple trees on the farm, he’s a horticulturist, so I decided to pick his brain a little. I told him about my non-producing fruit trees and asked him if I should just give up and cut them down. Well you will never guess what he told me to do…..any guesses?
He told me he had the same issue with a peach tree and was talking to an old farmer about it. The farmer said use a 2X4, on the wide side, and beat the tree about 20 times all the way around the base of the truck. Hit it hard but not hard enough to break the truck. Apparently the tree thinks it dying and goes into survival mode by shocking itself, and in turn it will blossom and produce fruit from here forward. He says you only need to do it once in it’s lifetime and the tree will start to produce.
Well who the heck ever came up with that idea I’ll never know but those old timers always seem to know what to do so I gave it a go. Luckily we have no neighbors to see me out beating my trees (I don’t want to get turned in for tree abuse, lol). I’m sure it was a sight, and looked quite foolish. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this works, if not the trees are going.
So I said to my hubby if those trees don’t blossom this year I’m pulling them out, I don’t need the extra work. Now if I’d planted them for ornamental reasons that would be another story but I didn’t. My full intention for them was to produce pesticide free fruit for my family to eat. Hubby agreed with me that they would be cut down if nothing happened this year.
I was at Grama Reds house helping my cousin prune the apple trees on the farm, he’s a horticulturist, so I decided to pick his brain a little. I told him about my non-producing fruit trees and asked him if I should just give up and cut them down. Well you will never guess what he told me to do…..any guesses?
He told me he had the same issue with a peach tree and was talking to an old farmer about it. The farmer said use a 2X4, on the wide side, and beat the tree about 20 times all the way around the base of the truck. Hit it hard but not hard enough to break the truck. Apparently the tree thinks it dying and goes into survival mode by shocking itself, and in turn it will blossom and produce fruit from here forward. He says you only need to do it once in it’s lifetime and the tree will start to produce.
Well who the heck ever came up with that idea I’ll never know but those old timers always seem to know what to do so I gave it a go. Luckily we have no neighbors to see me out beating my trees (I don’t want to get turned in for tree abuse, lol). I’m sure it was a sight, and looked quite foolish. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this works, if not the trees are going.
