5 Reasons Why Your Fruit Tree Might Not be Producing Fruit

Fruit trees are a long term investment. It takes several years for a small tree to start producing, and often, your first few harvests are nothing to brag about. Well, what if all of the work you are putting into your orchard is not paying off? The following are five reasons your fruit trees might not be producing fruit.

1. Improper Pruning

Pruning fruit trees is a combination of art and science. Knowing where and how much to prune can affect your trees ability to produce fruit. Make sure you are not removing the fruiting branches. On apple and pear trees, fruit will grow on older mature branches called spurs. On stone fruit, your trees will produce on new young branches called water sprouts. Understanding what type of fruit tree you have and where the fruit occurs is the first step in insuring that you fruit trees will produce fruit.

For more information about the care and pruning of fruit trees, please subscribe here:

SUBSCRIBE

If the fruiting branches are removed from your tree or they are not receiving enough light, then your trees might not produce fruit. It is important that the fruiting branches remain and the non fruiting branches are thinned in such a way that your tree is receiving the light that it needs to produce a good crop.

2. Pollination

Just like most living organisms, many fruit trees need two to reproduce. Even self fertile varieties will do better if they are pollinated by another tree. Fruit trees bloom. Each bloom has male parts and female parts, but it is important to make sure that the pollen from one tree is applied to female parts of another. This can be done by hand, but it works better if you allow nature to do the work. Bees, ants, wasps, butterflies and beetles can all act as pollinators. Flowers attract such insects with their sweet nectar. If you use harmful chemicals on or around your tree, there is a possibility that these insects are not present in your garden and good pollination may not occur.

Honey Bees are Not the Only Pollinators

If your fruit trees are the only flowering plant in several square miles, then a short burst of spring flowers might not be enough to attract pollinators to your trees. Pollinators need food during the spring, summer, and fall. If you are not using pesticides in your garden and you still don't attract pollinators, you may need to plant more flowers and make sure that something is blooming in your garden all year long.

Turns Out Weeds and Bugs Can be a Good Thing

3. Frost

Most fruit trees bloom early in the spring and blossoms can be extremely sensitive to cold temperatures. Depending on your climate and the variety of your fruit trees this problem can eliminate your fruit production. Once your trees have set fruit, its tolerance to frost increases, but it doesn't mean your out of the woods. The following link will take you to a chart that shows the frost tolerance of most fruit tree buds at various stages.

https://extension.usu.edu/productionhort/fruit/tree/CriticalTemperaturesFrostDamageFruitTrees.pdf

There are many creative ways to protect trees from frost, and they usually include a heat source and a cover. I did hear of gardeners in Canada planting apricot trees next to their driveway, so they could pile snow around their trees all winter long until it was completely buried. When warm temperature arrive in the spring, the snow around the trees will take several weeks to melt, delaying the bloom time enough to prevent late frosts from destroying fruit production.

Crab Apple Buried in the Snow

4. Root Stock

Many times in my career, I have been called out to prune a tree that has never produced fruit. When I see a beautiful multi-trunk fruit tree I know exactly why it doesn't produce. My first question is usually, "Did you plant this tree?". If the client says "Yes", then my follow up question is, "Did it die and come back from the roots?" If the second answer is "Yes", then I can explain the difference between root stock and scions. Fruit trees are comprised of two different trees. The Root stock that supplies the tree with nutrients and controls the height and vigor of the tree and the fruiting wood, or scion, that is a clone of all other fruit trees of it's kind. It's the only way to make sure a Honeycrisp is a Honeycrisp and not a bastardized version that was corrupted when a honey bee mixed the pollen from a crab apple with the blossom of a Honeycrisp. The fruit would still be a Honeycrisp, but the seed would not. Seeded fruit trees will always be a surprise hybrid and may or may not be the next best thing.

Root Stock, Graft Union, Scion

If the scion dies and the tree comes back from the roots, you have a root stock tree which, in most cases, will not produce fruit. Another way to tell if your fruit tree is root stock is to look for thorns. Most modern fruit varieties have been bred to not have thorns. If your fruit trees is thorny, there is a good chance that it is a sucker and not a desirable fruit tree.

5. Alternating years

Many fruit trees will begin to produce cyclically. Trees will have an "on" year, followed by an "off" year. This can be avoided. If your tree was pruned improperly, did not get pollinated, or froze, (off year) then it probably took a break and focused on growth instead of fruit production. It's not uncommon for it to have a bumper crop (on year) the next season. If each and every node, or fruiting bud is producing fruit, then the tree might not produce the microscopic flower parts for the next year (off year). And so the cycle begins.

The way to avoid alternating years, is to thin off 40-60 percent of the fruit on the "on" year so that the buds can then begin to develop new microscopic flower parts for the next season. The sooner the thinning happens, the more time the tree will have to respond to the thinning and get ready for the next season.

Thin Fruit as Soon as Possible in the Spring

If your fruit trees are not producing fruit every year, it's possible that one of these five problems are happening in your orchard.

Thanks for Reading! If you would like to learn more about the care and pruning of fruit trees, please browse our 100+ fruit tree articles here, join our Backyard Fruit Growers Facebook Group, and take our free Fruit Tree Pruning Course. Also, please subscribe to our Fruit Pruning YouTube Channel.