# Fertilizing fruit trees



## deadmoose (Oct 30, 2011)

Do you feetilize? If so when and how?

I have 2 big old apple trees. Produce a lot of fruit yearly for me and livestock. Never fertilized. I also have a handful of young (planted withiN past few years) of apple, cherry, and pear trees. They are yet to produce fruit. Hopefully lots of cherries this year. Trees in full bloom now.

These I planted with maybe 50-100# of mostly composted manure. It seemed to work well.

Should I top dress with manure? How much? Other fert?

Tia


----------



## Orchard6 (Apr 30, 2014)

We usually top dress some CAN-27 after fruit set on apples. We also use a lot of foliar 0-50-30 throughout the summer.
With fruit unlike most crops you can apply fertilizer based on the crop set. If you have a heavy crop you'd add more N to get size, if it's a light crop you may not have to add any N.


----------



## deadmoose (Oct 30, 2011)

How much? I would be interested to try for bigger apples. I seem to have plenty of small fruit (tennis ball or smaller) on my 2 old trees. Trees maybe 45? Yrs old. 20ish ft tall 20 ft diameter? Estimated.


----------



## Orchard6 (Apr 30, 2014)

We usually apply 200 pounds to the acre for an average crop. If it is a larger crop we may do a second application at about the same rate.

If your going to try for size your probably going to have to thin the crop some. During bloom you'll notice that there are 4-5 flowers around a flower in the middle. The one in the middle is called the King Bloom and the others are side blooms. The king bloom will usually produce the largest and strongest fruit. The side blooms of course are smaller and weaker. As the apples grow you'll notice a definite size difference between the two. When the apples are between marble to golf ball size you can pick off the smaller weaker fruit. This does two things for the remaining apples, the first being that they now have room to grow, the second being that you won't have the weaker fruit competing for the nourishment from the tree. 
Any idea what variety they are?


----------



## deadmoose (Oct 30, 2011)

No. Someone said maybe Jonathan for one?

One tree grows light green/yellow apples that get like a spot of eed at the end. Apples r e ady in late Aug early Sept. Once ripe they all fall off the tree aoon. They have little shelf life as well. Turn soft quick.

Second one is eeady late. Much firmer. Turn mostly red. Kind of look like pic Gratefull11 posted in orchard pics. They seem to not get sweet until a good frost or a few.


----------



## deadmoose (Oct 30, 2011)

Late one looks kinda like this:


----------



## deadmoose (Oct 30, 2011)

Early one kind of like this.


----------

