Fruit trees may drop small, undeveloped fruit in June. Finding a number of small fruits on the ground can cause concern all fruit will drop but this will not happen. For the most part, June drop is a good thing. Instead of growers having to manually thin fruit, the tree does some of it.
Why does some fruit drop and not others? Dropped fruits may not have been fully pollinated. Without complete pollination, they won’t develop normally and drop off. With rainy weather, pollinators may not have been as active this spring. And its important not to apply insecticides to trees during blooming.
Along with rain comes clouds and less sunshine and photosynthesis may be reduced. This, along with a hot, dry summer last year, may have caused a tree to not have quite enough carbohydrates to support as many fruits. If a tree had a heavy crop last year, this can cause it to be a little short on carbohydrates too and fruit are dropped to compensate.
