I have apple, pear and peach espalier that are now 2 years old. None of them has produced fruit.v I have done “summer pruning”. I pruned new growth above 5 leaves.
Any advice as to how I can get fruit next year?
Fruit growing is not for the impatient. Two years isn’t very long in the fruit world. Just hold your horses!
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Generally, for apples the time to first fruiting is for dwarf trees 3-5 years, semi-dwarf 5-7 years, semi-standard and standard 7-10+ years. This varies a lot depending on the scion (cultivar), the pruning system, and the growing conditions. Often trees will fruit outside these ranges.
Dwarf apples in commercial production trained to the tall spindle system will produce a small crop the 2nd year but commercial growers are supplied trees that aren’t headed back (cut back) and do a bunch of things to make this happen. I don’t think for most backyard growers that this is a realistic goal and many cases actually it is a bad idea to have a dwarf tree fruit in the second year.
Coming back to the scion and it’s effect on fruiting. For example, Goldrush is precocious and produces fruit early. Northern Spy is on the other hand very slow to come into bearing. I have a Goldrush that is 2 years old and it set two fruit this year. Normally, I would have removed the fruit so the tree would put all of it’s energy into growing. But the tree was send on the wrong rootstock G890 (semi-dwarf) while I ordered it on G41 (dwarf rootstock). So I am trying to keep the tree in a small space by letting it fruit early. I am hoping to partially " runt out" the tree and keep it in its space.
It would help if you supplied more information. Could you tell us the scion and rootstock of each tree? Is the soil type sandy, loam or clay? And may be post a picture of the trees/ growing area. I think we could be better able to assist you. I don’t grow pears or peaches but plenty of others on the forum do and they can help with them.