FROM BARREN TO BEARIN'

Enlarge Image Image Gallery TOP TO BOTTOM: Sometimes a stubborn but otherwise healthy apple tree has to be ""encouraged"" to set fruit. By cutting completely around the trunk or several limbs -through the bark but not into the wood la technique called scoring) ...then treating the cut with grafting compound ...the orchardist can often make the reluctant tree productive again!

Here's a way to "encourage" apple trees that are reluctant to set fruit.

by John V. Creech

As summer begins to wind down (perhaps fooling us, a time or two, into thinking we've seen the last of its sweltering days for this year), orchard keepers look forward to sampling the joys of harvest time. Unfortunately, apple trees occasionally for no reason apparent to the grower-just up and stop bearing for a while.

Over the years any number of methods have been devised to force nonbearing trees to produce. Many old-time pomology books recommend root pruning ...which involves marking a circle on the ground around the trunk, just inside the drip line, then dividing the scribed area into six pie-shaped wedges and digging about two feet deep-severing any roots encountered along the arcs formed by the outer edges of three alternating segments. Another "traditional" fruit encourager actually consisted of blasting away at the tree's trunk several times with a shotgun!

Strangely enough, both of those techniques often worked ...that is, provided the "patient" survived the abuse. Each of the methods served to accomplish the same goal: to slow down or otherwise interfere with the tree's nutrient intake, causing it to reduce its production of new leaf and limb growth in order to set fruit.

Nowadays, as you'd imagine, there are chemical preparations available to restrict vegetative production and promote fruit setting. However, should you choose to avoid such substances, you can try another old-timer's trick that works for me and seems to do less harm to the tree than either root pruning or "shotgun logic". The method is called scoring, and simply consists of using a pocketknife or linoleum knife (on trees up to six inches in diameter), or a hacksaw (when working with a large specimen) to make a cut—through the bark but not into the wood completely around either one or two limbs or the trunk of the tree itself.