There are a number of one liners that crack me up when talking to gardeners. Next to "Is Miracle Grow good enough?" The most common i hear is "More is better right?"....... "More fertilizer is better right?". "More water is better" or "More fruit on the plant is good and it means that its healthy." Typically this saying might hold true for many situations. In the garden, 9 times out of 10 i doesn't. This especially holds true trees with fruit.
Have you ever noticed 8-10 growing fruit on a 1-2 foot branch? Most people's initial thought is, wow my tree is doing great, im going to have alot of fruit this year!
Leaving a ton of fruit to develop on the tree results in many little poorly developed fruits come harvest time. Think of it as when you learned fractions.......... Dividing 100 pieces of food(nutrients) between 20 fruits is better than if you divided it between 50. Less fruits means more food to each. Some fruit trees will even take a break the next year from having spent so much energy to sustain a large harvest.
Fruit pruning is relatively easy. Painful in the beginning to do but gets easier with practice. There are many schools of thoughts to it but my general rules are
1.> No more than 2 fruit per 1 ft of branch
2.> Twist them off, dont yank.
3.> Do it when they've reach about a quarter sized.
4.> I try to keep them away from the ends of the branches, unless it is a thick branch. Having a big heavy fruit on the end of a skinny twig usually results in broken branches.
5.> If it is on a short stocky branch, I'll usually keep 2 keep them as far apart as possible(opposite branch corners)
These guidlines work for many fruit trees, I have pictured peaches but nectarines, pluots, citrus all benefit from removal of excess fruit.
Remember. There is no right or wrong way of fruit pruning. Just don't think too much about the whole process. The resulting fruit will be larger, and more flavorful and your tree is less prone to alternate bearing(every other year)
