Identifying the stress factor and treating it will help to remedy the problem. You can have your soil tested to find nutrient deficiencies. You should implement routine control of pests and disease. A tree can also have an excess of soil elements but not enough reserve food. The tree will appear to be healthy and lush during the growing season, but it will not bear fruit regardless of maturity since, in many cases, the tree doesn't even bloom.
If the soil provides plenty of nutrients, like nitrogen either naturally or by adding fertilizer , the tree develops an excess of vegetative growth that will delay the growth of fruiting buds. You can remedy this problem by holding off on fertilizing and waiting until the next growing season for results. There are some extreme solutions that should only be attempted if all else fails : root-pruning or scoring your trees.
Root pruning: Bring a spade or shovel out to the drip line of your trees. The drip line is where the tips of the branches are, but straight down on the ground. Take the spade or shovel and push it straight into the ground and pull it straight back out. Do not dig out any dirt. Move over a foot or two and repeat the process. You are essentially creating a dotted-line circle around your tree's root system, which will clip the feeder roots and "shock" the tree into blooming during the next growing season.
Scoring: This has the same result as root pruning, but scoring should not be your first step to getting your tree to fruit. Consider it a last resort. When scoring your trees, bring a small knife like a pocket-knife out to your tree.
Locate a spot low on the trunk and cut a single horizontal line into the bark, only halfway around the tree. Move up several inches and repeat this, but halfway around the other direction. Do not let these lines connect to one another or you will destroy the phloem tissue and completely disrupt the vascular system of the tree, which will lead to its demise.
See the animated image as a reference for examples of properly scoring the bark halfway around a tree. If you keep these instances in mind, then you will have a better understanding of why a fruit tree does not bear.
Nip a potential problem in the bud and exercise your patience not your lumberjack-swing. Your trees will thank you! Two commonly frustrating questions any grower might ask: "Why won't my fruit tree bloom? Things to Consider When Planting in Your Zone: Trees should be hardy to your zone for a chance to survive winters and summers. Over vigorous trees expend all their energy in growing wood and do not produce flower buds. Typically, this occurs for two reasons: over-fertilization and over-pruning.
Heavy applications of nitrogen will stimulate excessive growth at the expense of flower production. You say you do not fertilize the trees? But, do you fertilize the lawn surrounding the trees? Fruit trees do not know that you are applying nitrogen only for the grass.
Rain can move the nitrogen down past the grass roots where the trees can take it up. So not apply extra fertilizer to the lawn within 5 feet of the spread of the tree's branches. Be careful, because under fertilization can also occur.
The need for fertilizer in the home orchard should be based on soil test results and annual shoot growth. Bearing fruit trees should average 12 to 18 inches of shoot growth per year. Nonbearing young trees should average 18 to 30 inches. If they have greater amount of annual shoot growth it would indicate either you are over pruning or over fertilizing.
If you have too much growth and you are not fertilizing too heavily, you may be over pruning. Heavy winter pruning will also stimulate excessive growth. Fruit trees should be pruned each winter.
However, indiscriminate heading cuts will delay flowering and fruiting. Heading cuts are the main culprit. Apples and pears need to be pruned differently than peaches and other stone fruits.
Before pruning your trees make sure you know where the tree produces flowers and how to prune to encourage flower production. In general, thinning out cuts those that remove an entire branch back to its point of origin are less stimulating and encourage more flower production. Heading cuts the removal of a portion of the branch will stimulate more vegetative growth and delay flowering.
In extreme cases continual heading cuts will totally prevent flowering in apples and pears. Peaches need a combination of heading and thinning since they produce flowers on 1 year old wood. The second leading cause for lack of fruit production is frost damage. The flowers of fruit trees are very sensitive to late spring frosts. Temperatures much below 29 degrees F will prevent fruit formation. The frost does not have to occur during full bloom for the damage to occur.
Once the flower buds begin to swell and develop there is a risk of frost damage. You may not even see the damage, because the flowers may open normally but be unable to set fruit. If you suspect that you have had a frost wait till the following day to examine the flowers. Dark brown to black centers will probably not set fruit that year.
Plant fruit trees on the most frost free section of your land. Look for areas that are either close to the house or slightly elevated. Do not plant trees in low areas of the yard. Plant fruits and varieties that are adapted to your area.
Apricots are usually not very successful in the home orchard because they bloom too early and their flowers are killed by spring frosts. Cherries are next to bloom followed by plums, pears, peaches and apples. If you have consistent late spring frosts then plant trees that bloom later. There are also differences within varieties. For example, in apples McIntosh bloom before Rome Beauty. Therefore, in questionable areas plant the later blooming varieties. Mature trees should be fertilized in the spring before the first irrigation and in the fall after the harvest; trees in their pre-bearing years should be fertilized in the spring before the first watering and once a month from April through July.
Too little zinc in the soil, on the other hand, can also be to blame for the tree not flowering, as the University of California Davis elucidates. You may also notice yellowing, small leaves, with prominent yellowing along the veins. The results from a soil test will verify if you have a zinc deficiency. Correcting this problem can be done with a mixture of 1 gallon of water and 1 to 2 ounces of zinc sulfate. Spray this on your apple tree after the harvest in the first half of November; do not worry about the common side effect of leaf burn because the tree will be about to go dormant.
Overzealous pruning will keep your apple tree from flowering. Apple blossoms appear on spurs that will only grow on branches that are one year old or older.
You can see these 1- to 3-inch spurs growing laterally from the lower branches of the tree. As Harvest to Table points out, the best time for pruning your apple trees is in winter, when they are dormant. When you prune in the winter, you should remove any dying, dead or diseased growth.
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