Spartan unthinned
I have been thinning apples and it made me wonder about some of the ‘accepted wisdom’.
I realise that ‘king fruit’ do not keep well and are more inclined to be lumpy, bumpy and generally fail to conform to grading standards. So I guess we feel we need to remove king fruits when thinning.
However, what about the early varieties that do not keep, but we want to pick as soon as they are big enough?
Emneth Early, Grenadier, Lord Grosvenor and other early codlins are culinary apples that spring to mind.
Eaters might include Gladstone, the numerous ‘Jennetings’, Stark’s Earlest, White Transparent, Lady Hollendale, Irish Peach, Beauty of Bath and so on.
Does anybody know of a good reason why we should not thin to leave king fruit on the tree for these varieties?
If we desire size and earliness in a variety, why should we exclude king fruit?
(A ‘king fruit’ is a fruit formed from the centre flower of a blossom cluster. It is usually precocious in formation and often has an abnormal stalk and cavity. King fruit may have inferior keeping qualities).
Bob Lever
Spartan thinned
Bob Lever seeks comments on apple fruit thinning and queries the recommendation of removing the king fruitlet.
Some thinning is usually necessary each year but the degree of thinning depends on numbers of fruit set, the nature of the variety and the use of the fruit (perhaps severe thinning is essential if fruit is for the show bench). Thinning is done to reduce numbers of fruit and improve fruit size and gain greater uniformity. The king fruitlets are normally larger and often develop into mis-shaped fruits and should, therefore, be the first fruitlets to be selected for removal. Judicious thinning will reduce biennial bearing and possibly branch breakage. Early thinning (early June, before the so called ‘June Drop’) is far more effective than late.
Experience will guide on the optimum amount of thinning required.
I have tried a little experiment, following my thoughts above, and thinned some fruit clusters on a 60 year old standard Grenadier to deliberately leave single king fruit.
The result is that the ‘kings’ now sit nicely on a 90mm ring and are ready to part from the tree, the conventionally thinned fruit are at about 80mm and still well stuck on.
The king fruit are perfectly timed to stew with my early blackberries. Hurrah! I will do this again with the Grenadier.
Bob Lever calls into question the practise of selecting ‘king’ fruit for thinning, particularly those of early varieties of culinary and dessert apples.
How and when did this approach to selection for thinning arise in the first place? And why did it arise in England?
1954 saw the publication in an English translation of Paul Champagnat’s ‘The Pruning of Fruit Trees’, wherein it states on pages 20-21…. ‘When blossom thinning apples, the central flower of the truss will be left for reference, since it is the one that produces the best fruit. In the pear on the contrary the side flowers are most favoured.’ Translators note to this point states: ‘In England the central flower often produces “Lemon-strigged” apples and is deliberately selected for removal when thinning’.
The translator was N.B. Bagenal B.A.(Cantab) of the East Malling Research Station in Kent. So a man much acquainted with the practises of growing fruit. Turning to Bagenal’s own ‘Fruit Growing; Modern Cultural Method’s’ , first published in 1939, we find the following guidance on page 154 in the paragraph on ‘Fruit Thinning’. ‘It is becoming a widespread practise among commercial fruit growers to thin dessert apples such as Worcester Pearmain and Cox’s Orange Pippin, leaving not more than two and often only one fruit to a truss, with a view to getting uniformity of size in the fruit. When thinning the centre fruit of each truss, the “King” apple, is removed, because it is usually an abnormal fruit, which is often misshapen, and does not always keep well in store.’ Here let me add that Bob Lever acknowledges these facts in his post.
So, by the late 1930s this approach to thinning has become the ‘accepted wisdom’ in England, contrary to practise on the continent. And let it be recalled here that Champagnat was attempting in his classic work of the period, quoted above, nothing less than the distillation and exposition of all the best practise in fruit growing on the continent which had developed over recent centuries.
Referring back in time to the late Victorian era of fruit growing in England and ‘The Fruit- Growers Guide’ written by John Wright, revised later by Horace Wright, a singular work credited with promoting fruit growing in Britain, there is a short chapter given over to the matter of thinning fruits. But no reference therein to the approach of selecting ‘king’ fruits for thinning.
A near contemporary of Bagenal, Raymond Bush does not refer to selecting ‘king’ fruits for thinning in the guidance he gives in his volume ‘Fruit Growing Out-Doors’, yet he has much to say on the matter. Bush advices – ‘give preference always to the apple which hangs vertically down, for in this position it has least excuse for falling off.’ I thoroughly recommend a study of Bush’s volumes on fruit growing practises and the comparisons of them with the practises of his predecessors and contemporaries, not least because of the decades he spent travelling the country visiting all manner of fruit growers and discussing matters with them.
It should be noted that Bagenal in the footnote referred to above refers to the ‘lemon-strigged king fruit’ within speech and not quotation marks. Is Bagenal then the first to point this observation and practise into print? Was his advice hitherto only passed on by word of mouth? It does not appear to have been more than a few decades old when he first caused it to be printed under his name, in which case it is not even a century old today.
We need to hear from an older generation of fruit growers and enthusiasts to take this matter further and to establish why the difference with the approach on the continent emerged in England.
In principle it is right to question all received wisdom and not simply mechanically act on it. It became accepted wisdom to plant vines of German origin in England during the 1970s-80s. By 1989 though this practise was being called into question for several reasons. It was not until the practise was changed and vines of French origin began to be planted in quantity that the limitations of German vine here was overcome. Opening the way for the boom in vine planting which occurred by the millennium to the point now where over 210 hectares of land in West Sussex alone have been planted with French vines producing very fine wines indeed.
The Italian scholar and botanist Girolamo Fiorenzuola writing at the height of the Renaissance, looking back to its origins, identified the work of one botanist-artist, Pietro Andrea Mattioli as marking the beginning of Renaissance studies in the realm of botany and botanic illustration. He argued in favour of Mattioli and that before him were simply copied from ancient texts, or, by word-of-mouth from father to son, particularly in the matter of growing food crops. The weakness of these two practises was that all that was negative in them was mechanically repeated by one generation after another. Mattioli who rigourously questioned all practises opened the door to the Renaissance in the field of botany. And Mattioli spent most of his life travelling and learning, he was not secluded in a library on the one hand, or estranged from work in the field or the other. Renaissance literally means ‘re-natus’, the rebirth of knowledge and thereby the potential liberation of human practise from the dead hand of the past.
With regard to king fruit, when thinning fruits for exhibition with Howgate Wonder, Peasgood’s Nonsuch and Lord Derby I first assess the ratio of king fruits to ordinary fruits. If I find a majority of king fruits, I take off the ordinary ones. The reason for this is that the king fruit is taller and more handsome than the more flattened ordinary fruit. In the rosette of blossom in spring the central flower sets the king fruit and the peripheral flowers the ordinary or more typical fruit. Generally the latter are more flat-rounded in shape if the variety is Howgate Wonder and rounded if it is Peasgood’s Nonsuch or Lord Derby. My other flag-ship cooker, the Reverend W. Wilks, appears to have only one shape, whether it is a king fruit or not. With a little observation it can be easily seen with some varieties that there are two different types of apple on the same tree; long-conical and flat-round
Thank you for your replies, Ian and Adrian. both have been very informative.
I suspect that a number of varieties are best if thinned to the king fruit if one requires large and/or early samples and when storage is not an issue. I would not mind betting that this was exactly what canny growers of varieties like Emneth Early used to do, when the priority was size and earliness for the local market.
From the apple identification point of view, the ‘accepted wisdom’, once again, is to ignore king fruit and descriptions are always of samples that are not kings.
This can be a problem with varieties that produce mainly king fruit, especially in certain climatic or cultural conditions. For example, Newton Wonder is famous for this, and is probably easier to identify from a king fruit than from the often small and misshapen ‘normal’ fruit,
Any more comments on this from growers and identifiers would be most appreciated
After I wrote my response to Bob Lever’s query and following on from talks with Adrian and Alan, I chanced on a passage on thinning at the end of Rosanne Sanders’ book ‘The English Apple’ (p140). The words king fruit left off the page so I read the whole passage and realised that Harry Baker was the author. So I read his books and found two more passages relating to king fruit.
Each of the three passages have some new information, from my point of view, which has not been covered in the discussion. It is a shame that they are not published together in one of Harry Baker’s books, not least because they demonstrate greater flexibility than N. B. Bagenal’s position, I cited previously. Frankly any fruit grower who is unaware of the scope of Baker’s insights on the matter is at a disadvantage.
For the benefit of those who followed the exchange concerning the English adoption of the practice of selecting king fruits for thinning, and, who may not be in possession of the relevant books I set out below quotes from works authored by Harry Baker.
‘Thin dessert apples to about four to six inches apart, and culinary fruits, where a larger size is wanted, to six to nine inches. Obviously remove the worst and leave the best. The king fruit, i.e. the one in the centre of the truss, is usually the largest and can be left, but check that it is not malformed at the stalk end. Weak trees should be tinned more drastically than the strong ones.’
Quoted from a longer passage on thinning contributed by Harry Baker to ‘The English Apple’ by Rosanne Sanders (1988) p140.
‘Thin as soon as possible after the June drop and finish by mid-July. In addition to blemished and misshapen fruits, remove the weakest in the cluster, leaving the strongest and best shaped. Often, but not always, the king or crown apple produced from the central flower is malformed and should be removed. Certain cultivars, typically long-stalked, such as Golden Delicious, produce normal shaped king fruits which may be left.’
Quoted from much longer passage on thinning in ‘The Fruit Garden Displayed’ by Harry Baker, (1951 edition).
‘With apples, sometimes the “king” or “crown” fruit produced in the centre of a cluster is virtually stalkless and malformed. If this is the case, remove it, but if the apple is well shaped, leave it because the king fruit can be the best in the cluster.’
Quoted from a longer passage on thinning in ‘Fruit’ by Harry Baker (1980 edition).
Taken together these quotes represent a more flexible approach to the question of selecting king fruit for thinning, than that recommended by Bagenal. All this though, still leaves unsaid, just when the practise of selecting the king fruit for removal was first adopted in England. And did this practise spread to other countries and with what results?
On the matter of when to thin I would be inclined to agree with Brian Self where he recommends thinning ‘early’ before the June drop. I found this approach produces better results with many varieties of tree fruits, not just apples. But of course local conditions need to be taken into account – here on the south coast James Grieve gets too big and the winds rip the fruits off the tree – there are also matters such as rootstocks, soil type and rainfall/irrigation to be reckoned with in the course of experience.