Although all my potted citrus trees seem to be doing very well I am not having the same luck with my in-ground dwarf fruit trees. I have nine, a mix of apple, cherry, peach, plum, nectarine, and apricot. The apple trees and cherry tree are extremely healthy and by now have marble sized fruits all over with no signs of disease. The apricot has no fruit but has many many healthy leaves so I am not worried.
All of the others seem to be lacking in leaf growth:
The new plum bloomed many white flower blossoms, but has not produced a single leaf or fruit and I am certain it will die. I dug around the roots and found a huge nest of tiny ants & eggs. I don't know if they were eating the tree or just feeding on something else.
The new nectarine has leaves and tiny fruits, but the leaves seem under-developed compared to the apple trees. I would expect that they would be full sized by now.
The peach I planted last year appears reasonably healthy, but like the nectarine the leaves are not full sized yet. This one had borers last year so that may be the cause.
The new peach seems to have only half bloomed, most of the buds never popped and the ones that did still have only small leaves. I dug around the roots of this one and found the tiny ants, but not nearly as many as the plum.
I thought that peaches developed faster than apples. Does this sound like I got a bad batch of trees? Any idea if the ants are the problem or a symptom of something else? All of the trees came from a nearby store except the apricot. My suspicion is that the failing ones were leftovers from 2008 and spent a year outside in pots being devoured by pests.
