It could be (either, or, or some combination of) lack of good pollination
and/or the tree realizing that it didn't have enough roots left to invest
all that energy in apple production this year. If it was six years old at
transplant time, it lost a *lot* of roots. The roots recover at a growth
rate of about 18" per year. Overall the part of the tree below ground wants
to be roughly the same size as the part of the tree above ground, so it can
take several years for the roots to catch up on an older transplant like
this, and in the first year after transplant usually you do not get fruit
because the tree has to spend a lot of energy regrowing its root system.

Your tree doesn't look particularly diseased, but I'm not an expert on this.
It certainly looks less diseased than my two trees, which are producing a
lot more apples. I am also in zone 8 in Oregon (Willamette Valley). Mine
were 3-yo from the nursery, and this is now their second season in the
ground in my yard. The first season they flowered like crazy but dropped
them all before setting fruit. (Actually, there was one apple that had set
on one of the trees, but a small child thought it would be the perfect thing
to use as a missile, so it got picked when it was still only an inch in
diameter.) This second season they have set a lot of apples, despite having
chronic issues with leaves that get brown spots and turn yellow and fall
off. Apples are very closely related to roses, so I assume this is similar
or the same disease (black spot?) that does the same thing to all our rose
bushes every year. (A primary reason I have never been a fan of roses, and
we have already removed most of the ones the house came with and diversified
the flower garden.) Your pix showed a few leaves possibly suffering from the
same malady, but not nearly as many as on my trees. Since I don't like to
pour toxic chemicals all over my yard, I just let them be and will be happy
with however many apples they can produce in the face of this. There are
other apple trees in the neighborhood that are completely neglected and
apparently pretty disease-free, so I'm hoping that as mine become more
established and their roots catch up with their tops, they will have more
energy available to spend in fighting off diseases. That which doesn't kill
them only makes them stronger. I hope. (The squirrels are also getting a lot
of the crop too -- darn weed species! Oddly the apples seem to have
distracted them from the sunflowers this year, but I'd rather it was the
other way around.)

Utopia in Decay
http://home.comcast.net/~kevin.cherkauer/site

Kevin Cherkauer



"Ted Mittelstaedt" wrote in message
...

I am in USDA zone 8 (Oregon) and I have a question about an apple tree
in
my yard,
the cultivar is Transparent Yellow (or Yellow Transparent) on a semi-dwarf
rootstock.
I got this tree from a guy in the area who grafts apple trees as a hobby
and
was thinning
out his garden in Oct 2007

....

Then in May, most of the flowers dropped off leaving the green
fruit spurs (I also own an Indian Summer crabapple tree
planted in the front of the house that flowered at the same time as
this one did, I assume they pollenated. The Indian Summer produced
-lots- of crabapples.)

Then in late May just about all of the fruit spurs withered, wilted,
drooped over,
got brown and dropped off. The leaves were not affected, just the
fruit spurs. The tree produced a total of 6 apples. The
apples that WERE produced were perfect. (tasted exactly like transparent
yellow, at least like how I remember transparent yellow tasting from 25
years
ago)