Strange thing going on with trees and bushes

18 years ago

I have lived in my home for 10 years. In all this time I have never seen so many berries on the trees and bushes. My choke cherry trees are huge and have been in my yard since we built our home. The fruit would always fall off before it ripened. This year the trees are so loaded the branches are drooping. Also, my honeysuckle is loaded with berries. My mulberry tree has tons of fruit, the grey dogwood has so many flowers it is almost tounching the ground from the weight. Raspberries that never had fruit is fruiting this year, and there are so many grapes, I could open a winery. Does this mean a bad winter? Any ideas as to why everything started going crazy this year? All of the trees and bushes were here before I moved in, so they are all at least 10 years old and older. I am not complaining by any means, my birds are having a great time. I just wondered why all of a sudden everything is fruiting.

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Comments (8)

vonyon
18 years ago
Interesting.......I'm anxious to see the answers you get to this question. I have noticed a huge number of flowers on my two year old shrubs also.
dgower82
18 years ago
Nah the winter will probably be just fine(whatever that's suppose to be, Michigan weather). When trees and shrubs do this, it usually just means that they are mature enough to reproduce or that they are really happy. It's probably all that rain we had last year back when we got a month of rain in 4 days.
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bulldinkie
18 years ago
I think its just a bumper crop year.My apple trees are loaded this year.When I was a kid our cherry trees one year hardly gave any fruit and then maybe next year it was so many fruits on trees.
Elaine_NJ6
18 years ago
I'm seeing the same thing. In this area we had a very large amount of rain last year throughout the entire growing season. Since this year's flower buds were produced last year, during that extremely favorable season, they are abundant.
dirtgirl
18 years ago
Rain? what is that?

My favorite local weather station has turned off the radar to save money...no blips on there to report so it was wasting money. Ha Ha
Seriously, I have noticed weird shifts here as well, like the hickory trees. I think it could be compensation for the bust crop last year. I am already finding TONS of pignuts under the trees, and these don't usually get really started until later in July. The elderberries look good so far, but the balckberries are probably going to fizzle. THey are nothing more than tiny hard nubs full of seeds, with hardly any pulp. I still have a gallon in the freezer from last year, and a cobbler does have a nice ring to it!
THere were lots of flowers on the persimmon trees but I don't know just yet how pollination went. I was VERY lazy this spring and don't even know how the pawpaw trees are doing or how flowering went, but I would guess they will do a lot better than last year.
christie_sw_mo
18 years ago
I would think having a mild winter might increase the number of flying insects that pollinate your shrubs the following summer. Heavy berries predicting the next winter seems a little hard to believe though. Maybe a neighbor has gotten some beehives for honey or just a difference in your last frost date this year that increased the number of blooms or a combination of things. Sounds like good news for your birds.
catherinet
18 years ago
We have tons of seeds on all the trees (haven't checked out the hickory or the walnuts yet), and have tons of pinecones. I was thinking, for us in this area, it was a reaction to the severe ice storm we had with tons of damage. Like maybe when they get stressed, they try to really rally the next year, in case they feel they are threatened? I, like Dirtgirl, had almost NO hickory nuts or walnuts last year.......so it will be interesting seeing if they really pick up this year.
I think there is a code out there, that we humans might not be able to always break. YAY!! I love it when there are things that we silly humans just can't figure out!
jannie
18 years ago
I have three cherry trees. All three are producing like crazy this year. Guess it's a combination of a snowy but short winter, cool wet spring and lots of sun May and June.

Strange thing going on with trees and bushes

Comments (8)

vonyon

dgower82

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