Can others describe how to determine whether trees have been pollinated and offer some pics of the same? Not many bees so far, and I have been walking around trying to determine what sort of fruit to expect.
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If there’s a sign the tree/blooms give us the same day the bloom gets fertilized, I’d like to know what it is, too.
You could get a tiny paint brush or a Q-tip and help the bees get the job done if you only have a few trees and want to try and do the pollinating by hand. Usually 3 to 5 days I know if a fruit was set, but some take longer before can distinguish which blooms were fertilized and which weren’t.
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It would be nice to know if a nectarine and/or plum is pollinated. After I moved my Santa Rosa plum from a pot and put it into the ground in a different corner of the yard, I had really poor fruit set for several years. Last year I hand pollinated a section of the tree and that was the only section that set any fruit. My local pollinators were just not giving it any love. So as the tree blooms I’ve been hand pollinating them. I recently put a nectarine tree somewhat near the plum so I’ve been hand pollinating it as well. Yesterday I super pleased to see a bee going through it’s blossoms, so I left the tree alone after that.
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@JCT I recommend you graft some varieties with a similar bloom time so the wind can also be put to work (thats what i’ve been working at the last few years as i live in a windy area). Surprisingly the biggest pollinator of my 2 80+ year old cherry trees the last 2 years was hummingbirds…man do they hammer through the blooms amazing to watch! They even chose the cherry blooms over the neighbours feeders making me wonder if they like pollen too?
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I did not know that some stone fruit could be wind pollinated. I’ve just started attempting to graft and have had many more failures than successes, but I’ll have to keep trying. It does look like the Beauty Plum graft onto the Santa Rosa has taken, the grafted scion is actually blooming. I’m a little afraid to cut the blossoms off as I do not want to disturb the graft. If for some reason one of its blooms does take, I’ll definitely cut the fruit off.
I also had one of two hybrid nectarine scions take and it is putting out a lot of green growth.
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Santa Rosa and Beauty are self-fruitful as like peaches and nectarines. When the trees have flowers and it is not raining, there should be enough fruits set. Pluot trees require another plum or pluot tree blooming as the same time. The problem is blooming time for each one is unpredictable each year. Also, if the citrus are blooming, the bees will ignore the other fruit trees. Apple trees have the same problems. That is why I kept adding more varieties each year hoping there will be some overlapping time. I always admire the ones who can hand pollinate. How do you do it? The moment I touched the flowers they fell off.
@anon18642480 to fand pollinate use super soft/floxible little kids paint beush and dab gently
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Thank you. I think my problem is I am better at banging on the pavers. I will try again with the paint brush. The Q-tip is too big for me to dab gently, the cotton end got tangle with the flower when I tried to reach the inside part. The only thing I got some success with was for cherimoya because the flowers are very sturdy. Sadly, my region is too hot so the fruit will dried up when summer comes. I only got one ripen for all these years.
I put up a house for and released some Blue Orchard Bees this weekend. Fingers crossed that they do their magic… I’ll hand pollinate a few if I’m not very confident of their work.
Unlike last year at this stage though I’m seeing lots of bumblebees working blooms.
I have been putting out about 10 mason bees every couple of days and I have seen them on the fruit trees. I still havent seen many signs of them at the houses, though. I am hoping they are helping with pollination