Thank you for a wonderful episode. I truly enjoy your channel.

Really appreciate all your citrus videos. Bought 2 golden nugget mandarins and cara cara. God bless you

The older I get, the more tempted I am to try girdling.

Your girdling result is better than my experiments. On avocado, I did experiment on Fuerte, Gwen and Nabal, all about 1/4" gap cut. The entire Fuerte tree is flowering, yet to find out if there is more fruitset on the 2 girdled branches. On Nabal & Gwen, both showed significant leaf yellowing and dropping, to the point I had to use bridge graft to close the cut. In addition to avocado, on persimmon is effective to induce flowering and fruitset, but the entire branch died off after the first winter. On fig, just induced lots of shoot sprouting below the cut, not effective. On mulberry, caused infection and fluid oozing on every cut, resulted in one dead branch over the winter. More recently, I am experimenting with just knife cut with no gap, so the tree could close the wound and heal faster. Another experiment is small diameter rope girdling, basically the tree growth would choke itself in due time.

I would have thought girdling inhibits flowering to put energy towards repair in order to alternate flowering between years. Interesting.

@gregalderdotcom

2 ай бұрын

The physiological explanation I've read is that the girdle prevents the carbohydrates from flowing down the branch into the roots so it stays in the branch above the girdle. Having all of that energy makes the tree turn it into lots of flowers and fruit (sometimes!).

So if part of the tree is not producing flowers this year. Why even girdle the tree at all? Wouldn't it produce flowers the next year since it took this year off due to the alternate bearing? My Lamb took this year off. I have no plans of girdling the tree. My thoughts would be since it took this year off on flowering, my hopes would be that it will flower next spring.

@gregalderdotcom

2 ай бұрын

Girdling can be used to accomplish various things. With my Lamb, I didn't want to merely induce flowering, but I wanted to induce flowering ONLY in one section of the tree. In other words, I wanted to prevent flowering in other sections of the tree. That way, those sections that weren't girdled can just grow vegetatively this year and then be girdled to induce flowering the following year. It's a way of manipulating the tree into flowering and fruiting every year rather than having ON and OFF years for the tree as a whole. See my post and videos in the description above for how I've done this with my Hass tree.

@1970SBenny

2 ай бұрын

​@gregalderdotcom thank you for the clarification. My Lamb which is taking this year off is as you said growing lots of vegetation. I don't think I have ever seen it look so full and lush with leaves.

In second 12 through second 26. You were showing your house tree that has been gurgled three times. There appears to be a giant long cuke on that tree. Is that the case?

@gregalderdotcom

2 ай бұрын

Ha! That does look like a super long cuke. No, that's just a branch.

From what I'm seeing, the smaller / younger the tree the less likely it is to respond to girdling. But I guess more testing is required.

@gregalderdotcom

2 ай бұрын

Definitely a pattern there in my yard. The weird thing is that I've seen Hass trees elsewhere as young as two years in the ground responding to girdling with abundant flowering. But maybe that's a Hass thing. I've never tried to girdle a young Hass tree in my yard.

Hi Greg, very interesting results to girdling different trees. When do you usually girdle your trees?

@gregalderdotcom

2 ай бұрын

November 2 is my favorite date.

Hey Greg, my Lamb flowered last year and set fruits for this year, I guess this year is an off year it didn’t flower at all, my question is how do I approach girdling this coming winter since it’s gonna flower anyway next year?

@gregalderdotcom

2 ай бұрын

I only have this single experience girdling Lamb, but I'd say that if it's a vigorous and healthy tree you might girdle half of it this fall to try to get it to only flower on that half, and then you can girdle the other half next fall. That's the idea, anyway. The girdling can both induce flowering and shift the flowering to the girdled limb such that the non-girdled limbs don't flower, or don't flower much. Then they grow well with no fruit on them and are prime for girdling and flowering the next year.

Does girdling work on seeling trees that do not flower yet?

@MrSunergy

2 ай бұрын

Sorry..seedling trees