Flavor Supreme Breaks My Heart

General Fruit Growing
#1

Or maybe it’s the warm weather. 2nd year in a row, FS has very few blossoms and even after hand pollination they just fall off. Flavor King on the left is going gangbusters. I guess high chill+early blooming is not a good combination in my area. :frowning:

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#2

My Flavor King is still a few days away from starting to bloom. My Flavor Supreme (6 years in the ground) on the other hand is just about in full bloom. Here is a picture from this afternoon.

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#3

That tree is gorgeous. I all my short amount of years growing stone fruit, I have never had a tree bloom like that! Maybe this is my year! Wow that is fabulous.

#4

Chilling makes all the difference. Amazing bloom on your FS there Steve. Some of these pluots set 20 or more flower buds on each spur in a tiny cluster. They bloom looking just like little pompoms. Very pretty!

#5

At 700-800 chill hours, Flavor Supreme would be for shade only. As it is, Royal apricot has been spotty needing 400 chill hours.

#6

What a beautiful tree! Do you hand pollinate or rely on bees? I’m seeing much less than usual bee and bumblebee activity in my orchard this year. Or maybe it’s just too early? Today I’ve seen exactly one bee on each of two blooming apricot trees. Some unrecognizable (to me) insects looking like a cross between a small bee and a fly are working the flowers on pluot and plum trees.

#7

I’ve hand pollinated the past couple of years and I’ve had to thin off hundreds of doubles. I think this year I’m going to hand pollinate only half the branches and see how much different the fruit set is.

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#8

picturesque!

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#9

Beautiful tree…looks like a perfect size right there too (at least for me)… You’d break branches if you let all that fruit grow.

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#10

Stan,
Are there Mason Bees there?To me they sort of look like houseflies. Brady

#11

Thanks, it’s right at 6ft now. I cut it back from 8 1/2ft last September. I usually summer prune it twice, once after harvest in late june early july and then again in sept/oct.

#12

@SteveM, that’s real poor form to post that pic in my mourning thread! :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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#13

Ha, I know! :grinning: it was meant to be an inspiration. Give your FS a few more years and it’ll look just like mine. The first few years, mine hardly had any blossoms/fruit and only grew vigorous vegetative wood

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#14

Now that’s real helpful :thumbsup:

#15

Man that really stinks. It’s a crying shame that Flavor Supreme is so darn fickle. I’ve never tasted it but I’m going to graft it this spring. I’ve heard from more than one person that when perfectly ripe a flavor supreme pluot could be the single best piece of fruit you’ll ever eat. For me that makes it worth the space in my orchard. Since I’m not growing for profit I’ll be content to get a reduced crop when compared to other pluots.

#16

Does winter shade help trees barely achieving minimum chill hours? Solar radiation could easily raise the tree temperature above 50F if the air temps are in the 40s.

#17

I think that it may, in that the shading can reduce some of that solar warming which would otherwise partially negate chill hours.

#18

I’m not sure, entomology isn’t my strong suit. :slightly_smiling: I tried to make a photo, but they are small and move fast, this is the best shot I got:

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Here is a photo of another bee-like insect on the same tree:
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This is what I think is a honey bee (on apricot blooms, in a different part of my orchard):

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#19

FWIW, my FS is in complete shade for the entire winter in my backyard.

#20

I took that to mean it will always be a shade tree and not a fruit tree in your location, but I may be wrong.