Venus Golden Apple Pruning Techniques

Venus Gold is an excellent apple variety bred by Japan through hybridization of Golden Delicious. It was introduced to China in 2010 and planted in Weihai, Shandong. It has the advantages of easy flowering, easy management, labor saving and time saving. However, in actual production, it is also found that it is prone to fruit quality problems such as low sugar content, light aroma, and susceptibility to bitter pit disease. Let's talk about the pruning technology of Venus Gold apples.

1. Choose a small crown tree shape. Such as pine cone shape, slender spindle shape, tall spindle shape, etc. These tree shapes have few backbone branches, only a central leading trunk, and relatively more fruiting branches. Pruning is simple and easy to learn, and can be learned in 1 to 2 days.

2. Strictly control the number of trunk branches. There are many main branches and many contradictions. It is very troublesome to consider the number, angle, growth potential, and balance between branches. Therefore, the number of large branches should be kept as small as possible.

3. Pay attention to the distance between branches. In order to improve leaf quality and photosynthetic efficiency, attention should be paid to improving the lighting conditions of various parts of the crown. Among them, it is important to increase the distance between branches. The spacing between main branches in the same direction should be 80 to 100 cm, the spacing between large branch groups should be about 60 cm, the spacing between medium branch groups should be about 40 cm, and the spacing between small branch groups should be about 20 cm. With the proper distance, the parasitic leaves will be reduced, the flower buds will be of higher quality, the fruits will be better colored, larger in size, and have a stronger flavor. Mastering the distance between branches is the key to pruning and must be done strictly.

4. Change the cutting and shrinking pruning method to thinning and releasing pruning method. In the past, too much pruning was done, even every branch had to be pruned. The main thing now is thinning, which can moderate the tree's vigor, improve light, and control the load of flowers and fruits. For example, when we pruned Red Fuji apples at the Erxianpo Orchard in Sanmenxia, ​​Henan, the average thinning amount for pine cone-shaped trees was 41 branches per tree, accounting for 99%, and the reduction amount was 0.4, almost 1%. The rest of the branches were all left long, and no branch on the whole tree was shortened. The tree reacted steadily to this pruning method, and no branches appeared.

According to practical investigations, the time spent on pruning is significantly reduced using this simplified pruning method; it takes 5 to 10 minutes for a single tree, with an average of 8.1 minutes. The short medium anvil (M26) takes about 3 minutes. It is not a dream for one person to prune an acre of apple trees in a day.

5. Lower the tree height. The tree crown is too high, and many field operations are very inconvenient, such as pruning, spraying pesticides, thinning flowers and fruits, bagging, and removing bags. The taller the tree is, the more labor it requires. The fruit yield in the parts above 3 meters is not much (the author investigated 10 trees in Erxianpo Apple Orchard on October 12, 2017, and the fruit yield in the parts above 3 meters only accounted for 2.75% of the whole tree). Therefore, lowering the height to 3 meters will not have much impact on the yield of the whole tree or the whole orchard. In addition, if the tree is too high, it is too dangerous to climb the tree. In order to reduce the number of workers in the orchard and improve labor efficiency, it is recommended to operate while standing on the ground, especially in tourist orchards. Visitors like to pick apples with their hands, so the tree height of this type of orchard should be controlled at 2 to 2.5 meters.

6. Thin out branches by branch group. First, determine the spacing according to the different branch group types (large, medium, and small) specified above, thin out the dense ones, and retain the sparse ones.

The second is to look at the strength and age of the branch groups. If the tree is too old or too weak, replace it with a strong branch group.

Third, look at the distribution position. Those that are upright and pointing upward are generally not kept because their fruits tend to be skewed and the fruits are not large. The back branches are worth preserving and utilizing on trees with few branches in the entire tree and in the early fruiting stage. However, on trees in the peak fruiting stage, due to the large number of branches and severe shade, they cannot produce good fruit and should be gradually thinned out to allow the branches on both sides to play their role. Fourth, check the health status. If there are rot, dry rot, or serious insect pests on the branch axis, it should be cut off as soon as possible.

7. Control the number of branches per tree and per mu. Generally, in order to achieve high yield and high efficiency, a reasonable leaf-to-fruit ratio is required. For Red Fuji, the ratio is 50-60:1 for tree rootstock trees, 30-40:1 for dwarf rootstock trees, and 20-30:1 for potted trees. The number of branches per mu is generally required to be 60,000 to 80,000. The number of flower buds left per mu is 10,000 to 12,000 (mainly top flower buds).

That’s it