Inherited Apples trees

Just inherited four apple trees on my new plot. Maybe Bramleys. there is grass all round the trunk base of all four trees and fruit is forming. How should I care for them until picking please?

MTA

Lad.

 

I'm no expert on apple trees, but I would definitely remove the grass, perhaps put some fertilizer down and then give them a good watering followed by a good mulch of compost or the like to keep the weeds and grass down.

 

How big are they?

 

Two are c2.5m the two smaller ones are c.1.5m They are not spreading trees the growth is almost pyramidal, I will take a photo and upload them.

The fruit is forming so I want to make sure I get a good crop.

 

Height or spread?

 

Height, the spread is compact, c 1.5m not ur usual apple tree shape oddly.

 

If they're that small, then go with advice in post #2.

 

You can just see my trees in my album called Lads garden and allotment.

 

Lad, it doesn`t sound as if they are very vigourous, so I doubt if any of them are Bramleys.

 

What a shame, well I can still do lots with dessert Apples.

will take a better pic in the morning.

 

I'm not an expert on fruit trees, (ours were so old they had to be grubbed out eventually), but my uncle was 'the fruit man' so I can only pass on what he told us.

Firstly, (hard as it might be) in early June, you should remove any fruits which are obviously diseased, not forming properly or are much smaller than those around it. Then sometime in June - or even July - you have to be prepared for the 'June drop' - when perfectly healthy looking small apples suddenly start dropping off the tree for no apparent reason. This is just what apple trees do (annoying little blighters!) but it's the tree's way of 'pruning itself', by limiting the amount of fruit it 'knows' it can support.

Once that is over, you then need to thin out the fruit (yes .... again I'm afraid ) so that there is something like 4"-6" between each apple on an eating apple tree, and roughly twice this distance between cooking apples, just so that you get decent sized fruit. I know this is hard picking off perfectly good fruit - my uncle always maintained you should get someone else to do it for you because you'd never do it properly to your own trees!! (of course, that could also have been because he had over 100 of them and doing it by himself would have taken weeks!).

You'll also need to summer prune and, if you take a look at the Gardener's World website, there's information there on on how to do it.

Just two other things - firstly, if you let too many apples form (which is a great temptation) you may well find that your tree(s) may not fruit at all the following year, or the crop will be very poor.

Secondly, the trees will need to be pruned again in the winter to both 'open up' the centre of the tree and to encourage fruit spurs for the following year - as they say 'with a 'properly' pruned apple tree, you should be able to throw your hat through the middle.'

 

Images of the trees and my new plot are in my album "Lads garden."