There is an old saying out there that farmers want corn knee high by the fourth of July. Well, driving around Sullivan County this past weekend, I was lucky to even see a field of corn planted. We basically lost May this year with the cold and wet weather. Farmers couldn’t even get their tractors out on the fields to plow as they would just sink into the soil. We had so many rainy days in May, even to the point that many fruit trees that blossomed didn’t get pollinated by bees or other insects and never set fruit. I only have two of my nine fruit trees with any fruit on them this year. Last year I had a fair amount as they are fairly young trees yet. But, the heavy rains in May, washed the pollen away and with it my potential fruit crop for the season. I know this isn’t the case everywhere, because we have apples, pears and cherries on some of our trees in the garden center right now. So maybe my trees were just the unlucky ones this year, but the weather didn’t help. 

Speaking of the fruit on our trees in the garden center, I always get asked, how long it takes before the trees start to fruit? Five to seven foot high fruit trees can start producing fruit in two to five years from the time planted depending on the size of the tree. Some of our trees have fruit now because of how we pot them up without pruning the roots. We get our trees in bare root in early March and pot them up ourselves. Most other places have trees delivered already potted from a nursery, and the roots are usually pruned so that they can fit in a standard size pot. We just use a bigger pot for bigger roots. And don’t fall for those great prices on fruit trees on the internet. I love looking at those sites and reading the fine print that states, the tree size is approximately eighteen inches tall. A tree that size would take ten to fifteen years before seeing its first fruit. 

My wife fell for that thirty years ago when the National Arbor Day Society had a fundraiser where if you gave them a donation they would send you ten flowering trees. We had just moved into our new house in Swan Lake at the time and needed some shade trees for around the yard, so what the heck. Well, she didn’t read the fine print, and they were all eighteen inch trees and out of the ten, two survived the first winter without having the deer eat them. Those two trees were now twenty feet tall and beautiful when we sold our house in 2023. 

Nut trees are always popular until you tell people the truth about them. A typical nut tree that is four to six feet tall will take anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five years before seeing its first nut. We have deer hunters in every year that want to plant nut trees to attract deer in the fall, until I tell them how long it will take to get a nut. 

Oak trees are a much better bet, they will start producing acorns in about five to ten years from the time they are planted. My aunt has a butternut tree (white walnut) in her front yard that is almost fifty years old now, and it only produces nuts once every few years. There is a story that I heard about an old man planting a Carob tree, his neighbor said, “You’ll never see a carob pod at your age.” The man replied, “I’m planting this tree for my grandchildren to enjoy.” That is truly how you need to look at nut trees because where will you be in twenty-five years?