Apples and Cherries

[TNHermit]

I was out picking strawberries and I noticed that there were NO apples on my apple trees and very few cherries on the cherry trees. And those did not look good. I hadn't noticed before. There were plenty of blossoms on the cherry trees but I don't think the apple ever blossomed ??. They didn't get caught in a freeze or frost so what is up with that. Neighbor said they had no apples either!!

There goes the cherry pie and wine:cry::evil::mrgreen:

[Lardel]

Cherry wine? ooh, that sounds sooo good!!
I was just looking at my apple trees yesterday and wondering when they were supposed to blossom. Ours didn't get caught in a freeze either.

[hereiam]

Had both apple trees flower, as did my nectarine and cherry. However, the plum never did. Now what's up with that??

My only thought was that chilling hours might not have been sufficient for the plum variety this winter as not all fruit trees have the same chilling time required each season.

So did ya'll have a mild winter perhaps??

[hunybee]

how old are your trees? have you pruned them lately? have you fertilized with the right fertilizer for maximum blossoms? some varieties produce alternate years, are your trees of this type?

[Summerthyme]

Most apple varieties are natural biennial producers. You can control that to a certain extent by pruning yearly; proper pruning thins the potential crop, and you get yearly reasonable sized crops, rather than one huge crop one year and few to no fruits the next.

Severe temperatures during the winter (generally much colder than anything you'd get, though) can damage the latent fruit buds, and ruin the next year's crop. However, temps in the "normally acceptable" range, if you get an odd unseasonal weather break earlier, can also kill buds. For example, if you get a really warm spell in January, especially for more than a day or two, it may get the trees to start breaking dormancy. If the buds start swelling too early, and then winter sets back in... you may have a very poor crop that year.

One other thing... never fertilizer fruit trees past about July 1st. Late fertilization can also create new tender growth later in the year than normal... and that growth won't generally survive winter.

We had 23° here Sunday night and 26° last night. I'm not sure we'll have any fruit crop at all. Sigh...

Summerthyme

[garnetgirl]

My cherry tree bloomed out beautifully, was not exposed to a killing frost, and no cherries this year, either. I have a Montmorency pie cherry. However, it produced so well last year that I still have cherry jam and pie filling left over. My apples are not making apples either. Everything else is still too young to produce (if they survive the deer nibblings). Blueberries look great - loaded with fruit - they are pretty dependable, except for a late frost at the wrong time - lost them all about 2-3 years back.

garnetgirl

[LP]

We are new to gardening, but the house we're in, which we bought 6 years ago, came with apple and peach trees. Having other things occupying our minds, we didn't do anything with the trees all this time, except prune. We had a lot of fruit on each of the trees, but deer would eat most of it. This year though, we decided to spray the trees because we'd noticed bug rotten fruit last year. And now, so far, hardly any fruit at all. We also didn't have as many blossoms this year as usual. I thought maybe we'd done something wrong with our spraying, but after reading the comments here, it must be something else going on.

[Summerthyme]

Have any of you observed bees (of any kind, but particularly honeybees) around? We're very blessed in that we have at least one thriving wild hive, which I've been encouraging in every way I can! I noticed several years ago that my crocus flowers, which I've naturalized all over our lawn, were a true honeybee magnet in the very early spring- I suspect they are the very first nectar plants they can find on those first cleansing flights from the hive. So, I keep planting more (I also have a couple thousand daffodil bulbs naturalized in the lawn, plus a few hundred tulips, but those bloom after other flowers are available, including many of the fruit trees).

But about 6-8 years ago, I wasn't seeing a single bee on my apple trees. So, for three years I hand pollinated them, and it looked like it helped, because the fruit set on the lower branches (where I could reach!) was much, much heavier than the branches I didn't get to. Then we started noticing the honeybees on those early spring crocuses, and this year they were in numbers which looked like a floating carpet above the crocus patches, and you could actually hear them humming from quite a distance.

One other factor for those of you who only have a few trees, and don't live where there are wild apples (or other wild varieties of your particular fruit)- CROSS POLLINATION. If you only have two apple trees and they are biennial bearers, you may not get much fruit, if they're "out of synch"... on with tons of blooms, the other with few or none. A good pollinator for almost any apple variety is a crab apple, and they don't generally have the biennial bloom problem.

As always, if you have questions of this nature, contact your local Co-op extension folks. I know, some aren't as helpful as others, but most can be a great resource, and if they don't know the answer to your question, they can often find someone who does. And their biggest asset is they are LOCAL to you... they may know exactly why your particular trees are giving you fits..

Summerthyme

[Nicho1]

Oddly enough, I have noticed the same thing recently. I have 3 varieties of apples...golden delicious, red delicious and stayman winesap. The winesap was the only one that blossomed this year and it had hundreds of blossoms. The temperatures were good during the blooming phase and I also have bees which were active on those blossoms. So far, I've spotted only 3 small apples! I'm glad this thread was brought up because I was wondering about this. My peach tree has some fruit so I don't know what is going on.

[Summerthyme]

Nicho... are there plenty of other apple trees around which bloomed when your tree did?

Summerthyme

[garnetgirl]

Bumblebees are my usual pollinators, however, I have new neighbors and they brought their honey bees (the kind of neighbors you want, yes?) and their bees are already visiting my garden. I am so happy to see them!

garnetgirl

[morningstar]

Cherry trees produce a heavy harvest every two years. I had gallons of cherries off one tree last year, but I'll probably only get a couple of quarts this year.

[minnie]

I have (had) a 2 yo cherry tree. 3 days ago my son ran over it with the lawn mower. He broke it off right at ground level. Right now I have it sitting in a bucket of rooting hormone - going to try to re-plant. Before this happened it bloomed nicely and is covered with cherries. Even though we had a late freeze.

[Boogaloo]

There goes the cherry pie and wine:cry::evil::mrgreen:

NOOOO!!!! No cherry wine? Last year, I tried my first serious attempt at 5 gallons of cherry wine and made half of the bottles into champagne. It was WONDERFUL! Next year if you get some cherries, try adding powdered sugar to your bottles before you seal them (find the amount on the internet if interested). I added half the amount and used non-champagne bottles, but a heavy duty screw-on glass container. Respect the power of fermentation, right? Anyways, I didnt need to worry about the sediment as it was reduced sugar and the result was amazing. Give it a try sometime.

Boo