Apple tree hasn't blossomed

AKMild | 13:31 Mon 28th Jun 2010 | Gardening

5 Answers

I have a mature apple tree that regularly produces a good harvest. However, since the winter, the tree has been bare of leaves and blossom and to all intents and purposes, now that summer's here, it looks dead. I've never done anything to it, I've always left it to its own devices. Any ideas what could have gone wrong? Do apple trees just die after a given time?

Hydrangeas

Cheshunt Compound

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Clanad

Most apple trees (at least here in the western U.S.) live a good 25 years or so. Fact is though, no blooms = no fruit. Could you have experienced a late frost? Or, perhaps, did you prune them late last season or early this one? Additionally, there are all kinds of blight that affect apple trees, fire blight being the most common here...

If you cut the tree down, be sure to cart off the wood or burn it immediately since to keep the wood stored will certainly produce the blight in other trees...

modeller

I had a similar problem and I felt it was lack of water for the amount of foliage .
So I removed 80% of the canopy which opened it up to air and sun . I dug a 1ft ( 30cm ) hole all around it and 9 ft ( 3m ) across. I filled the hole with water and then with tree and shrub compost plus fertilizer. Within a month it had come back to life and this year it is back to its former glory . Apple tree orchards can live for 100 years according to the experts I have spoken to , so it may be worth a go , if it's not completely dead.

johnk

Some trees will stay dormant for a whole year. trying the previous post suggestion wouldn't do any harm and might spark it into life.

Hymie

As a child, our garden had an enormous cooking apple tree that produced copious large fruit every year. Then one year, for no apparent reason, the crop was more than 75% down on usual. None of the other apple trees in the garden showed any discernable reduction that year. Subsequent years, the tree produced as normal. Personally I think that the tree decided to take a break from fruit bearing, and conserve its energy for its own growth – rather than producing offspring.