Growing apples

Apple trees may start bearing every other year.  This is called alternate year bearing and can be avoided.  When apple trees produce every other year they set a huge fruit load that produces small apples and the fruit load may be so heavy it ends up breaking branches.  The fruit load also drains the resources of the tree and it doesn’t develop flower buds for the following year.  A tree that is bearing fruit in alternate years can be brought back into yearly production by managing fruit load with thinning the fruit, proper pruning, and specific summer pruning.

Frosts may cause the blossoms to freeze in the spring about blossom time which will also cause fruit not to set.  You can try keeping some air moving or lightly misting the crop with water a few times during the below freezing temperatures.  Water may freeze and cause branches to break.  Another method to keep trees from freezing is warming the area with fire.  One of my uncles wrapped Christmas tree lights on the branches and the small amount of heat from the lights kept the blossoms from freezing (that’s a lot of work).  The best method is to select a variety that is tolerant of the cold and selected for your environment.

Commercial fruit growers yearly thin the fruit after it is set when the new fruits are about the size of a dime or nickel.  They use commercial products that must be applied at precise rates.  I wouldn’t recommend this be done by amateurs.  Homeowners may have difficulty spraying an even amount of chemical over the whole tree.  If your tree has excessive fruit numbers, hand thin when fruit is about the size of a nickel and before it is the size of a quarter.  Prune until there are one or two fruits per terminal.  The terminal is the group of leaves at the end of a branch.  An old fruit grower said you need 40 leaves to produce one apple.  The fruit will be much larger and you will get a good yield with proper thinning.   When thinning, leave the apple at the very end of an apple bunch.  This apple grew from the king bloom.  In a bunch of blossoms the king bloom is the center and larges blossom and will produce the largest and nicest apple.  By good pruning and controlling the fruit load, you can have fewer apples but each apple will be a lot larger and the over all yield will be a good yield.

If you are bold and want to chemically thin the insecticide, Sevin is used commercially for apple thinning.  Consumer packages don’t include apple thinning instructions.  You will have to figure that out yourselves.  If you over thin you will have no apples.  If you under thin you will have to reapply or thin by hand.  Apple trees often have what is called the June drop where the tree self thins.  Some varieties and trees do a pretty good thinning job by themselves.  Others may have so many apples it looks like the fruit was wrapped around the branches like a rope.

Prune the tree each year to remove excessive branches and any branch that will brush or interfere with other branches.  Fruit should be able to hang without banging other branches. The distance between branches when pruned should be 2 to 3 feet.  During the growing season this distance will close and then you prune again the following year.  Determine whether you want the tree to have a single leader with branches coming off the main trunk or do you want an umbrella shaped tree with several main branches arching over.  When pruning remove all water sprouts.  Those are the shoots that grow straight up but are not the central leader.  Pruning will stimulate more water sprouts to grow.  There are very sophisticated trellising or staking methods for growing apple trees planted at very high populations. 

Trees with alternate year bearing usually don’t produce flower buds because of the high fruit load stressing the tree when it does bear fruit.  Proper fruit load reduces the excess stress so the tree has the strength to produce flower buds for the following year.  Flower buds develop mid to late summer then bloom the following spring and turn into fruit.  Pruning stimulates the tree to grow new growth.  You can stimulate bud production by a light pruning mid July.  Prune 8 to 10 inches of the tips of some small branch that don’t have fruit. The remaining leaf bunches will be stimulated to produce flower buds that will bloom the following spring.