r/Apples • u/PuffinTrain • 10d ago
Help a newbie?
I have two young apple trees planted last August, purchased from a garden center on an end-of-season sale that flowered impressively and now have what look like tiny apples growing on them. They are McIntosh and Zestar. I live in south-central Wisconsin in the United States. Do I need to do anything immediately to help the trees do well? Am I supposed to reduce the number of apples that they bear, or are these not even apples? I’m not super enthusiastic about using pesticides, but if there’s something I should do now, I’m all ears. Thanks for any advice you have for a newbie!
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u/Left_Interaction_288 10d ago
Apples are usually thinned to one or two fruitlets per cluster. You could wait a few weeks for the fruit to get bigger, some natural thinning may occur, and it might also be clearer which is the biggest fruit in the cluster.
Since these are new trees, you want to remove almost all the fruit, so the trees engery goes in to developing it's branches and roots. But you also want to taste you apples, so it's OK to leave a few.
I suggest learning about pruning and training. Also if you know the rootstock make a note of that as it will tell you how big the tree is likely to get, whether it needs permanent staking etc.