How to Grow Larger Sized Fruit

Pick large, juicy fruit from your own fruit trees...

New fruit tree growers are always shocked at how small their fruit is compared to what they’re used to seeing at the grocery store. While smaller fruits might be what nature originally intended, it is possible to attain larger fruits without any genetic altering or added chemicals.

On almost any tree, the success of each individual fruit depends on spacing. Usually in the early stages of fruit production, veteran growers do something called “fruit thinning”. they remove nearly a third of the emerging crop. Generally, there should not be any fruits within six to eight inches of each other. During the fruit thinning process, this is the distance you should generally aim for to optimize the amount of nutrition that each fruit gets. Hundreds of little fruits on one tree competing for the available materials necessary for growth just results in stunted fruits. The resulting crop is fewer in number, but larger in size and better in quality.

Unfortunately, reducing the number of fruits may not be enough to ensure a bigger, healthier fruit. Sometimes small fruits are caused by conditions out of the gardener’s control…

• During the process of cell division that all new fruits go through, cool weather can adversely affect the size of your fruits.
• Likewise, if the weather is particularly cloudy very early in the season, then fewer carbohydrates will be available to your plants.
• A lack of water or certain nutrients, or excessive pests and diseases can also damage the growth of fruits.
• Ocasionally, if the factors are all against the well being of your fruit tree, then the fruits will drop to the ground before they are even ripe.

If you notice these things going on early in the season, you should  thin the fruit more than normal. Sometimes as much as three fourths of the fruits should be removed to allow full nutrition to the remaining fruit.

The best way to find out how to gain larger fruit sizes is to experiment. If your tree has been around for a while, there is almost nothing you can do to it to cause it to die or to stop producing fruit. Just test different thinning techniques or anything you can think of to make the fruits larger. You might even head down to your local nursery and ask them. They will be able to give you advice based on your region and specific tree.

Just know that you don’t have to settle for small fruits. Ask professionals in your community what you need to do to improve the size of your tree’s fruit… then have fun experimenting.

Image courtesy of… © Paul-andr? Belle-isle | Dreamstime.com