[goosepimple]

Our young orchard produced quite well last year but this year we've next to nowt, literally.  The plums are doing well but only 2 measly apples.
 
How are you apples doing?  Are we just unlucky?

[Bionic]

My apples are doing really well. We have 1 

[Greenerlife]

Such a big year last year (400 litres of cider still left to be consumed!) and I thought it would be a poor year.  The bramley in the garden which I took over 400kilos off has about two apples on it, but the young trees in the orchard which didn't fruit too well last year are laden.  Weird.

[Marches Farmer]

Depends on how early the trees blossom.  In this area the damson crop is excellent as blossom time coincided with the mild spell mid-Spring, which also gave an early boost to the nectar available to local bees.  .  Most of our neighbours with apple trees found blossom time coincided with the following colder, wet weather and have a very poor, or non-existent, crop.  Our own trees are old, unidentified local varieties but they blossomed late and are laden. 

[Bramblecot]

Loads of apples but they are a bit small - I should have thinned them.  No pears, and hardly any plums or damsons except for a Victoria plum.  All down to the timing of the blossom I think

[pgkevet]

I had a cox apple in my last garden that only fruited well every other year whereas my (only) other red devil did so every year.

Here the old badly planted orchard i inherited has loads of apples.. many trees with unsightly blotches and the summer apple and plums covered covered in wasps and wasp craters.

The new trees i put in  three years ago.. well a few have a couple or three apples on but since they're all being espaliered it does knock them back. I'll be forming the third and finally tiers this autumn and I'd expect (given half decent weather) to get a reasonable crop of a dozen or so from each one next year. After that they'll really start to come into their own  and they'll be easy to spray and monitor.

Not a pear though and one williams was really covered in blossom

[suziequeue]

Out old Bramleys doing well and did well last year but not the year before. I was told that older trees sometimes get a bit biennial….

[Clarebelle]

I bought a fan trained Apple tree when we moved and planted it in my greenhouse. It was doing great, loads of blossom and I had about a dozen apples starting to develop. However every single one fell off the tree when it was still a little green ball. Anyone know why this might have been?

[pgkevet]

Wow. Is it so cold up there you have to grow apples in a greenhouse?
You get the june drop anyway with apples and i'd guess any additonal stress.. lack of water, too hot etc would exacerbate the amount. Perhaps finessing it by reducing the burden?

[Clarebelle]

Lol, Actually, it's not that cold up here, it's the wind and salt that does the trees in. I was hoping it was just stress of planting. What do you mean by reducing the burden? There are no apples left on it now so whatever I try will have to wait until next year

[Marches Farmer]

I had a cox apple in my last garden that only fruited well every other year

Cox has a tendency to bear biennially.  Summer pruning in August - reducing the new shoots to around 4 leaves - has stopped this on the tree we inherited from the previous owners.  Seems to encourage the production of fruit spurs rather than growth.

[pgkevet]

Lol, Actually, it's not that cold up here, it's the wind and salt that does the trees in. I was hoping it was just stress of planting. What do you mean by reducing the burden? There are no apples left on it now so whatever I try will have to wait until next year

exactly. Watch the june drop and then thin a bit more..better a few good apples than none.

Isn't there soem way of grwoing them outside with appropriate windbear? assuming one or two prime wind directions. Even here my fruit trees need locating away from the prevailing.

[Clarebelle]

It is possible to grow outside in the shelter of the town's but we are on an exposed hillside next to the sea and there is no other windbreaks around to provide shelter. Eventually I hope to grow some hedges to provide shelter, I've put some willow in which is doing well and a neighbour is bringing me a clump of Rosa rugosa to plant as a hedge, it does really well here. But all that takes time so for the time being apples in the greenhouse 

So when fruit starts dropping g in June I should thin out a few more to help the tree along?

[Lesley Silvester]

I have a good crop of apples, pears and plums to come. Even my cherry produced a few this year.

[pgkevet]

...

So when fruit starts dropping g in June I should thin out a few more to help the tree along?

Thin out the mutiples to singles and thin to space them out - was how i dealt with my espaliered red devil in the last place.

As ever it comes down to money and enthusiasm and space, layout.. No reason you can't built a windbreak before the hedges come in. If they'll grow there then silver birch is nice. Unless you're an enthusiast with willow I find it a royal pain keeping under control and every bit you chop off wants to grow somewhere...