In my experience precocity is highly dependent on growing conditions and rootstock. Contrary to what makes sense the faster a tree grows the earlier it will bear, at least in some cases. I've had both Fuji and Pink Lady bear heavily in second leaf when they grew a lot the first leaf. Those were both in long season areas, TX and CA, respectively. My second leaf Pink Lady in CA must have carried 20-30 lbs of fruit after thinning. It never ripened properly even into January due to too much nitrogen.

I don't think that such a list could be very accurate over the whole country given the wide range of root stocks, growing locations, soil types, micro-climate conditions, weather variations, fertilizer applications etc that will affect the time of first fruiting. And often my first fruits, when there were just the first few, dropped off at some early point.

Of course, there are some variations between species and within species which are well known. Pears tend to be slow fruiting on standard rootsocks (ever hear the phrase "you grow pears for your heirs"?), while peaches and Japanese plums tend to be quicker to fruit than pome fruit. European plums tend to be slower to bear than Japanese types. One of my favorite apples, Northern Spy, is notorious for being slow to bear fruit (7-15 years depending on conditions). I hear about and see pics on this forum of 2nd leaf fruit (after planting) on some pome fruit and am amazed, but those people often have better growing conditions or longer seasons than I (my peaches usually took 4 years for first fruit, apples 4-6 years).

I agree that such a list would be nice even if it just included words like "precocious" or "slow-to-bear".

You can do a search for precocity on Orange Pippin. If you scroll to the bottom under Filter Selection you can choose "Precocity".

Here is a link that might be useful: Search for fruit tree varieties

Yeah... ton of variables here... if growing from seed, they always are going to take longer...even stonefruit take 3 years before I usually get some flowers... Apples from seed? Wouldn't want to find out...same with pears..

If they are grafted/budded..obviously a lot shorter time period, especially if place on some good stock. I budded a bunch of stuff last summer and i can see fruit buds on most branches now, so I will see fruit next year... that is stonefruit. Haven't done much apple budding, but may do some Honeycrisp here anytime and we'll see how long that takes. Obviously you want to have wood from trees that are already in a flowering state (mature)...

Now there are other variables, like sun, temps, water that obviously will factor in somewhat... fertilizer... Then you have things like branch bending, ringing, etc...that can force a tree to flower very young...

I will add this, if you let a young tree fruit...it does seem to limit the amount of new growth ...some of my pluots have put on almost no new growth this summer, so i should have thinned more aggressively...although those being container trees...they do seem to runt out in a few years anyways...

Thanks for the Orange Pippin list milehigh. Frank, I'd just appreciate info on time from planting three year old trees to fruit set on 'bareroot' trees only. I'd keep it simple. Seeds? I won't live that long. LOL

Orange Pippin is a great site although you may want to search the internet by variety and your area. I had a Cox's Orange Pippin that I planted late last year at the back end of my yard where I pretty much didnt visit and in July found nine or ten apples hanging on this little guy. Needless to say when I searched on that variety many sites said it fruited "freely"! I had to add some more stakes to hold it up - even after popping off a few apples. (Nota Bene - These apples are incredibly good - even for someone as picky as myself!)

A category like precocious would be so nice - although if I really want an apple I buy the smallest rootstock and run with it. Even if I had acreage like I did when I was young I'd never again plant standard size trees - I just don't have that much patience anymore!

I also would make one more comment - I believe in using only 22-24-12 the first and maybe second year depending on how much growth I see - in the following years I feed an Orchard blend fertilizer something like 10-13-13 to help encourage great fruiting. Maybe Im overthinking it but my results were so fast and so good Im sticking to my plan!

Orange Pippin also has a tree registry. I'd like to get mine listed at some point.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Fruit Tree Register

I wouldn't count on that Orange Pip precocity list too much- skimming it quickly it really isn't all that specific and not consistently accurate as far as performance in my region. Bosc pear is precocious?- not in my experience. Seckel, Bartlett and Harrow Sweet are much more so in my neck of the woods.

We could maybe start our own list. For J. plums my least precocious is Elephant Heart- it is like an average E. plum that way.

Soil also makes a pretty big difference and I would say that my experience is different than FN's in that more vigorous varieties, at least with apples, are pretty consistently less precocious. Fuji takes a long time to bear here. Honeycrisp, Goldrush, Arkansas Black, Zestar, and most unvigorous types bear young for me. However I have had the same experience with Pink Lady- great growing tree that bears very young.

I get the impression that Fuji needs a lot of light on spurs to produce fruit, so maybe where the sun is stronger it fruits younger. Here I select its scaffolds when they are quite young so they get max sun and fruit sooner.

How varieties react to a rootstock varies a great deal as well. Some are delayed significantly by 111 as compared to M7 but others not at all.

I think one problem with a list is that we each have a different description for say, precocity or yield. If we each had the same level of experience it would be better.

A list comprised of actual facts would be beneficial. Say, soil test results, first/last frost date, diameter of trunk, bloom dates, ripe dates, annual precipitation, and rootstock. It would be good to also list precocity but that would only apply to newly planted trees, and, unless a person has records of first crop, and size of crop, the data should not be entered.

Eventually we could get some good data collected.

Anyone have ideas of how to go about this?

This post was edited by milehighgirl on Thu, Apr 17, 14 at 14:51

Stark Bros. list based on planting 1 - 2 year old trees.

Here is a link that might be useful: Stark Bros.