apples

I have two young apple trees and last year was the first year for them to bear fruit and we had a couple dozen small apples on each of the two trees.  This year the east tree only had a handful of apples but the west tree was loaded with big crisp apples.  Most of them we a half pound by weight.  We have not sprayed and we had a little superficial damage to the skin on some of the apples but really none to the flesh. 

Although we planted the trees straight they both are growing at a steep angle toward the north.  Dad came out and we staked the apple trees.  I had purchased a tree stake that used a rubber tube to apply tension on the tree but it was not strong enough to straighten the tree or even keep it from getting worse..  We changed it to a fence post at an angle with a wire on a high tensile fence ratchet.  We used some pieces of garden hose to protect the tree from the wire and every few days we tighten the ratchet a little more so that the trees are gradually straightening up.  Here is the west tree loaded with fruit and leaning to the north.  In the background to the right in the picture you can see the east tree which is not as dramatic but still leaning. 

 Here the tree has gentle pressure to straighten up the tree gradually.  All of those apples have since been harvested and enjoyed. 

This year I made a small batch of crock pot apple butter with some of the apples and shared some and sold some in the farm stand.  I am not worried about the other tree yet.  I was reading that some trees have an every other year habit of fruiting so I will be anxious to see what happens next year.  I am trying to add new fruit each year to the farm so this years apple harvest was really fun.