small fruit trees. 3 questions

i planted some small fruit trees last fall and a couple are trying to bear fruit already.

one is a pear tree that surprised me with 5 pears growing already. it's so small though i think the pears are going to break the branches they're on. should i go ahead and pull them off? maybe let it get a little bigger and see what happens next year?

the other is a peach tree which also has fruit, maybe about 10-11. in this case though, they're about the size of big marbles and haven't gotten any bigger for maybe a month or so. no worry about branch breaking this time (unless they take off and start growing later or something). i'm just wondering why they seem to have stopped getting bigger. maybe the tree is too new and the root system can't support the fruit growth yet?

i also just planted a cherry tree maybe a month ago, but i think it's gonna die. i've planted trees in both spring and fall and done ok up until this. i don't know why the cherry tree is dying. the only connection i can guess is we had two huge rains two days in a row and right after that it just started wilting and now the leaves are turning brown. i may try again if the big box stores get cherry trees again in the fall. i'm just wondering if there's something different cherry trees need done to them.

thanks.

I'm not familiar with peach or cheery trees. But I my grandmother used to have a pear tree. If the pears look big enough, I would definitely pull them off. The pear tree will get bigger year by year. Pear trees are great to have. As far as the other ones, I wouldn't worry too much about them.

I have several peach trees. They all did the same thing as your when they were immature. It didn't stunt their growth or hurt them in any way. As for cherries and pears, I would definitely pull the pears off. It's too young, from the sound of it, to be bearing fruit that large. It will definitely break its branches.

One of my peach trees split in half this year with all the weight on it. Very sad.

With that Cheery tree I would just keep an eye on it and make sure it's still got green under the bark from time to time by barely scratching the bark off. If and when you are sure it's not going to make it, prune it back to about 2-3 inches above the graft. Lots of times this will allow the roots to not have to work so hard to feed the tree. Of course suckers will start popping out but you just need to prune those back and keep the ones you want to get the desired growth (up for now). Good luck,

Scott

haven't been back to check. thanks for the replies

i pulled a couple of the pears off the pear tree and let three that seemed to be in sturdier spots grow. they got pretty big, but just this week they disappeared. they're not on the ground around the tree so i guess some kid or animal (will a racoon take them?) pulled them off. there was another smaller pear tree that had one smaller and not as good looking pear on it that's gone also.

same with the peaches. they got a little bigger and some disappeared also, but i saw a couple around the base of the tree. not sure what happened there because they were nowhere near being ripe enough to eat.

the cherry tree as far as i can tell is dead. it wilted more and more and now is just a stick in the ground with some dead leaves on it. still don't know why, but like i stated before, i may try again this fall if i can get one or two more.

thanks again for the replies.

while i'm here a quick update. the cherry tree died compleatly, top to bottom. just last weekend i picked up another (the big box store sell them for next to nothing this time of year). i asked one of the garden people about it and here best guess was the big rains we had this spring. the other trees had been planted at least since the fall before. the cherry tree i had only planted a few weeks before the big rains we got later.

hope it makes it. turns out it rained all day yesterday, but still not like this spring with some pretty big rains a few days in a row, so hopefully it'll just be like a good watering. hope to find one more cherry (both for pollination and to take the last spot where i want a tree), and my personal eden will be done treewise.

Philphine said:

while i'm here a quick update. the cherry tree died compleatly, top to bottom. just last weekend i picked up another (the big box store sell them for next to nothing this time of year). i asked one of the garden people about it and here best guess was the big rains we had this spring. the other trees had been planted at least since the fall before. the cherry tree i had only planted a few weeks before the big rains we got later.

hope it makes it. turns out it rained all day yesterday, but still not like this spring with some pretty big rains a few days in a row, so hopefully it'll just be like a good watering. hope to find one more cherry (both for pollination and to take the last spot where i want a tree), and my personal eden will be done treewise.

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I think you still need some apple trees and a few snakes.

i planted two semi dwarf apple trees last fall, and there's a hawk(?) that's swooped down a few times while i was watching and grabbed a snake, so there's a few of them too.

the hawk can take all the snakes he wants though.

For what it's worth, I planted 15 citrus trees three years ago. The people that I got them from have been growing these things for about 30 years and told me to pull the fruit off the first couple years and it will allow the trees to get bigger instead of the tree feeding the fruit.

Just about any animal will come to eat the pears. I have a war all summer long with the squirrels here. They do't wait for the pears to ripen, they just pick them off and start gnawing. Also, here in North Jersey, black bears eat the low hanging pears in late August & early September. Last year, i got one pear for myself; this year - NONE!