Bill726 wrote:
Hello
I am an backyard apple tree grower. Most of my knowledge comes from
reading and trail and error , a fair amount of error . The majority of my trees
are on dwarf M9 root stock. I do have aGrimes Golden on M7.
Here are a few things to check.
#Most apple trees need to be cross pollinated with a another apple with viable
pollen. Do you another apple tree close by?
# It is good to do a lot of the prunning on dwarf and semi dwarf apple trees
in the late spring and summer.
Fertilizers with high nitrogen content will promote vegitive growth at
the expense of fruit set.
Bill

My neighbor has a standard size apple tree of unknown variety. I don't
think they get any usable fruit from it, but it blooms and apparently is a
good pollenator for my tree because I've gotten good fruit set in the past.
Also, there are flowering crabapple trees in the neighborood, but not all
that close by.

My tree didn't bloom very good this year, and it was cold and wet while it
was blooming. So it probably didn't get pollenated very well. Especially
with the decline in the honeybee population. That still doesn't explain
the poor blooming.

It looks like the tree is getting a little too much nitrogen, but I don't
give it or the lawn any fertilizer. Plus the tree has to compete with the
grass underneath it for nitrogen. (It probably could use a little
phosphorus, and I have a bucket (it was in a bag originally) of triple
superphosphate in my garage that's been there about 10 years...

I need to thin the inner branches anyway; I'm not sure what the best time
of year to prune them to encourage fruit spur production. I haven't really
pruned the tree at all in several years. It does have some nice
horizontal-growing scaffold branches, and way too many secondary branches.

I think I should probably prune it this month, while the weather is hot and
(hopefully) dry so I don't have to worry so much about fire blight.

My neighbor had to cut down a huge elm tree (Dutch Elm Disease) that was
near the property line on the north east that was probably crowding both my
apple tree and theirs. Now that the elm is gone the yards are a little
more open and that should help.

Best regards,
Bob