600 apples a day

When we bought our new house, it came with the landscaping installed. Everything was shiny new, including all the plants, except for an apple tree on the west side of the house. As apple trees go, it is a pretty good sized one, maybe 15 feet high. However, it had obviously never been pruned.

Since we moved in and the tree was already beginning to bloom, I decided to wait until after this season to begin pruning the tree. This was a bad idea. When the tree went into bloom in late April, the bees kicked into high gear, pollinization-wise. I think every blossom on the tree turned into a mini-apple.

I read on the internet that in early June, the tree would thin itself. I decided I would let nature run its course and thin its own apples. This was another bad idea. Yes, nature did thin about 200 apples off the tree. I spent the better part of an hour picking them up one Saturday afternoon. However, it left many hundreds of apples clinging to branches that are not nearly ready to support the weight of one apple, much less 5.

Over the past few weeks, I've lost several small apple-laden limbs that snapped under the weight of the growing apples. The larger apples are about the size of a half-dollar. Tonight, I finally decided for the sake of my younger tree limbs, it was time to thin the apples. I did a little more internet research. The general consensus is that you should leave one apple about every 6 inches. However, there is no advice on what to do if the limb is 7 feet long and clearly bending from the weight, even after thinning. I decided to just let it be. The limb can take care of itself.

The picture you see above is a small section of the tree, pre-thinning. Imagine this multiplied by several hundred, and you can visualize my task. After 90 minutes tonight, I ran out of sunlight. I had gathered two buckets full of small apples. In the interest of science, I decided I needed to find out how many apples I had cut off. I counted the smaller of the buckets and came up with 288 apples. So between nature and myself, the tree is down about 800 apples. Unfortunately, there are still a gazillion (roughly) left on the tree. Anyone care to join us for apple pie in a couple months?