apple tree crisis

[fortunati]

Help. Moved to house with garden and old apple tree
It had apples on, some maggoted, leaves/branches bit decayed ..
So in jan the tree was pruned .. this year no apples atall .. leaves .. no apples .. what happened ? help .. she's a lovely old tree .. ta

[landscaper2]

Not to many takers to date i see, so best I can do is suggest that the tree has been pruned a little too hard and the poor things fruiting spurs have been removed. A 'full size' root system is now pumping sap to a half sized tree, producing hundreds of 18" or so shoots from the cuts. If this is so, then you will need to thin them out. Take some out all together, some back to 2 or three buds and allow some to grow on to produce a shaped tree. New fruiting spurs will appear and you will be able to keep the tree to a manageble size by annual pruning.

[suggestor]

Apple trees either bear fruit on the tips of the branches or on fruiting spurs along the brancc. If you have given the tree a good pruning then you have probably pruned off all the fruitng spurs. Don't worry it will be back in production in a year or two. Next time don't prune the whole tree in one go, but prune back 1/3 of the branches each year.

[gem_mother]

We've got a couple of very old apple trees in our garden. The house is just over 100 years old but I don't think they're quite as old as that. We've been here 21 years and have always had a good crop of apples one year followed by a poor crop the next and so on. Last year was one of the best years we've ever had and this year was absolutely the worst! We've had about a dozen apples at the most from both trees. My husband prunes them but not too severely. We assumed it was just that we were due for a poor crop anyway and then the wet weather made it even worse.

[Dragonmist]

This has been a lousy year for apples, so don't worry about it. Local allotment holders say their apple trees were hopeless, and blight killed the potatoes and tomatoes.
I got 13 apples off 4 trees. Normally I freeze lods and give away bagloads. This year I will have to buy apples to make apple sauce. :( I didn't get blight, but I have only had ripe tomatoes this past week!. Last year I was picking them in the polytunnel Xmas week. Not much hope of that this year as I can't see many ripening and I hate green tomato chutney.
Hopefully everything will be back on track next year.

[Lonnie]

Sometimes fruit trees have a 'lazy year', basically resting, but as has been mentioned, if you've given the tree a 'hard prune', which will be good for the tree every so many years, it may be a couple of years before it fruits again.