Winter pruning can reduce the need for flower or fruitlet thinning on trees that regularly set too many fruits
- On trees which are making excessive numbers of flowers, too many of which set resulting in poor fruit size, spur reduction should be carried out as part of winter pruning.
- On trees where excessive flowering is accompanied by minimal new shoot growth, some renewal pruning of branches should be carried out to restore a better balance between shoot growth and flowering.
- This usually entails heading back some of the branches quite severely.