Apple tree

We all love to see Apple blossom, but to stop it fruiting pick off all the flowers. It's a long job, but as you pick them you may take off most of next years fruit buds.

A strong weed blower? :-( How sad to think of deblossoming an Apple tree.

Side-bar. A country singer who died way to early rendered a beatiful ode. Here are the words by Kate Wolf
It is a beatiful song in a haunting album. I take it with me when I visit the dentist! Listening to it with headphones helps a lot!!

The Lilac and the Apple Tree
(Kate Wolf)

"A Lilac bush and an Apple tree
Were standing in the woods,
Out on the hill above the town,
Where once a farmhouse stood.

In the winter the leaves are bare
And no one sees the signs
Of a house that stood and a garden that grew
And life in another time.

One Spring when the buds can bursting forth
And grass grew on the land,
The Lilac spoke to the Apple tree
As only a good friend can.

Do you think, said the Lilac, this might be the year
When someone will build here once more?
Here by the cellar, still open and deep,
There's room for new walls and a floor.

Oh, no, said the Apple, there are so few
Who come here on the mountain this way,
And when they do, they don't often see
Why we're growing here, so far away.

A long time ago we were planted by hands
That worked in the mines and the mills,
When the country was young and the people who came
Built their homes in the hills.

But now there are cities, the roads have come,
And no one lives here today.
And the only signs of the farms in the hills
Are the things not carried away.

Broken dishes, piles of boards,
A tin plate, an old leather shoe.
And an Apple tree still bending down,
And a Lilac where a garden once grew."

Copyright Kate Wolf
DP
oct96

Ok but that wont solve the problem.
I have had a simlar problem with an old Bramley that produced nothing but rotten apples.
First you need to shape and prune the tree hard now. Open the middle of the tree to aloe the air to pass throuhg. Second you need to give the tree a winter wash just before the spring,because there will be bugs and pests galore that will cause the aplles to rot next year. Use Morteg and follow the makers instructions. You may need to repeat this for a couple of years until the tree is sound and healthy again. My bramleys are the best I have ever tasted now! Good luck Rod. Tilford cottage gardens.

Rodburn,

That was excellent advice. Applies to plums and stone crops as well. Pruning is everything. Spraying second and perhaps some good fertilizing when needed.

What is Morteg? Is it a lime sulfer or Copper bordeaux formulation.

I love Bramley's. Very rarely planted in the Pacific Northwest of the USA. Wolf River is another favorite cooking apple of mine. Does well here. Not so for the Cox Pippens and some of your other aromatic fruits. We have only some 1600 degrees of summer heat here. Oregon. Willamett Valley has some 2400 hrs.

By example Hudson Golden Gem (another favorite) doesn't do squat here but does well just a hundred miles to the East of us and down in Oregon.