Nectarines require a lot of chill hours. It is possible your zone doesn't have enough.

My nectarine tree did the same thing after I planted it--flowers but no fruit. It was like that for 2-3 years. I have no idea why. I'm pretty sure that mine got enough chill hours. This year, it produced a lot of nectarines. There were so many that I had to thin them. I'm waiting to see what happens next year. I previously had another nectarine tree and it produced every year, starting the year that I got it. Some varieties do need more chill hours than others.

Great, not knowing the variety it's likely we'll never get fruit. We do not get many chill hours here at all. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. I never would have thought of it.

It could be lack of chill hours. If the nectarine has a higher chill requirement than you get, they tend to leaf out later and the blooms are not viable. I have had that problem the last 2 years. They bloom out nicely, but none of the blooms produce a fruit. The lower chill hour peaches bloomed and made fruit.

I wonder if there are any varieties that are suitable to orange county, CA. She must have purchased it locally so that's odd.

Sadly, if she bought it from a big box store it is not odd at all. They seem to offer the same trees in all their stores statewide. I have seen trees with a chill hours requirement of over 800 besides trees with a requirement of 150. There are some nectarines with low chill hours but I think all need at least 200 hours.

It was home depot. I remember the top of the tag. I think we just had a record cold and rainy winter too. If it didn't get enough this year well...

Tropic Beauty peach has a chill requirement of only 150 chill hours. I really like Tropic Snow, a white flesh peach with very good flavor that has a requirement of only 200 chill hours.

My husband says if I they turn out to be white fruit variety he'll replace it. He likes yellow. :) I just wish I knew the variety.

The tropic beauty is a yellow peach. I do not like white flesh peaches but I really like the tropic snow peach. It has a good complex taste, unlike most white peaches I have eaten. Arctic Star is a lower chill nectarine that has a good complex taste that is also a white flesh. Sunraycer Nectarine is yellow fleshed that needs 275 chill hours. Not sure how many chill hours you average each year.

Oooooh I misread. I looked our chill hours up earlier for this year. I think it said about 145.

I disagree about the home depot trees. I've found they stock fruit trees that do very well in the local climates with some exceptions. As an example, ours carries bing cherries which I don't get near enough chill hours to reliable harvest. The folks that live a half hour away in the mountains do though. Harvest time equals time in the ground from what I have seen. Give your tree another few years and you should see some fruit. I have a third year in the ground fruit cocktail tree. I have one peach, 12 apricots, and some plums on it now. All the first time fruiting for me. No nectarines yet.

It's a beautiful tree. I will give it a few years to see what happens. I hope we get some fruit sometime soon. I really appreciate all the advice and comments!

It looks like some of the branches died back. You might want to cut those out.

The ones with no leaves? Some of that was newer too. I wasn't sure how to prune it once it was growing well. I pruned it when I first got it but that was when it was leafless. Would it harm it if I cut off all of the wood with no leaves?

It looks like some of the growth from last year died, quite a bit of it actually. I dont know why...

But i would cut the dead portions out.

I'll cut it tonight. Thanks for the advice. I've done lots of research on my citrus trees but I don't know much about the nectarine. Seems they require a lot more water than I'm used to. We had a really wet winter this year, so maybe that's not the cause.

I dont know what the cause might be, but i hope the new growth you have this year doesn't die over the winter.

Me too! We don't ever even get frost, so I don't think that's it. I'll have to pay this little tree more attention.