How do you induce a lazy tree to bear fruits?

 How do you induce a lazy tree to bear fruits?

Dr Abe V Rotor


1. Smudging hastens flowering of fruit trees and protects fruits from pests.
This is a common practice on many common fruit trees, especially mango. Old folks gather dried leaves, grass, rice hull, corn stalk and the like, and burn them slowly under the trees. The smoke is directed to the branches and leaves. This is done every morning until flowers come out. It is resumed to protect the fruits from insects and fungi. Smudging is preferred over potassium nitrate spraying that forces trees like mangoes to flower out of season. Repeated chemical spraying reduces the life span of trees, unlike smudging.

2. Wounding the trunk and branches of a tree induces it to fruit.
There are trees that tend to grow luxuriantly, bearing few or no fruits at all. Imagine how disappointed a farmer is and we can read his mind as he reaches for his bolo. But instead of cutting down the trees, he inflicts wounds on their trunks and branches, resulting in multiple staggered wounds. Sap oozes but in a few days the wounds heal. A transformation ensues: the trees start to bloom.

What could be the explanation to this? Nature has provided a coping mechanism for organisms subjected to stress so that they can pass on their genes to the next generation – reproduction. We may be surprised to see plants under dry condition profusely blooming. Some bamboo species flower during the El Niño. A starved caterpillar soon transforms into pupa, skipping one or two moultings, and soon metamorphoses into butterfly, diminutive it may be. Early sexual maturity is also observed in many animals that are under stress, as compared to their normal counterparts.

To the mango trees, the effect is the same, a phenomenon that is not clearly understood. Physiologically the stored food in the wounded plant will now be used for reproduction, instead of continued vegetative growth, which explains sudden blooming.~

*Lesson on Living with Nature - School on Blog (avrotor.blogspot.com)
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