I was at a meeting last night with an organic orchardist (apples, pears, cherries, peaches, apricots) -- for the first time I heard that sometimes a sick tree will go into a biennial mode (skipping fruiting every other season) -- her suggestion, besides the manual care that's been described here, is to add a "summer" pruning to your winter pruning schedule, for the sick trees only, first by removing up to half of the set fruit if the tree shows signs of scale or fur or other pest infestation, and after the fruit is off the tree, remove any small water suckers or crossed small branches completely, to "dry" the tree out before the winter rains/snows set in. I didn't realize that the cell division of setting the fruit lasts only 10 days, after that the cells themselves simply get bigger as the fruit matures!!
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