I remember my Grandpa whacking his under-producing apple tree on the trunk with a bat!
Never did get the skinny on the reason it worked, but he swore by it; we never lacked for apples when I was growing up.
Never did get the skinny on the reason it worked, but he swore by it; we never lacked for apples when I was growing up.
There was once a saying that went like this: "A woman, a dog, and a walnut tree, the more you beat them the better they be."
Yes, an atrocious sentiment. Nonetheless, a lot of people were convinced that whacking a walnut tree not only shook the walnuts off, but thinned out branches.
I remember older people doing the same thing to sugar maples and fruit trees when I was a kid, claiming it was to "help the sap flow." Weird as some of the old traditions sound, the best fruits and vegetables were usually those grown by people who planted by the moon phases and indulged in some of those seemingly odd old traditions.
I think something about the trauma makes them focus. There are experiments where they determined plants were "scared" of certain people because they'd ripped out their compatriots by the roots. These traumatized plants performed better than a control. If I have a plant that's not producing, I threaten it. "You better give me a flower or I'll replace you!" That works, but so does talking sweet to them.
MarQ
whacking his under-producing apple tree
I have a wisteria that’s over 20 years old. It has never flowered. Someone once told me to hit it with a bat for about a week in the spring and it would flower the next year. I tried it for a couple days, then would forget to do it. It has something to do with the plant getting stressed and producing more flowers/seeds as a survival mechanism. At this point I just want it removed. They can be damaging to your structures.