Apple tree with no blossoms

[canuck]

I was wondering if anyone knew why my apple tree didn't get any blossoms this year....had it for 3 years now and always had blossoms. I took all of them off the last 2 years because I was told to let the tree develope a good root system before I let it bear fruit. Any advice?

[SG6]

Not sure what you mean by took off all the blossom. You may have removed the fruiting buds which is where the blossom froms and the fruit is produced from.

When you prune an apple you prune it for shape but also to produce fruiting buds.

I am guessing that you have removed these fruiting buds and therefore there is nothing to produce blossom.

Instead for removing the blossom, and I suspect the fruiting buds, another option would have been to allow small fruit to form the remove these by cutting at the stalk. Still as they say hindsight is a great thing.

[canuck]

The first 2 years I had the tree I took all the blossoms off to stop the tree from getting fruit....I was told by the nursery that I should let the roots develope before letting the tree bear fruit so that it would thrive in years to come. So the first two years I knew that I would not get fruit, it was done on purpose.

This year however, I didn't get ANY blossoms on the tree at all. Since then I have been told that trees do go in cycles of producing fruit and not producing fruit so it was a normal thing to happen.

Sorry for the confusion

[SG6]

Not your fault Canuck but mine.
I should have said when you removed the blossom did this mean just delicately picking off the blossom only, or did you rub off the small "bud" that the blossom grew from on the tree branch.

In the first instance the fruiting bud remains, in the second it is the fruiting bud that is removed. No fruiting bud would I presume mean no blossom so no fruit.

I am not sure about the biannual fruiting, seen it occur but usually there is one year of heavy fruiting then a year of sparse cropping but there is fruit. Also that is cropping not blossom. My pear this year has very few fruits on it, 20ft tree and 3 pears, but it was completely full of blossom. Finally I have only seen biannual cropping on older trees, you seem to say yours is young, 3yrs.

As to the root system, it depends on the rootstock. I have several trees on dwarfing rootstock, the roots never get big. After 15 years most root bundles are less then 10ins across. The more dwarfing rootstocks tend to bear fruit earlier.

If you removed the fruiting buds you will have to allow the tree to grow and produce new buds. If I recall an apple treee forms fruiting buds on second year growth. New growth could be by letting it expand or by pruning then letting it grow back to its present shape/size.

Just a thought: The present growth isn't all vertical is it?