It can put more energy into making roots if the fruit is removed.

Gabby, Most peaches set about 80-90% more fruit than they can carry. If I didn't thin heavily, my peach trees would all be on the ground in one season (from broken branches). I generally try to thin to 1 peach per 12" of branch space. That means a 1 year old 24" shoot could carry 2 peaches. Your trees must be very healthy to have such a large fruit set when planted only last fall. It helps that they are such large trees. My guess is they were also potted trees and you were careful not to disturb the roots? I wouldn't be afraid to let the peach trees carry a heavy crop (spaced every 12") IF you have fertile soil and the trees are not unduly stressed. That means you need to have a grass/weed free zone around the base of the tree and the trees are neither drought-stressed or flood-stressed. If that's the case they should still be able to carry a full load and have plenty of vigor left over for new shoot growth without any future detriment to the tree. The "Siamese twin" peaches you describe are called "doubles". They are caused by stress during bud formation (the previous summer). You can identify these doubles in the flowering stage. They will have two separate pistils inside one flower. The ovaries in both pistils are fertilized and grow together. Because of the way peaches develop, one fertilized ovary will not grow much (or in some cases die) while the other develops normally, giving the double fruit a sort of Siamese lopsided look. Double peaches are fine to eat, if you can get them to harvest. The problem is as they get bigger, they tend to split at the connection and allow bugs and fungus to enter the fruit and rot it. Generally it's recommended you remove doubles at thinning time to avoid this problem. Early in the season I have broken off the smaller side of double peaches (very carefully so as not to pull the peach off the tree) and the peach will generally heal up just fine at the break, leaving a small scar and a slightly uneven peach at harvest. All my comments above refer to peaches only. Pears are much less vigorous than peaches. As such, they may be more susceptible to set back or runting, if cropped heavily at such an early age.

Snuffles, How's your longan doing now? The little plant there looks gorgeous--leaves are healthy and blooms fantastic. If you decide to keep the blooms, I hope you get some fruit forming for you. I would keep the blooms too .. just because blooms aren't always guaranteed year on year. Right now, I have got 3 juvenile longans growing in the ground. One of them actually isn't too juvenile. I got it 9 years ago when it was about 2-3 ft tall. So, it must be about more than 10 years old now. I planted it in the ground at first, but it kept getting sick with white flies. So, I dug it out again and nursed it to health. A couple of years back, I planted it back into the ground and since then it has grown to 8 ft tall with a lot more new leaves, but the white flies came back to attack it. Now that it's bigger, I think it's also more hardy to withstand the white flies attack. I used to clean the sticky stuff off the leaves, but now that it's bigger, it's hard to do that. Anyway, here's a picture of it bearing some fruit now: Longan Kohala at 8 ft now: close up of the little fruit formation: The second longan I have is a Biew Kiew (slightly more than 5 ft tall). I'm guessing the age is less 5-7 years. It was blooming last year, but I got no fruit from it. This year, no sign of any blooms. Longans have a habit of growing long floppy limps. I just chopped off two of the lanky limps in the middle. If you look closely, you'll see the old dark green leaves beneath the new flushes that shot up. Here's a third longan which is also a Biew Kiew. It's a little over 5 ft too. No blooms this year. The problem I noticed a while ago was this tree was in a "frozen" state, meaning the little budding shoots from last year got dried out. I was waiting to see if they would grow, but they never did, so I decided to rub them off the branches. A few weeks later, I saw lots of new flushes coming up. So, I did learn something new. I was having so much troubles with my lychees and decided to pay more attention to my longans to see if they will perform better for me. At least, with the lychees, they are pretty pest free except for web worms ... which unfortunately is prevalent when there are mature hard wood trees around. Oh yeah, we have some humongous Oak trees around here ... lol. I hope you enjoy your little longan tree now and hope it'll do well for you in the years to come.

The information given is too vague. I think your environment plays a big part in the life cycle of the tree. If your tree is happy with its conditions, it is going to bloom whenever it wants and set fruit. You don't specify which type of mandarin you are referring to, the country you are in or which type of fertilizer you use. Maybe something you have done to the tree has caused the tree to change it's growing habits.