My Chehalis apple produced four beautiful juicy tasty apples. It is a young tree and this is the first time it has fruited. Melrose, another baby, has one single beauty that I can't wait to sink my teeth into. Queen Cox needs more time I think. My problem tree is Spartan. I moved this dwarf tree four winters ago from my old place. Two years ago I got several wonderful fruit. Some of the nicest apples I have ever tasted. Last year was a crappy year for fruit in this area. But this year the tree is loaded. The fruit is nice and flavourful but in spite of my thinning, the size is quite small. I am not very experienced in fruit growing Could I have thinned the fruit when it was too mature? Should I have thinned the actual blossoms before the formation of fruit? Or should thinning take place somewhere in between the two stages? I would love some input from someone who knows fruit trees. Muddy
Well I'm afraid I don't know too much about fruit tress but I did find these websites and they seem to cover almost everything you'd need to know. http://cals.arizona.edu/pubs/garden/mg/fruit/index.html http://www.scenicnursery.com/archives/000058.html http://landscaping.about.com/od/fruittreesbushes/ http://www.gardenline.usask.ca/fruit/fallcare.html I just hope they are of some use to you Muddy. :-D
Over here in Sunny Essex we have something called June drop when the trees shed a quantity of fruit - it is at this time that we also do a spot of thinning if necessary. This is quite early on in growing, so I would say, don't pick of the blossom in case those you leave behind don't set, but wait until you have lots of fruitlets, then firstly, remove any that look mishapen and any that touch their neighbour. The wait a while, and as the fruits swell, again, thin removing any that touch their neighbours. Also I think watering is important whilst the fruit it swelling. It has been an iffy year for me for apples. I have plenty, but last year I had tonnes. However, I did prune all the trees quite hard to try and keep them in shape, so maybe, now they have had a rest year, they will go bonkers next year!
Thanks ladies, The first website you sent was great! I'll put that on my favourites list. I guess no one was born knowing the right way to do things in the garden. It's trial and error and asking for advice. I can see what I'll need to do differently next year. Thanks again. muddy
