wolf river apple trees

[Karenduel747]

I have two wolf river apple trees. Both were planted seven years ago. On
their 5th year I got a pretty good crop of beautiful apples. Since then I
have not gotten apples. There is hardly no blossoms and where there is a
small apple develops and then falls off before it becomes ripe.

My grandfather had one of these trees in his orchard and did not do anything
special to it year after year. It produced the traditional softball and
larger apples.

Any suggestions as to why my trees are not producing? Pruning is done in
early spring and we give the trees a couple treatments of bug spray, one
before blossoms and one after. We have 6 other kinds of trees and they are
all doing well.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Karen Duel

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

I am not familiar with the cultivar, and could find nothing on the internet.

It sounds like it is not self polinating with the stunted fruit. But with the lack of flowers, how is the general health of the tree? Is it loosing leaves to apple scab alot? other stresses?

 

[mberst]

Hi Karen;
Sorry you aren't getting any Wolf River apples. They can be huge and are a lot of fun.
Many apple varieties bear well in alternate years, and Wolf River is one that typically bears a good crop every other year. Perhaps year 6 was an off year. All of the apples did poorly in the midwest last year for a variety of reasons: warm weather in February got them (and their enemies) started too early and hard frost in April damaged the bloom.
Usually trees that fail to bloom or set fruit are suffering from stress of some kind. Keep in mind that the bloom cycle is almost a year long, so stress now can cause bloom problems next spring.
This variety needs to be pollinated by a different variety close by. Perhaps it was pollinated in year five by a tree that is no longer there?
Wolf River is a hardy and long-lived tree. There are a lot of them standing in abandoned orchards in our area. We have one grower in our area still growing quite a few, and it is a reliable cropper for him.
Mike