I am not a pecan expert and there is a lot of very technical advice out there as to how and when to fertilize, special fertilizers for pecans, pollination - what varieties need another to pollinate and so forth.

Bottom line - even if you do all of that stuff your tree may not bear every year anyway. Some years they put out pecans and some years they don't.

I have several pecan trees. The oldest is at the front of the property, broken and disfigured, the woodpeckers have drilled holes all over it. It has moss and ferns growing all up and down the awkward lopsided limbs. Everyone keeps telling me to take it down. I just can't do it. And every two or three years it still gives the best crop of sweet tasting softshell pecans.

My experience has been good crop followed by poor crop or no crop then good crop again. Helps to have more than one.

Have a look here.

Here is a link that might be useful: Pecans - timing fertilizer applications

There are 2 potential answers.

1. Most likely this is an off year for your tree. Pecans are a masting tree (bear fruit irregularly). This is natural and happens in the wild. The purpose of this is that by producing a large crop, the tree makes more seed than the predators can eat (crows, squirells, weevils) so some is left for new trees. The next year there are no nuts and the predators starve and the population lowers. Often all the trees in the forest will be on a similar schedule and one year there are few nuts, the next year plenty. Even good pecan growers struggle with this problem, and it is the focus of much pecan research.

2. The other potential problem is pecan scab. This is a disease that affects the leaf and shucks, producing black velvety spots. If the young nuts are heavily infected they will drop off in the summer. In a wet year this disease can devastate your crop.

If you see a lot of catkins on the tree in spring, there were probably female flwers as well and if you then don't have nuts something like scab took the crop. If you don't see catkins then the female flowers were probably never there and it is an off-year for your tree.

SeaHawk is dead on target.

2004 was an 'off' year for pecans in my area(an hour north of Nashville) - we had bumper crops on pecans, hickories, and walnuts in 2003, but virtually no nuts or acorns at all in the fall of 2004. Looks like a decent crop of walnut & hickory nuts this year, but I've not checked the pecans in the area. Hope this will be an 'on' year.

Will pecan trees grow in N.E. Tennessee? We just bought some property there and want to grow pecan trees but don't know if they're suited to that area. If so, what variety would grow best?

I have several pecan trees in my back yard. I have been in my house for 7 yrs. The first year, I saw a few pecans but since then-nothing. I see a few green pecans on the ground and a few rotton one--what should I do?

Just purchased a property and it has five large and very old pecan trees. They do not produce. The previous owner says they haven't produced in years. Do they simply get to old?

No, pecans don't get too old. They can however be so nutrient deprived or otherwise disabled that they don't produce. They may also be seedlings which rarely or never make pecans. The first thing to do is to try improving their nutrients. Start with applying 10 pounds of zinc sulphate to each tree. Then give each tree at least 50 pounds of fertilizer, 13-13-13 will work, but is not properly balanced for pecans. A leaf sample can be tested to show what nutrients are limiting.

If do a sample make have Nickle nutrient checked not all labs can do one.

All my seedlings produced pecans this year, big time.

I volunteer at an arboretum with a large group of pecans which are easily 80-100 years old and still producing every 2-3 years. We water them during drought years and use a mulching mower on the grass/leaves. We maintain large tree rings around each tree; grass actually competes with trees for nutrients so the bigger the mulch circle, the better. We use arborist mulch (wood chips) but any of the regular bagged mulches works just as well.