Fruit Trees

By Kathy Purdy March 25, 2003 – Posted in: Plant info

Which pears and sweet cherries do you grow? Where did you get them, locally or mail order?

About the Author

Kathy Purdy is a colchicum evangelist, converting unsuspecting gardeners into colchicophiles. She gardens in rural upstate NY, which used to be USDA Hardiness Zone 4 but is now Zone 5. Kathy’s been writing since 4th grade, gardening since high school, and blogging since 2002. Find her on Instagram as kopurdy.

Pear & Cherry notes

More from the Northland

What differentiates a bulb from a perennial plant is that the nourishment for the flower is stored within the bulb itself.…There is something miraculous about the way that a little grenade of dried up tissue can explode into a complete flower.

~Monty Don in The Complete Gardener pp. 142

Comments on this entry are closed.

Judith August 19, 2004, 10:48 am

Many things factor in fruitfulness. Maybe your tree is just young. Apples frequently don’t bear until 7 or 8 years old (but then go on for many decades).
They need nearly full sun to fruit.
Applying lawn fertilizer near them can suppress fruiting (and weed and feed in particular is damaging). Fruits all need a higher phosphorus to nitrogen ratio in the soil—you could try adding rock phosphate, spraying with a soluble phosphate solution like microphos, or give it a bloom booster fertilizer with the “P” # at least 2 to 3x the “N”.
Apples need pollinators (honeybees & such)—-has your neighbor sprayed the life out of the neighborhood?
If it has set fruit before but didn’t this year, a late frost could have killed the flowers.
Red Delicious needs anopther apple (including Lodi or Yellow Delicious or a crabapple like Profusion) to pollinate it. Gravenstein’s pollen is sterile so that won’t work; and your pollinator must bloom at the same time as your Red Delicious.
Whew! It is not as arduous as this all sounds. If you have a County Extension office nearby, likely they will have a good bulletin for free or nearly so, listing suitable pollinating varieties. Good luck!