The June Drop

The June drop with Bob Flowerdew, AG’s organic gardening expert. Don’t worry if your fruit tree starts shedding its load, says Bob, as it’s just getting rid of the surplus.

THERE are some events in gardening that seem hard to swallow, as at first glance they look like disasters – the June drop of fruit trees being one of the most obvious. Most fruit trees, especially apples and pears, regularly set many more fruitlets than they can comfortably ripen successfully. This means that around the end of this month, they start to drop their surplus. To the beginner, this looks terrible. One day you see a huge potential crop of little apples on your tree. The next, most seem to be lying underneath, and all appears lost.

Don’t worry, though, as the tree has just done the sensible thing. It could never carry all those fruits to harvest – and if it did, they would be small and sour. Instead, the tree chooses how many it could ripen, and this is still likely to be more than is optimum for us. You see, the fewer fruits left to swell, the bigger each one gets, the sweeter each one becomes and the fewer but larger sweeter fruits we then pick. And by dropping the surplus, the tree has saved ripening so many seeds that take more resources from the tree than the tasty, pulpy bit we eat.

So don’t fret – instead, give the trees a good shake every other day to help them drop even more. Then, a week or so later, thin the remainder by hand. Take off every congested and damaged fruitlet, leaving the perfect and well placed to ripen. Put picked fruitlets with the dropped ones into your compost, or bury them, as these may carry pests or diseases. This improves the quality of your harvest more than almost anything else you can do. Be ruthless, as it’s really hard to over-thin. Go on, try it and see.

Bob’s top tips for the week

1. When digging fi rst potato crops, be careful not to damage the plants. Also, leave small tubers attached and heel in again for a bonus crop.

2. Prune blackcurrants at the same time as picking them. Cut out cropping branches that you can take and pick elsewhere in more comfort.

3. Dig up your garlic as soon as the leaves yellow. If you wait until the leaves fall off , you won’t be able to fi nd the bulbs.

4. Raise the cut height of your mower to leave taller grass that will stay greener for longer in hot weather.

sources:

Amateur Gardening, June 2018

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