Eliminating Unwanted Fruit
Eliminating Unwanted Fruit from Fruiting and Ornamental Plants
The white, pink, and red flowers of early spring are a welcome sight after a long, cold, dark winter. The planting of crabapples and other similar fruit was not only for the flowers that welcome spring, but for the harvest that would usually follow. Less and less people are wanting the fruit, but still want the spring color. If you disrupt the flower from setting, there will be no fruit.
The old fashioned way of getting rid of the unwanted fruit was to spray the tree at the time of flower with insecticides, killing the bees that did your pollinating. Kill the bees so they can’t pollinate and you will have no fruit!!! Another way was to cut the tree down! We would just think about ourselves without thinking about the impact we would have on nature.
We have come a long way from those times with our understanding that without bees we would be in a world of hurt. The practices that we use now do not hurt bees, birds or butterflies.
One way to rid of the fruit naturally is to plant varieties that still flower, but do not produce fruit.
Another is pruning the fruit tree in the fall, but I don't recommend it. Most fruit trees will flower on last year's growth. Pruning in the fall will take off the growth where the tree will set fruit. Eliminating the branches will also eliminate the flowers that you desire. It might possibly get the tree to push out new growth in the fall. With our weather, this new growth has a good chance of getting hurt by the up and coming cold.
Another way is to use a hormone disrupting chemical that will break down into a stress plant hormone that causes the flower not to set fruit. One I have used with success is Monterey Florel Fruit Eliminator. The bigger the fruit produced by the tree, the better it works.
The timing of the application is critical to the success of the product. After reading and following the instructions, spray the entire tree three times during the bloom season. A tree doesn’t come out with all its blossoms at the same time, so by spraying at the beginning of blossom, in full blossom, and as the tree is going out of blossom, you are getting most of the blossoms to not set fruit.
The temperature should be above 60 degrees when applying. I like to use a hose end sprayer to get the pressure needed to spray the entire tree.
Since this produces a stress hormone, do not spray an already stressed tree!
No need to cut down the tree or spray and kill the bees! There are effective alternative practices that allow you to still be able to enjoy Mother Nature.
