Kitchen Garden Forum

Hi all, about this time last year give or take a few weeks i planted 2 apple cordons both the same verity , one produced around 10 perfect apples the other had a lot of small deep red diseased apples would this be a one off problem or is it the cordon

Morning Robo, it could just be that it hadn't made enough root growth to sustain the crop. So i would give it another year to see what happens.

Hi robo

Planted two apple, one pear and one plum tree in Oct 2012. All purchased as pot grown.

Spring 2013 removed all fruit growth to give root growth time to establish

2014 saw a reasonable amount of fruit developing on both apple trees and the plum, only a few fruits started to appear on pear.

Culmination in 2014 was, a few plums picked, all the fruit off both apples either dropped or disappeared completely (now that was a mystery).
Managed to pick ONE pear

Trees all look healthy enough so, patience being a virtue, we shall see what transpires this year

Give them time. I know cordons crop quicker than many forms of fruit tree but instant they are not. Two or three years to settle in is required and although pears have improved over the years of rootstock development they still require patience. I planted a half standard pear a year ago and I'm looking 5 years down the line for fruit.
MW

We planted two cordon apples and two cordon pears four years ago. At least, we thought we had. When they broke into leaf, it was quickly apparent that one of the pears was in fact an apple. The nursery we had bought from immediately sent us a replacement pear, which we managed to squeeze into the row, but couldn't tell us what the mystery apple was. For the first couple of years, that mystery apple was a disappointment, with small fruit suffering from bitter pit. Last year, though, they all did well (I was careful to water regularly to ward off bitter pit) and in fact the mystery apples were the best of all: later to mature than the others, but very good flavour, and they stored well. When you say the apples from one of the trees was diseased, Robo, can you be more specific? Was it something like bitter pit - lots of little round dark marks that spoil the look and flavour? That's more of a condition that can be corrected than a disease which might spread.

They were small no more than an inch in diameter all were deep red with black spots all over there were far more on the one cordon than good apples on the other

It just sounds stress related to me....well they seem to be blaming that on nearly all health problems.

I would worry they aren't crabs / rootstock. You say they were both supposed to be the same variety, was there any resemblance at all?

Hi geoff, they both look the same both in height and leaf shade

It does sound like bitter pit to me, and Oldherbaceous is right to talk about stress. They are young trees, and possibly the roots hadn't full adjusted to being moved in the first season. Bitter pit is due to a failure by the tree to take up enough calcium. The usual recommendation is to spray the trees with calcium nitrate (except I usually forget to do it at the correct time) and also vey much to keep them mulched and well-watered as the fruit is developing in the summer.