For whatever reason, I continue to have certain trees in my orchard that just don’t produce many fruits. Are some individual trees just prone to this behavior, is it a varietal trait, or is there some environmental issue that I could address? One is my Jonathon. It’s 8 years old and a beautiful, well-formed tree, but I never get but half a dozen apples off it. It doesn’t even produce many flowers. Another is a Santa Rosa plum. Like the Jonathon, it is the same age, and I have yet to get a plum from it. It, however, is loaded with blossoms but really early in the spring. I wonder about the availability of pollinators. However, I have a Shiro next to it, and it is loaded with fruit. Two other varieties are Sundance and Pixie Crunch. They have put on good growth but have been a nightmare to maintain. They are seven years old, but neither has produced enough to even offer a good sample. Perhaps I’m a little impatient, but I usually get a good sampling from my other varieties by their third leaf.
Santa Rosa is a shy bearer here as well, it seems perfectly hardy in my z5 location, but mightnot be totally happy here; I have only gotten 20- 30 plums from it in 8 years. Really good though! Bloom looks to be on the light side again this year.
Jeese,
I’ve heard that Santa Rosa is not cold hardy. Maybe, the tree can handle zone 5 but fruit buds are more susceptible. Also, Scott does not give it a good review.
Santa Rosa is hardy enough in zone 5 and I agree, it is very shy bearer.
I have a standard sized Santa Rosa that is close to 20 years old with very few fruit this year. However, I don’t blame the tree for that. It did take 8 years for me to start getting anything from it. Though once it started producing, it produced very well until last year when we had a late freeze and I lost much of the fruit. I also had a Burbank plum next to the SR. They did a good job of pollinating each other. Last year the Burbank, which had been badly weakened by previous borer damage, succumbed to the hot droughty summer. This year the only other plums were just little one year olds, and not even as close as the Burbank had been. So, I’m chalking this year’s small set on the SR plums up to lack of pollination. I always looked forward to them since they were my earliest tree fruit.
Could shy bearing be helped with girdling the tree? I think there was a thread about that.
Santa Rosa flower buds are hardy here, survived-25F two years back. They are just very sparsely distributed on the tree. So unlike most of my hybrids that are loaded with bloom. Maybe the tree isn’t quite getting what it needs for heat or daylength, and lack of bloom is the result. Thinking about top working some limbs over to Black Ice, Black Amber.
I also have Northern Spy apple on standard antonovka rootstock, this variety is notorious for taking its time producing fruit, lIke 15+ years in some cases… Vigorous tree, with no sign of spur development after 6 years. Such good apples, one of my true favs. I plan on ringing the trunk in a couple weeks, and hope that will put the tree on notice that it’s time to start giving back…or next year it will be bark inversion!
Santa Rosa is a fantastic tasting plum, but the farmers around here confirm it is difficult to fruit in this location.
@scottfsmith and others have recommended that top-working them with Weeping Santa Rosa might provide superior results. Reports indicate that the weeping variety fruits more readily. And I read somewhere that it might taste even better than the original. I am seriously considering top-working mine in this manner.
My Santa Rosa wasn’t bad every year, but it was bad about 3/4ths of the time. I also think WSR is more tasty, its more sweet and more aromatic. I didn’t feel too bad about top working a fully mature tree a month ago - it wasn’t producing much of anything, its better to wait a few years and then get some real fruit.
You don’t mention the rootstocks of apple varieties. Jonathon is not a shy bearer for me, and being a long time commercial variety, presumably it is a reasonably productive variety in areas that favor it. 111 rootstock can take a very long time to come into production- partially depending on how you prune and train- and, of course, the precocity of the variety itself. Jonathon is only medium precocious, which is surprising because it is not very vigorous.
Some trees are shy bearers for different reasons than others because of particular issues such as their nutritional status or whether they get true full sun (some require more sun than others to bear well). Sometimes it is a complete mystery why a variety is productive on one site and not another.
I have one site where Santa Rosa provides a good crop every season- it just doesn’t need to be thinned as much as every other J. plum there. At my site, it is dependably productive of an adequate crop. However, only Elephant Heart is a shyer bearer in my orchard.
Interesting responses. Alan, the Jonathon is one of the few trees I don’t know the rootstock. Over 90% of my trees came from mail order(mostly Adams Co or Starks), but this loner came from a local store and was labeled only semi-dwarf. I was getting several fruit from it in its 3rd and 4th leaf, but it has not increased its production since then. It’s now approaching a nice size and still no more fruit. This year, I observed very few blossoms. It may be an environmental issues as it’s too close to a woods line. Still it gets full sun from about 10am on. It suffered some minor fireblight about 3 years ago but nothing significant. I have not fertilized since then, but it is in excellent shape. I love jonathons but don’t keep trees unless they produce or are just too troublesome to work with.
I feel positive It will produce- that is what apple trees do, but some take a while to calm down and do it and maybe yours in on 111. The tree may have been dwarfed by a pot causing it to fruit at first, but liked the soil so much decided to grow instead.
Spread scaffolds a bit above horizontal about a third the diameter of the trunk at point of connection tend to bear significantly sooner than over-sized and or upright growing ones.
This is from a plum and prune growing book
Thats a very accurate description of Santa Rosa. I have a dozen varieties to pollinate it so its not having problems there for me, but its very sensitive to spring weather. If its a perfect steady-temps sunny spring I get a great crop, otherwise not.
Re: 111, I had an interesting experience of a 111 which got girdled all the way around a few years ago. I did bridge grafts on it and the tree is doing fine now. But the surprising bit is in its third year now it is bearing - it seems like it was shocked into early bearing.
Of course it responded to girdling by early bearing- that is nothing more than radical scoring. The carbs were trapped so their energy was devoted to fruit. Carbs need the support of roots to grow wood and roots and the supply route was broken. Almost every trick to coax early fruiting pertains to reducing root dominance or slowing carbo flow to the roots- even when it is just based on grafting to a weak root.
How did you get the bridge grafts to work?