Maybe you knocked the immature fruits off with too much shouting. Other than that, maybe the pollinators haven't been around at flowering time. Honey bees, for instance, have been in serious decline.

Hi Tom - I talked to my brothers yesterday and they told me they were prepared, I will call back tonight to see how they are doing and if they have power in their houses. I can only pray for them, it is really not fair after the bad winter that they had. And talking about the garden, I am keeping very busy most of the time using and giving away crops, yesterday was the day for the collards, the eggplant and the avocados. I am really surprised that people who were born and raised in Florida are new to the best crops that we home gardeners can produce, like everyone is saying praises about the Brogdon avocados, and the question that I get when I give the green glaze collards, "are these collards? but they are so pretty! no sign of bugs or ugly like in the stores, the neighbor that I gave even smelled them,lol And the friend that I gave the eggplants said, I cook the whole bunch and they were not bitter or anything, they were great! In the fall I don't grow as many squash or cucumber plants because of the nematodes being active and number of bugs when is hot. I grow only the compact summer squash and a couple of winter squash, they are doing well in the containers. Tomatoes are getting big and struggling with the heat, you are probably hotter than me, I can see the tomatoes not liking the high temperatures, some do better than others for me when is so hot. Started seedlings for collards, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, some herbs And some views from the garden, eggplants and butterbeans Bush green beans The mini orchard Hi Luther Nice pictures like always! Sorry that you did not get a lot of sweet potatoes, maybe the soil was too rich. I have mine all around the garden where I only amended with used container soil. And Luther I have to tell you that yesterday I was working in the garden and Willy said the same thing "I don't know how you doing, but you never sit down" lol Your set up for the tomatoes is really high class like in the growers systems.:) I just learned a new thing from the community gardens, they bought some cheap wood sticks 2x1 for under a dollar and cut in half, they are 10 foot long but they are sturdier, so I got some this morning for the tomatoes that I have all over the garden now, like this one. Silvia

Haight Ashberry Hibiscus Here is a link that might be useful:

You might want to look at this article http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/gagarden/msg041309538748.html A callery pear for example could be top grafted over to another variety of large pear which is what I would do. It is undesirable for them to make fruit aka produce seed because they are known to be invasive. They are very useful as a root stock in my location. Callery pears will pollinate many varieties of pears but I'm not sure if it will pollinate your neighbors. If It does act as a pollinator remember the neighbors tree only will get the larger fruit. Callery pear tree fruit will always be small . The next generation of callery seeds might make larger fruited unique varieties when the trees were grown from seed as shown in the picture above. Those trees in the above picture were not intentionally grown but rather grew by accident on a farm in my area. Some day work may be done to use callery to breed better pears. In the late 1800's the kieffer pear was grown from a cross between the sand pear and European pear so natural crosses do happen across species. Garber is another sand pear hybrid highly resistant to fire blight. Hybrid pears are fascinating because of their disease resistance. This post was edited by ClarkinKS on Fri, Jan 2, 15 at 0:07