Last year I bought a peach tree (I think in march) and it was covered with flowers which eventually fell off before the leaves started to grow. The tree yielded lots of fruit last fall.
This year the tree has grown lots of leaves but I never saw any flowers. Why did the tree fail to bloom this year? What did the nursery do to get it to bloom before I bought it? Am I just being impatient?
The tree is a grafted onto a 4 foot tall standard and is planted in a half wine barrel. Watered regularly and only occasionally fertilized with
16-16-16. Spot is plenty sunny and I live in central CA (SF bay area).
your problem is the barrel part. Fruit trees, unless they are dwarf, need to be planted in the ground. You could never provide enough fertilizer in a container for it to fruit properly and set.
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It is a dwarf and was labeled as appropriate for container growing. No sign that the roots have become bound at all. I must need to figure out a more precise fertalizing schedule.
Oh well, This would not be the first plant to skip a year of flowering after coming in from a greenhouse lifestyle. A year of non fruiting will give it a chance to increase the canopy which didn't seem to increase at all last year.
Chill requirements? Are you saying that some cultivars may require freezing weather to get synched with the season. We had no freezing weather at all this year just lots of rain. I know some seeds like to be frozen for a while but a tree?
I was going on the assumption that local nursuries generally sell varieties suited to the local conditions. We have lots of microclimates but the nursury and myself should have similar winter conditions. I should look into where the tree was originally propagated it may be from the central valley (fresno area) where it gets a bit colder at night in the winter but is generally hotter in the summer. I think I still have the tree tags.
Since plants like this sell much better when in flower, I'm sure the nursury had some sort of trick they pull just before putting them out for display. It was afterall sold in a 10gal pot and now it is in a much larger container.
Chill requirement does not mean " freezing". Can you Google on " peach tree chill requirements" ?? Chill hours are usually below 45 F. Requirements vary all over the map, wholesalers sell all over the map.
Your tree is grafted onto a rootstock. Definitely ask your nursery where the tree came from. If they bought the tree in a wholesale transaction from an inland purveyor, most likely the chill requirement was met in the winter before you purchased.
"A bit colder at night" could make all the difference between enough chill hours and not enough. Even when dealing with low-chill requirement fruit trees, placement within a microclimate could be important... if your peach is in a half-barrel on concrete or blacktop, or sited close to your house, the night time temps could be significantly warmer than on grass, away from the building footprint and thermal shadow.
Well, believe as you like, no skin off my teeth, but there isn't much " magic" a nursery can do ( beyond refrigeration for the winter) to make a peach tree flower if the flower buds weren't formed during the previous season's growth and hardened during dormamcy. No fruiting spurs=no buds=no flowers.
The other question I posed still stands.
There is a good chance your peach put all its resources last year into ripening a heavy fruit load after transplanting and had nothing left to create new fruiting spurs ( ie-- "new growth")
Chill hours can be anywhere between 400 to 800 hours of temperatures below 45 degrees. I live in a very mild climate so I use the lowest chill hour peach, 'Dixieland.' There are other varieties of low chill hours, but I personally like this one because it is thin skinned and the flesh is very golden and juicy.
Most trees go dormant based on light lessening in the fall. When the light becomes lower, the tree sap stops running and shortly after than the cold comes in and seals the deal. Unless you have tropical weather, everything goes dormant whether it's in the summer due to high heat, or winter due to low light and cold.
Don't go under that assumption any more! LOL. These box stores and many nurseries don't care what they sell as long as they make money. You have to research the varieties for your region and select those.
Like I said before, fruit trees don't normally perform well in containers, ongoing. Do as you wish, but don't expect much.
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You didn't say which part of the Bay Area you are in, but in San Jose we definitely had some overnight frost (which our guava tree doesn't appear to have survived).
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