Thinning peaches..

Imagine you go to each peach tree. Look at the clusters of developing fruit. Nip some of them and throw them away on the ground. That's thinning.

What a disturbing concept, right? Why would anyone throw away some fruit? That's what I thought when I first heard of Thinning. And on top of that, you pay workers to do this?

But, fruit thinning is a crucial step in consistently producing good quality fruit.
Here's a sales lesson:
6 extra-large peaches sell better than 24 extra-small peaches. ALWAYS.
So, what do you do? Nip away 18 peaches in a cluster so the tree can focus its energy towards growing the remaining 6 fruit into nice, extra-large peaches.

Fruit trees will often set more fruit than is needed for a full crop. Several undesirable things can happen.

• Excessive weight from the fruit can cause tree limbs to break. 
• Excessive fruit set often will result in small fruit with poor flavor. 
• Excessive fruit set also can result in alternate bearing in which a tree will produce little or no fruit in the year following a large fruit crop.

So, it's all right to pick and throw away all that fruit.