The apple tree is one of the most popular fruit trees that are most often found in our gardens. Today in local nurseries you can buy a zoned seedling for any taste.
But no matter how breeding progressed, the common old problem did not go away. An apple tree takes root in a new place, develops well, blooms every year, but flatly refuses to bear fruit or gives only single fruits.
What’s important
In search of the cause, summer residents will soon learn from more experienced relatives and acquaintances about former ways of solving this problem. Many of them boil down to the fact that it is necessary to shock the tree, literally forcing it to leave offspring instead of systematically taking root and spending all the accumulated strength exclusively on growth, ignoring fruiting.
In most cases, the following measures are carried out in the spring, as soon as the tree fully wakes up after a long cold winter:
- The first thing suggested is driving a rusty nail into the trunk below the lower branch. If it is an old apple tree with a fairly thick trunk and bark, use a two-hundred-year-old apple tree. The method seems absolutely barbaric, but if you compare it with the same circumcision, then it is unlikely to be even close to it in terms of trauma. Another thing is that fungus can penetrate through an open wound (pretreat the nail with alcohol). Many gardeners, wondering why they used a rusty nail in ancient times, come to the conclusion that it is, among other things, an excellent iron supplement.
- Gently tap the apple or pear tree with a stick. In order not to cause damage, such a handy tool had to be wrapped in a cloth beforehand. This procedure additionally stimulates the flow of sap, as a result of which the probability of normal fruiting increases for the next year.
- Spring pruning sometimes helps. This is a strong stress that forces the apple tree to start fruiting already in the current season.
