This seems to be happening all over. People on a listserve I read are reporting the same thing.

Of my 3 bearing apples, only the Gala flowered, sparsely, but they seem to have set fruit, so I should have several dozen - much less than its usual crop.

My Seckel pear flowered profusely, but no fruits.

Most everything else - no flowers, no fruit, nothing.

I need to go look at one neighbor's Honeycrisp, one of the few apples in the neighborhood that did flower well. [edited - a double dozen fruits seem to have set]

I did a short tour of the neighborhood and found barren trees and trees that appear to have bloomed abundantly but set little or no fruit. I'm giving more weight to the bee hypothesis. Most of the days during bloom, the temps never got above 50 and the bees didn't fly.

Of course that can't explain the trees that never bloomed at all.

It just seems more extreme than ordinary biennial bearing.

This post was edited by ltilton on Sat, May 31, 14 at 14:53

Happened down here in the deep south as well to a lesser extent, it may have been due to our very unusual April 15th freeze that had a low of 28 which also totally wiped out my peach and plum crop. My Pink Lady was full of blooms but zero fruit set. Other varieties showing lower than normal fruit set.

Are you sure it was 28 only? That is not critical here and quite normal through petal fall. Below 26 and you begin to worry.

Here, there were no frost issues at all- bloom came so late that no species faced frost danger, not even apricots.

I should mention that my fruit trees were mostly frozen out by several extremely late low 20's frosts the year before last, which may be contributing to at least the problem of trees with almost no flowers.

From recent reading I've done, it seems correcting biennial bearing can be more complicated than simply adequate thinning, particularly following total crop failure (the problem coming two seasons later). Commercial growers in the east must sometimes resort to hormonal sprays that encourage flowering in addition to thinning fruit. Two sets of chemicals, in other words. If I'd put that spray down last year, maybe I'd have a good crop this one.

Harvestman:

I think you're right to go back to the total freeze out yr before last. That's likely the root of your issue. After a total freeze out like that commercial growers, as in MI last yr, were told to thin ruthlessly or risk continuing issues the following yr, ie this yr. I'd say you didn't thin enough last yr. That's what your trees are telling you. I'm just chiming in same chorus.

FN, if thinning ruthlessly is always adequate, in and of itself, why do commercial growers here sometimes need to spray gibberellin as well as a thinner cocktail to break the biennial spell? This in orchards with dawn to dusk sun, precise nutrient and water management and mostly fairly cooperative varieties where chemical and hand thinning is done in a timely manner every season.

I'm just asking you to entertain the possibility that more than one issue may be in play with biennial bearing.

Also, it was much more than a matter of trees not flowering here- that could be the result of over bearing, but what about the Braebern and Jonathon I have that flowered fully but also did not set much fruit? Those trees both bore well last year as well as years preceding the freeze out.

Of course, it's impossible for me to know if your suggestion is or isn't correct- and maybe if I'd thinned more and sooner the trees would have all bore well, but the flowering not fruiting trees make me doubtful that it would have helped them. The flowers looked healthy and strong.

One other thing, I have 3 Goldrush apples that were thinned at the same time with same spacing last year- one has a normal crop the other two have almost nothing. None of them were frozen out the preceding year.

I haven't had a decent Montmorency cherry crop in 8 years. This year, the cherries are not dropping and the tree is loaded. Will start netting it tomorrow. That is the good news. Out of my nine apple trees if I get two dozen apples this year I will be happy. I will have my first three 'Shui Mi Tao' white Chinese peaches this year and a bumper crop from my 'un-named' variety of white peaches. Only had one yellow 'Elberta' last year and after much thinning this year I should have about 40. I will have a few Italian plums only. Boy this is hard! Nothing seems to be predictable in orchard life. At least the sun is out today! Mrs. G

My Jon-a- gold has a really good fruit set this year...last year too. Jon-a Red set well too. Golden delicious hardly any blossoms...declining tree.

FN, I should have mentioned that the giberrelin is a plant hormone that coaxes the formation of flowers buds.

Mrs. G, I'm glad you have a crop of cherries to cook with. I'm surprised they have been so often barren as sites where I manage them they are dependably annual.

HM if you are saying that properly used chemical thinners are more effective than hand thinning, I think that's definitely true. The chemical thinners start when the apples are 5-6 mm, very small. They hit them a couple times more if needed and follow up with hand thinning as a last resort.

The recent article in GFG about apple thinning is very informative. Apples that are going to fall off can be predicted by their growth rate. Apples growing half as fast as fastest are destined to fall off.

In the Cape Cod area out of my 26 apple trees They are all pretty loaded with pollinated apples especially my Macoun and my Granny Smith apple trees. My Jonagold seem to carry a heavy load every year. The only trees that have very few this year is My Golden delicious and my two Macs which I think could just be my inexperience with thinning them enough and allowing too much of a crop load last year. turning them possibly biennial.

I can rarely contribute to these conversations, but for what it's worth, I had to do very little thinning this year. Interestingly enough, I had fruit set on some trees, none on others.

I have 8 nectarines that flowered and set NO fruit. Some peaches have set, some did not. 20 of 26 apples set. Pluots set, Plums and Plumcots did not. 4 year "in the ground" pears still no set, but that seems par for the course. Funny, after a 5 year endeavor, I seem to have a reason for not producing much. BUT, I still have hope.

All of my trees blossomed and set heavy fruit. I had one pear(pineapple) that is an early bloomer. It bloomed but got zapped by a late freeze and set no fruit. It's the first time this tree has never set fruit. This was the harshest winter we've had in a long time, and I lost one apple tree (red devil) completely My problem is keeping the squirrels out of the trees. I've already disposed of 20 of them in May alone.

I don't thin out my trees just let nature do it's job and for some reason have never seen the biennial bearing with these trees...plus I like a smaller apple anyway. I get June drop and lose a lot of apples so I figure the trees know what it can grow better then me...plus with animals and insects I lose more apples to them.

I did notice the same here, apple trees were in bloom and it seemed to cold for the bees...no frost problem though. I have a lot of apples set just need to see if they were pollinated, still to early to tell. The winds were crazy too when they were blooming so maybe I'm ok.

Peach tree set not blossom at all this year so the winter has something to do with this problem...that's my bet.

Because I was involved in moving and planting trees in my nursery at the time (same land as my orchard trees), I got to study the bees doing their work. As I said, the Braebern and Jonathon that flowered well were extremely well tended by a range of buzzem buddies. Kidd's Orange Red, Baldwin (2 that did set) in my orchard and a score of varieties in my nursery were in bloom at the same time.

This year, the blossoms of Brae and Jon just didn't take well.

The only place I saw bees actively at work this year was on the Asian frankenplum tree, which bloomed very sparsely but it was the only blossom game in town. Not a single fruit set on this tree that I've had to thin very heavily in the past.

otoh, my Gala apple, which had so little bloom I expected no fruit, has set an astonishingly high percentage of fruits/bloom.

So I don't understand at all what's going on.

But in addition to my surviving hornfaced mason bees, I got 100 new blue orchard bees, and looking at the nesting box now, there aren't more than a dozen filled tubes. Something is wrong.

I'm noticing the same thing on a few of my trees. My Sweet Sixteen had enough blooms, but I don't see a single apple now. Maybe I'm missing a few in all the Surround, but it should have quite a crop given its size (1.5" caliper last year, producing about 40 apples, and 2" caliper this year).

Several other trees are also very patchy- certain sections of the trees have plenty of fruit and others were skipped entirely. I wonder if it has to do with the path that pollinators took.

I've been thinking about getting a honeybee hive- maybe that would have helped. My wife suggested it for the honey, but I'm more interested in getting everything pollinated.

I also have a few very late bloomers where I'm still not sure what the fruit-set will be. Pomme Gris still has a few flowers, which I've tried to avoid hitting with Surround.

Check the blooms next year on a warm day and see how much attention they are getting. I have quite a posse here, with carpenter bees leading the charge, but a host of smaller buzzers as well.

I only manage one Sweet 16 and it has taken for ever to come into productivity. Only N. Spy has been slower at that site, and just barely.