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Tough love with a baseball bat helps trees bear more fruit.
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Jeff Cox, host of HGTV's Grow It! would never knowingly hurt a tree. But he says one of the best ways to spur a fruit tree to bear fruit is to make it feel as if it's under attack, and therefore needs to produce some seeds so the species will carry on after it dies. So Cox stimulates the reproductive hormones on an unproductive fruit tree by whacking the side of its trunk six to eight times with a sturdy baseball bat. "That makes the tree think, 'Uh oh, I'm going to die, so I better produce some fruit,'" says Cox. Another way to encourage a tree that's not bearing is to pull down the branches that are growing vertically. Once you've got them in a nearly horizontal position, tie them to a stake in the ground with string. Repeat the process with limbs around the entire tree, so sunlight will bathe the limbs, encouraging them to produce flowers and fruit next year.
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