How to Grow Apple Trees Complete Growing Guide

grabbing fresh organic homegrown fruit right off your own trees is Within Reach today will share with you the techniques you need to know to make this reality let me take you over to an apple tree that me and Tuck have been growing for many years now when we started growing apples about 12 years ago we struggled to produce quality fruit we'd get an Apple here an apple there but there was no level of consistency to our Harvest now look at our trees they're covered with fruit every single year we are confident that by sharing with you few important techniques and by filling you in on some mistakes that you must avoid that you could have trees like this that are covered with apples when it comes to any fruit tree planting the right tree the first time will save you space time and money in the long run that's why suggest you plant young bare root dwarf trees in the early spring as soon as you can work the soil semi- dwarf trees are okay as well there are many reasons these are the optimal trees for backyard gardeners to plant the first one has to do with the roots with bare root trees when planting The Roots won't be Tangled together and you could spread them in different directions which in the future will allow the tree to have better access to water one planting don't typically add lot of compost or homemade soil will add in some cocoa core because my soil is very Sandy and the cocoa core will help improve the soil structure want the tree to get used to its new home and where it will live instead of putting lot of highquality soil in and tricking the tree discouraging it from expanding into the native soil you will notice add some micro risal fungi when planting out this will inoculate the roots and create the Michael risal Association then backfill the hole and water the tree in mistake you cannot afford to make is buring the graft Union our trees are grafted onto dwarf root stock which is what we want dwar trees will be smaller they'll produce fruit sooner and they'll be more productive if we bury the graft then what will happen is that top variety will root into the ground and our tree will no longer be dwarf tree right here is be root tree that planted 3 years ago you can see it's loaded with fruit now let me take you over to another tree planted the same year but it was potted tree potted trees will often have their Roots Twisted together and can strangle themselves especially if they're root bound and have been in the pot for while if you're going to plant potted trees the younger the tree the better for this potted tree planted made sure to separate the roots as much as could and to untangle them to reduce the chances of issues with the roots further down the road check this out this is another tree that planted the same time as put the Potted tree into the ground this one is the honey crisp apple it looks beautiful and it has some great apples on it another important Tech technique when planting your trees is to make sure that you put thick mulch down around your trees this is super important because when young trees have to compete with weeds and grass that will greatly weaken the trees especially when they're first getting adjusted to their new homes so thick mulch chips is my favorite is very important the first year you plant your tree you want to make sure that you're watering the tree and helping to support it when first get my tree in the ground make sure to give it nice heavy watering then I'll come by and monitor it and make sure that In the Heat of the day especially in the summer come by and give it an adequate level of moisture just think about it like tomatoes almost so when it comes to tomatoes and you're transplanting those into the ground they take about say 3 Days To transition and adjust to their new home before they start growing trees is the same thing but it's longer period of time so tree might take instead of 3 Days To transition about 3 months or more to transition into its new home so so think about it like that when you get these trees in they're not finished they're still transitioning to their new home and they're getting used to that place so make sure you stay on top of watering the first year after the first year don't really water my tree regularly just help it that one year and then after that want the tree to kind of go out on its own and expand its roots and tap into the water table so it's not like addicted to me watering it we have tuck out here hanging out with us working hard like usual right Boo this guy is always out here he's the young king he's the boss he's always watching over the garden making sure nothing sneaks in and steals our apples that's why he's the greatest spam some hearts down low if you love seeing the guardian of the garden in the videos fortunately it's not that not that hot out yet so he's just you would think lounging but actually he's working he's just keeping an eye on everything making sure nothing sneaks in right boo when it comes to fruit trees proper pruning is just as important as planting and pruning when when you're first planting your tree is highly advantageous newly planted tree will have Healthy Start If you balance the roots with the top growth for be root trees before they're sent to us the roots get pruned back which means when we first get this tree in the ground we need to prune back some of the top growth to make sure that the top and the bottom the roots and the growth up top is balanced the same thing goes with our Potter trees when we take our Potter trees out and we separate those roots little bit and potentially kill some of the those roots by separating them to make sure that they go out in different directions then we need to make sure we balance that top growth with it when it comes down to it you're better off having more Roots when it comes to the balance at the bottom than more top growth because this will allow our tree to adjust and when we have good root system that will automatically lead to big healthy trees up top with lot of nice growth on them apple trees grow best when they grow in the pattern of having central leader one main stem growing up the whole plant plant and then your branches grow off the side of that it's best to establish this shape when first planting your tree what you want to do is remove few branches and be left with four different branches with some space between them growing in four different directions this is best to do when the tree is Young not only is the shape of an apple tree important but so is the angle of the branches the branch on an apple tree will either focus on Leaf growth or fruit production based on the angle of that Branch come in here the ideal Branch angle for apples is between 50 and 75° from vertical you can see this is very healthy Branch angle right here and as we move up you can see we've got good balance of fruit and leaf production on here if we have branch that's completely lateral it's going to have too much fruit on it if we have branches that are going straight up then they're just going to basically be producing leaves so getting good Branch angle is important and establishing this Branch angle when the trees are young is vitally important to help train tree when it's young like to use clo pins to help get the proper Branch angles which will allow you to get fruit as soon as possible you can see there's still Clos pin on this Branch right here from when first planted the tree and it helped me establish good Branch angle and look at the fruit back here pretty nice I'll remove this close Pin now though they're really convenient when using them on young trees for older trees if need to train them to better Branch angles I'll use spacers that create just out of using scrapwood it is much harder to train and prune an old tree to the correct shape than it is to plant new one and give it the right shape from the start especially when it comes to Apples because they fruit on old wood if you go out there and you try to prune your Apple heavy to get the shape correct like an older tree then what it's going to do is shoot put out lot of regrowth and lot of new shoots like you see right here and that's not good cuz you're going to have to kind of keep removing those every year and then it's just going to be hard to keep up with the tree only have few water shoots right here that need to remove cuz have the right shape on this tree but it is very difficult to kind of get an old tree to good shape it takes number of years you can't just remove lot of the branches all at once or the regrowth is going to be so so hard to keep up with mean it's it's going to be it's going to be terrible I've tried it before and I've tried it with pear trees too if you do want to go out and make some Cuts in your trees make sure for apples you're mainly making thinning cuts and not heading Cuts if you want to know what these are I've made video about this in the past I'll link it right here knowing the right kinds of cuts for the trees you're growing when it comes to pruning is going to make huge difference for your trees in the future when it comes to Apples and getting fruit from them make sure to be patient it's not just about what happens this year it's about establishing tree that will produce well for you for 20 or more years if you take care of it realistically you're not going to get fruit on your tree until like the third or fourth year this tree right here was able to get fruit on it after only 3 years because laid good foundation for the tree planted this in the spring of 2022 so it grew 2022 it grew 2023 and now it's 2024 and it's fruiting really nicely there's an old adage when it comes to fruit trees it's first they sleep so when you put them in they kind of don't do much the first year the second year they creep they grow little bit the third year they leap they grow bunch and then typically the fourth year they fruit if you do everything that share with you then you could have your apples starting to produce after the third year and by the fourth year they should really be kicking out lot of fruit but if you want your fruit to reach maturity there's few important things additional that we really need to look into to make sure we don't just get small apples that fall off we want fruit reaching full maturity like you see right here apples are not not self-pollinating which means you need more than one variety that flour at the same time in order for them to pollinate one another fortunately have bunch of different varieties and also have this apple that planted from seed my own variety the Pion Apple this one flowers for long period of time and pollinates lot of my other apple trees in my opinion apples are one of the greatest fruits out there and think both pests and diseases will agree with me that's why we need to make sure we're protecting our trees our flowers and our fruits that's another reason why dwarf trees are so great cuz they're much easier to protect to prune and just everything else let's start out with the flowers when it comes to your apple trees if you have really wet Cool Spring and you start to notice that some of your flowers are turning brown and falling off then your flowers are potentially and most likely getting Brown rot what you can do is once you see that start to happen you could go out and you could spray your flowers at night with this suver spray you mix it with water just follow the directions make sure you're doing it at night though because you could really injure the the bees by using this if you spray it onto the bees this is only if you need to use it I've only had to use it about once haven't had to use it at all the past 3 years that's just if Brown Rod is taking over those flowers if you don't have the flowers there then you're not going to get fruit that's what it comes down to another thing you could do is if it's consistently an issue is you could use copper fungicide in the winter this is probably better thing to do than the sulfur because this is dormant spray so you would have to prepare the season before you spray this on the tree before they wake up I've only had to use this about one time don't like using it if don't have to when it comes to your fruit there are few things that really will go after to the fruit and decimate it the number one thing around here that you have to use or the plum culio will come after you the plum culio is terrible pest what it does is it's the females slice into the fruit when they're really young then they lay eggs in that fruit they can go around and do that to about two or 300 fruit in one night so you need to make sure you're protecting your fruit the best way to do that is with surround kin clay this stuff is amazing it's pure clay it's protectant but it's super super fine it's spun in magnetic centrifuge to make it so fine and it forms protective layer over your fruit and it's incredibly important that you get that on there it protects your fruit from so many different things and you must start applying it once you see the petals start to fall off the flowers the earlier you get it on there the better because like said one night and the plunk your kilo can just like ruin your whole fruit so that spray you want to apply about every 7 to 10 days and then once like mid June comes around don't even need to use it anymore have video where go into detail how use this spray and how mix it and I'll put link to that right up here if you guys want to reference that it's call it the magic powder because it just works for so many different crops it's an incredible protectant another cool thing about the clay is you could mix within the clay something like the sulfur if you have lot of bad apple scab or other fungal issues you could also mix into the clay which suggest you do like every third spray or so you could either use BT or you could use spinosad both of these are really good and these will you know damage lot of the worms and stuff that are can potentially go after your apples when they're young because you can mix this into the clay it actually stays on your fruit lot better after you have the first application of clay everything sticks to it better so when you mix this into the clay it is really effective these things have allowed me to consistently get apples with no issues know it's not fun to spray some stuff in your trees but like this year and the last few years the only thing that I've had to spray in my trees was the surround kale and clay and then every few would mix in the BT and it's made allowed me to get consistent apples like all the time and it just feels good to be able to go out there and grab apples you'll notice come up here since stopped spraying the clay on my apples in like mid June because the plum culio can't cut into the fruit when it's this big don't have any Clay on my fruit so if you time it right you won't have to worry about clay being on your trees when they're young yeah your trees and fruit will be covered with Clay but I'm telling you it will be worth it when you're heading into like September October and your trees are loaded with fruit it's great feeling another simple practice that will make big difference in your garden regarding pests is to make sure that you go out and pick up any of the Fallen fruit this is important because this will harber both pests and diseases especially when it comes to that Plum culio they will whole generation will will you know Sprout out of this fruit and then keep going and keep going in new generations if you don't remove it so it's simple but it's really important to make sure whatever fruit trees you're going to go out and pick up any of that Fallen fruit another thing that cannot be overstated is the importance of variety selection some varieties just grow way better and are more disease resistant for instance this variety right here this is the Liberty Apple this is known as the most disease resistant apple on the planet if you have choose growing apples you should start with the liberty and then if you want you can expand into other varieties but mean it just makes sense grow the one that's easier to get frood from and it has incredible flavor to it also when you grow number of different varieties you could extend your harvest season for instance have the Williams pride in the front that is my earliest producing Apple we're talking like Late July early August that thing starts kicking out apples and then move move over to my favorite flavored one the honey crisp apple fruits next and then after that the Liberty is late producing one so it's like can have big window of time where I'm harvesting apples simply by growing different varieties and it's such it's such fun thing to be able to eat those fresh apples another thing is making sure you grab your apples when they're actually ripe good sign is when they start falling to the ground like this apple right here just is falling to the ground on its own so we know that this tree is starting to really have some ripe apples what you want to do is you don't want to yank these apples off you just want to go out there find the Apple you should just be able to give it few twists without without pulling it down and it should pop right off that's an indication that you have some ripe apples you can see the the little bit of white on the outside that's like lot of the good bacteria and stuff all need to do is just wipe this off with my shirt you'll see right here and it'll get that classic apple shine to it look at that absolutely beautiful and when we bite into these apples we know they're not going to be starchy and green because they're actually ripe let's get bite and see incredibly juicy so fresh tasting mean this kind of video is so important to me and Tuck because we want you guys to have the opportunity to go out there and grab your fresh homegrown organic apples right off the tree it's truly gift it's up there with peaches and strawberries when it comes to Growing your own I'm always planting more apple trees because it's like one of my favorite alltime fruits can never eat there's never too many apples no matter how many there are could always eat them there's so many uses for them so we are really hoping that this video give you lot of value and that's today's video Growers thanks for watching we hope you enjoyed it we hope you got something out of it we hope that you truly take some of these things that we share with you and apply them into your your garden me and Tuck have really been growing apples for 12 years now maybe even longer we've grown we we've had to gone through like 20 or 25 trees that I've planted at least throughout that time I've been able to get some firsthand knowledge and experience to be able to share with you guys what truly works in the garden so could almost guarantee you guys consistent fruit there was couple years like three or four years in where was wondering am ever going to get fruit is it even worth it but just by putting little time little effort and trying some things out experimenting different ideas it's come to the point where there's consistent Apple production every single year and it's such gift to be able to eat this stuff fresh from the garden me and Tuck would ask that if you guys enjoyed this video to hit the like button hit the Subscribe button and share this with your friends that makes massive difference we want everyone out there to eat their own apples that's part of Team grow to be able to grow some food share what you're doing with somebody and then they grow food they share with someone else and it becomes this exponential compounding thing where we're all building better future together we're growing better future together one apple tree at time and come on we got to do it for the classic Johnny apple seed that guy put in the work and the effort we got to keep expanding that we got to get apple trees in everyone's backyard we had blast out here we hope you guys enjoyed the video we wanted to sh send thank you to one of our new channel members corn thanks for being part of Team grow thanks for having your hand in everything we're doing out here we're so thankful that you guys especially the mean everyone in team grow and members of the channel who help support us and help all this to be possible and allow me and Tuck to get some fresh food right from the backyard and we're just thankful to all the subscribers but none of this would be possible without you guys so we're truly grateful for it Tuck's down here he's feeling little chill today he's not too hyperactive there's not too many great snacks for him to eat so he's just kind of doing his thing out here enjoying the day and we're going to have to go by and harvest lot of these apples cuz these things are at their Peak it's going to be fun when you we have more apples than we know what to do with tuck and James will be back to you again real soon we out