Vox Pop - Writer offers tips for backyard apple growers

Vox Pop

The apple trees are budding out. These tips from someone who’s been working with apple trees for about 60 years may be useful to you.

If you’re planting an apple tree, make certain it gets as much unshaded sunlight as possible. If you’re unable or unwilling to pick apples from a ladder or with a pole picker, plant dwarf trees, which may need support because of smaller root systems. Standard size apple trees are intended to grow beyond unaided human reach. If beheaded, such a tree will respond ASAP with a thicket of vigorous, weakly attached shoots which are nonbearing disease magnets. Nothing will be gained and a spreading disease could kill the entire tree. Better to find someone to pick into a small pail hung under an arm, from a firmly lodged ladder, or pick what you can with a pole picker and shake down or pick up the remainder when they fall or leave them for the wild ones.

Fertilizing with anything containing nitrogen will prompt excessive growth at the expense of bearing and greater risk of disease in the vigorous new shoots. Earthworm castings and nitrogen-fixing bacteria provide enough. Most apple trees (and lawns) need only Ag lime, which sweetens the soil that may naturally become sour and releases nutrients that are unavailable in the acidified soil. I spread about 10 pounds of lime under some of the medium sized feral apple trees a couple years ago. Leaves of those limed were much darker green, larger and more disease and insect resistant. No need to apply much close to the trunk as most feeder roots are out near the drip line.

Few trees are isolated enough to be free of apple maggots which leave tunnels through the flesh that decay in early apples and become corky in later apples. To reduce the infestation, apple maggot fly traps could be tried. You can make your own or buy them online or in hardware stores. I’ve used Red Delicious apples covered with Tanglefoot with a stout wire inserted top down through the core with a “?” bend above and an “L” bend below. Use at least 2 hung at eye level for a small tree and at least 6 at the same level for a large tree. University of Wisconsin Division of Extension says the adult flies that lay eggs on apples emerge from late June through August.

Last tips? If you haven’t already done so, read something about growing apple trees. There are many good books at the Medford library and online. And don’t let hail strike your apples! Good luck with that.

— Michael J Riegert, Medford