Problem with Anjou Pear Tree

GABRIOLA, Canada

Hello everyone. Last year I had a gardener plant four new fruit trees (about 5 feet tall), one of which is an Anjou pear. I followed his instructions for care of adjacent soil and have kept the soil moist as we are now moving into our dry season. I took all baby fruit and flowers off the trees last year. This Anjou was by far the heaviest producer. I didn't count, but I think I removed hundreds of teensy pears.

This year, they trees have few flowers and almost no fruit (not sure why but fewer bees is part of the fruit problem). Everything looks normal on the other three trees. On this one, all flowers look like the photo (crisp, dead, brown). The gardener (organic, permaculture...) did spray them with an organic spray (sorry I don't know what it was but I asked if it was the sulphur/oil spray and he said no. I did not notice if this problem happened in association with the spraying, but it seems unlikely.

Apologies for the rotated photo; not sure how that happened.

Would greatly appreciate any insights you may have.

Thumbnail by amacgillivray
Algonquin, IL(Zone 5a)

Hi amacgillivray,
I don't know that much about fruit trees, but I found some info from Penn State University that might be a little help. The main reason I copied the link is they mention enough different reasons that possibly one or more of them will sound like what your problem is.

For example, is it possible you had a late spring frost? Apparently the flowers and buds of fruit trees are very sensitive to frost.

Here's the link:
http://extension.psu.edu/plants/gardening/fact-sheets/home-orchard-production/why-is-there-no-fruit-on-my-tree

I'm posting one more link from New Mexico State University. Though many of the things they mention are for conditions in New Mexico, many of them should be the same for most areas.

The one that particularly caught my eye was under "Cultural Practices". They mention that sometimes fruit trees might bear extra heavily one year and very little the next year.

http://aces.nmsu.edu/pubs/_h/H308/welcome.html

It's possible none of the things mentioned will apply to you, but I thought the articles might offer some useful info.

Good luck!

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