i.e. Three year old Jonagold apple planted spring 2014 you can expect your first fruit in _____ years. Even though it might not be totally accurate (weather, zone, etc. differentials), a nice hint or 'ball-park' number is better than -0- knowledge about fruit bearing age trees. I would have definitely chosen two different apple trees in my current collection; they did not blossom for their first six years in the ground and then each tree only had one apple each. Best apples I ever ate, due to the excitement of growing them! But there are far more precocious trees out there.

I would love to find a list that just might exist that applies to pome fruit and stone fruit. It is always surprising that fruit descriptions never include 'setting fruit' times. If not, it would a powerful list to compile given all of your (this forum's collective) experience. Mrs. G

Of course, there are some variations between species and within species which are well known. Pears tend to be slow fruiting on standard rootsocks (ever hear the phrase "you grow pears for your heirs"?), while peaches and Japanese plums tend to be quicker to fruit than pome fruit. European plums tend to be slower to bear than Japanese types. One of my favorite apples, Northern Spy, is notorious for being slow to bear fruit (7-15 years depending on conditions). I hear about and see pics on this forum of 2nd leaf fruit (after planting) on some pome fruit and am amazed, but those people often have better growing conditions or longer seasons than I (my peaches usually took 4 years for first fruit, apples 4-6 years).

I agree that such a list would be nice even if it just included words like "precocious" or "slow-to-bear".

If they are grafted/budded..obviously a lot shorter time period, especially if place on some good stock. I budded a bunch of stuff last summer and i can see fruit buds on most branches now, so I will see fruit next year... that is stonefruit. Haven't done much apple budding, but may do some Honeycrisp here anytime and we'll see how long that takes. Obviously you want to have wood from trees that are already in a flowering state (mature)...

Now there are other variables, like sun, temps, water that obviously will factor in somewhat... fertilizer... Then you have things like branch bending, ringing, etc...that can force a tree to flower very young...

I will add this, if you let a young tree fruit...it does seem to limit the amount of new growth ...some of my pluots have put on almost no new growth this summer, so i should have thinned more aggressively...although those being container trees...they do seem to runt out in a few years anyways...