On Saturday, September 7, 2013 7:01:03 PM UTC-7, Kay Lancaster wrote:
On Sat, 7 Sep 2013 14:17:40 -0700 (PDT), Higgs Boson wrote:

Last year my beloved little tree finally bore TWELVE heavenly oranges - taste out of this world!



This year it has only TWO! Gardener thinks it's one year on, one year off.

But does he *know?*



Any experience out there? I tried a Web search, but the only thing I found was that it needs to be pollinated. Thanks a lot!



I guess those two new fruits got pollinated somehow; I didn't notice. Just found ONE new bloom.



So is it annual or biennial? If annual, what am I doing wrong? I'm giving it adequate food, water and She is giving it sunshine.



If biennial, why those 2-1/2 volunteers?



It's a perennial. An annual blooms one season and then dies, biennials spend their first season

growing and the second fruiting and then die.



Most fruit trees go through bloom cycles, typically 1 year of heavy fruit followed by 1-4 light years.

As fruiting takes a lot of reserve photosynthate from a tree, it makes a lot of sense that they

don't fruit heavily every year -- it would "fruit itself to death" if it did.



For instance, last year, our pear tree bore so heavily that it actually broke the top of the crown just from the weight of the fruit. This year, we're getting about 1/4 of the fruit from the tree that we did last

year. The previous two years, our apple crop was sparse, but this year we're going to get several

bushels off a semi-dwarf tree.



If you'd prefer a little fruit every year rather than a boom and bust cycle, you can pick off most of the

fruit on a heavy fruitset year before it develops far and uses much of the tree's reserves. That
tends to keep the fruiting each year a little more constant.



Kay

Thanks, Kay - very informative. Question: From the tree's POV, its raison d'etre -- along with all living things, including people -- is to reproduce the species. So why would it engage in such wild "mood-swings", rather than consistently reserving enough photosynthate (new term to me) to produce enough fruit which it "hopes" will create more trees?


HB