apple trees leaves

[Sally Clarke]

Hi all I am alittle worried about my 2 apples one was planted last year one this spring, no friut yet but as the summer has gone on the leaves have been covered in what I can only decribe as swirling brown lines which are like scares. does anyone have an idea what it might be and is it something I need to worry about?

any suggestions welcome

Sally

[nick the grief]

Hi Sally,

If they are only a couple of years old I wouldn't expect any fruit off them, they take that to "bed in".

As to the swirly lines in the leaves, that sounds like leaf miner. It's a grub that lives between the outer surfaces f the leaves & eats the middle bit (like nibbling the custard out of a custard cream or don't you do that ) Nothing really to wrry about they just look unsightly.

You can spray for them but I guess you won't want to do that

[Sally Clarke]

thanks for the advice as long as it isnt detremental im happy to leave the tree alown to "bed in" so I can watch and wait for some fruit next year prahaps. (fingers crossed)

thanks
Sally

[Mrs Dobby]

Hi Sally, just thought I'd post and let you know that you arent alone with no fruit from new apple trees! We brought 2 apple and one cherry tree last summer, all being a couple of years old and about 4' tall. Last year we got 2 cherries and 5 apples off the eating apple tree, and nothing off the cooking apple tree, this year loads of lovely cherries (or at least lots that we got before the birds nicked them) and 6 cooking apples, but nothing from the eating apple tree! I too was worried about this, but a quick bit of research also put my mind to rest that it is quite usual! I'm just looking forwards to the crops I'm hoping to get in a few years after they are all well established!

[Squirrel]

There are two five year old apple trees in my front yard, planted in totally the wrong place and not producing much fruit at all. They are too close to a hedge and to each other! I would like to move them and see if they can recover and 'do' something!

Any suggestions as to how to make things easy for the trees. They are about four foot high and have only the one main stem with maybe two or thee little branches.

[nick the grief]

Take as big a rootball as you can Squirrel. Give them a good Stake as they may suffer from the wind at that size (I'm 5ft 11" & I do ) then dig the whole for them twice as big as the one they came from & mix some compost into the soil inthe whole & the Back fill material along with something like Blood, fish & bone. then make sure they dont dry out next year (you may want to sink a peice of plastci pipe nest to them to make sure the water gets to the roots) Fingers crossed they should be OK.

If they only have a few branches why not put some posts & wires in and train them as Espaliers, Decorative & productive .... just like me

[Squirrel]

Thanks Nick for that! Will fish out the garden plan and decide where to move them to post haste.

Had not thought of training them! Good idea as looking at them that would work quite well!

Thanks again!

[Mrs Dobby]

The cooking apples we got this year (all 5 of them) were quite good, I forgot that they were cooking apples at first though, and gave Mr Dobby one in his packing up for work, which he bit into heartily, before having every drop of moisture in his mouth disappear, he wasnt impressed at first, but we had a good laugh about it later! lol!

I used 2 of the 5 home grown cooking apples to do baked apples last night for Mr Dobby when he got in (late) from work, hadn't done these since Home Economics at school (many moons ago), and forgot that you are supposed to wrap them in tin foil, oops! They were very tasty, but a little crunchy too!!