MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
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Anybody got apple trees in their garden? The fruit on ours is dropping off, all very small and in very poor condition.
The trees look healthy enough but the crop is going to be nothing, I guess the weather is to blame?
The crop off ours keeps the blackbirds fed in the winter months, 2 years ago when the deep snow was here we had 17 blackbirds all feeding at the same time, how do they know there is food there? Normally we seem to have 2 regular pairs in our garden.
Matt the bird man of the NW Alpes.
Weather is the cause, lots of trees like that
Neighbours tree has THREE apples whereas the past 2 years have been bumper crops.
Other trees I can see across gardens are doing ok though.
Don't they have alternate years or similar ?
Has had me looking into making cider with cheap ASDA juice instead !
The tree at my Parents is the same. Last year was an absolutely bumper crop - this year = useless. I was all up for making cider this year and now I can't - my life is so hard.
Seems to be a general problem wit hboth apples & pears this year. None of our apple trees even had blossom on them this year - last year one tree had so much fruit on it the top snapped off!
All the trees in my locale are the same as well.
Mine has bugger all fruit on too - bad year.
It is also a old monster of an apple tree too - getting to be as tall as the house!
Been a very weird year for mine too.. I've had a couple of mature Bramleys die completely. The other bramleys seem ok (small fruit). A couple of eaters doing terrible and one overloaded.. Not a single pear this year on any tree.. Hardly any cherries or damsons but LOADS of plums.
It makes no sense.
Our apple tree will be useless as well this year. The fruit that's on it looks OK, but there will only be a handful of apples compared to previous years. Have a couple of esplanaded(sp?) pear trees as well, one of which is completely loaded with fruit, the other hasn't got a single pear on it. Weird.
My plums are rubbish this year, hardly any fruit.
Last year was good and they do seem to boom and bust.
No cherries this year either
Its grim (and wet) in Yorkshire
A ecologically minded colleague of mine pointed out how few flowers there have been this year due to the poor weather. If stuff isn't flowering, it isn't being pollenated, and it won't fruit.
Not enough bees around in spring to pollenate the flowers
Some varieties could be self pollinating, not requiring bees.. they would surely do better than the ones that needed bees?
It's a bad year here, except for Victoria Plums. The weather gets the blame. Some flowers were not pollinated or otherwise failed to set. Bitter pit seems bad in apples, maybe from too much rain.
Plum tree is good, 3 x cooking apple trees have a total of about 6 apples on, 4 x eating apple trees are empty and one looks very ill and is going to get pulled out. 1 x espallier apple did well
So no cooking apples this year but frankly I'd rather have that than have to collect 100 fallen apples before being able to mow under the trees!
It could be because of the hot weather in March which made the trees think the summer and caused any early flowering - was here followed by a cold spell in April which stopped pollination and budding.
Here in Scottish Borders most tress have almost no fruit!
No plums, no crab apples, no pears, and only 2 of my apple trees have any fruit on them, and that fruit is of poor quality.
I think what anjs said is correct, wet weather early in the year kept bee numbers down and so nothing was pollinated. I've got a couple of bee houses in my garden which have had little or no activity this year 🙁