Apple Tree Care

JOHNPT

Hi All

I am not sure if this is the right section for this question but thought some farmers here would have some advice

We have about 10 apple trees in our garden about 5 trees are cooking apples and 5 are eating apples. Trees are approx 20 yrs old. Although there is alot of apples every year the apples are very small and alot of them have what looks like brown marks or scabs on them.

Is there anything I can do to prevent these marks or have bigger apples - do the trees need to be treated or pruned or fertilized?

Thanks in advance for any advice

KatyMac

JOHNPT wrote: »

Hi All

I am not sure if this is the right section for this question but thought some farmers here would have some advice

We have about 10 apple trees in our garden about 5 trees are cooking apples and 5 are eating apples. Trees are approx 20 yrs old. Although there is alot of apples every year the apples are very small and alot of them have what looks like brown marks or scabs on them.

Is there anything I can do to prevent these marks or have bigger apples - do the trees need to be treated or pruned or fertilized?

Thanks in advance for any advice

For general feeding of the trees apply sulphate of potash in last January at a rate of three quarters oz per square yard (sorry, I'm still in the dark ages and don't know that this is in grams per cm!!). Then every 3 years apply superphosphate at 2 oz per square yard (also in January).
In late February apply sulphate of amonia at the rate of 1oz per square yard.

This is out of a wonderful book I got that is an idiot's guide to vegetable and fruit. I tried it on my trees, one of which is probably nearly 60 years old, and they produce great fruit. If they are getting too big give them a bit of a tidying up also - it makes it an awful lot easier to pick the fruit as well.

The_Conductor

Also- brownspot on apple can be minimised with calcium sulphate (CaSO4)- you can pick up a small bag in any garden centre/larger hardware store.

aidanki

how do you keep crows away

The_Conductor

aidanki wrote: »

how do you keep crows away

This comes up every so often.
Apparently there is some sound clip you can download from the internet which mimics the natural predator that crows in Australia have. The predator obviously doesn't live in Ireland- but the Irish crows react similarly to their Ozzie cousins and get the hell out of there as quickly as possible.

Google it.

reilig

Some people will drop nets over the trees to keep the crows away. You can pick up net very cheaply on ebay these days!