No Blossom On Apple Trees

[Ananke]

Neither of my apple trees have blossomed this year. They both did last year but had no fruit (the older of the two developed some fruit but they dropped off)

The only thing I did different this year was to put some weed matting around them and cover it with wood chips, this was done in different stages though, one at the end of last summer and the other just a few weeks ago. I also pruned them in the winter there and they both look healthy enough with lots of new growth.

They are both young trees and I wasn't really expecting much fruit wise but I thought they should still blossom, any ideas?

[solway cropper]

It could possibly be that the pruning was done incorrectly. Some apples are 'tip bearers' and if you pruned back too hard you would remove the fruiting buds. Just a thought but if you had a picture it might help.

[Kirk]

What variety of apples are they and (but irrelevant) the rootstock.
Rootstock shouldn't make any difference but may as well ask for it.

[cheops]

My two apples trees did not produce any blossom this spring either. One is a cooking apple -Howgate wonder and the other is an eating apple -Braeburn. Both are young trees and both blossomed and bore fruit each of the two last years. Both trees look very healthy. As a side note my plum trees have a glutof fruit.

[Ananke]

I don't know the rootstock, I have the labels somewhere but the varieties are Cox's Orange Pippin and Golden Delicious.

Now that you mention it Cheops, I don't think my plum tree has blossomed either, the pear tree did.

The two apples and the plum were pruned for the first time so I am guessing that it was my pruning job that has done it

I hadn't pruned them since I got them (one is 3yrs old and the other is 1year old but I don't know what age they were when I got them) as I was a bit nervous about getting it wrong so this year I done a good bit of reading.... and still got it wrong lol.

[Ananke]

Oh, and typically, last year, I asked two plotholders with the best apple trees how they prune theirs and one doesn't prune at all and the other doesn't know anything about pruning and just lops his back right after he harvests his apples.

[Kirk]

Cox is a spur bearer but that means you need the spurs present and if I recall, they form on "old" wood. Old being more then 1 year old, or not new growth.

So pruning may have left no spurs for blossom/fruit to develop on this year, everything will be new.

I think that idea is let it grow, then prune selected new bits back to 2 or 3 leaves in length.
The spurs for next year come from the bit left.
Some new growth is left to develop to create the structure you want. I usually end up with a random mess of a structure.

Golden Delicious is the same - spur bearer.

So a good prune of both could (if I am right) mean not a great (0) amount of blossom, especially on a smallish young tree.

Watch the Cox, they are susceptable to just about everything.
GD is reckoned to be partially self fertile as are some of the newer Cox's.

[CiderJay]

One of mine didnt blossom either the plum tree was covered with the stuff but none on one of the apple trees, i was gonna put it down to it being a bad year as my other apple tree didnt blossom as much as it usually does.