5 BIGGEST Mistakes when Growing APPLE TREES!

5 Biggest Mistakes when growing Apples! Apples are one of the most common fruits grown and eaten in a homestead or on a farm!
There are many benefits to having and growing your own apple tree, but if you dont know how to manage it, you will not have much success.
The first one on my list, Choosing the Right variety! this is the most important one! second and third and fertilizer and water! Weed control and training systems is also critical!

If you have any questions let me know!

Farmer Dre Supply

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[ZacandCompany]

1. Right variety, rootstock, and density
2. Fertilize appropriately
3. Water (most ppl underestimate how much they need)
4. Control weeds
5. Train trees appropriately for the system

[mohawksniper]

I'm looking for old big Apple trees to plant for my grandchildren. Biggest thing I remember from when I was a kid was climbing a big Apple tree for an apple👍🤠

[honestlyna]

A tree is never a waste of space. Plant the trees people. The fruit it bears is icing.

[stevecochran]

I started my small orchard of 30 trees 8 - 10 years ago and I think I have made every mistake there is but I think I got it just about figured out now. I had a lot of damage two years ago from the cicadas and I think if the trees were any younger when they hit I might have lost many more, as it was I lost 3, but I have had a lot of fun and a lot of heart break along the way.

[JDHood]

Awesome! I learned something! Never knew about training the branches below horizontal to encourage it to fruit.

[Biophile]

This one was quite helpful. I just planted our first apple trees this past spring. Liberty, Monark, King David, Enterprise and Winesap. I was not thinking a lot about fertilizer but that makes sense on building more wood to encourage earlier fruiting. I'll definitely work on that this spring. Fall work is chopping down the red cedar trees ;)

[fredfrost]

We are new to growing apple trees, literally just bought our first 2 apple trees of Pink Lady and Courtland yesterday 6/29/2021 and pretty excited about giving them a go lol... anyway, thanks for your video, I learned 5 thing of what not to do so I went ahead and subscribed, because I'm going to need all the damn help I can get, a green thumb I do not have lol... thanks again and look forward to more videos...

[curiouskitten]

I think the biggest mistake you made was planting these in a monocrop orchard. You could massively increase the density, reduce your fertilization and herbicide costs, increase the amount of food you produce, reduce your labor inputs, and increase water retention in the soil by planting in an agroforestry/permaculture food system.

By planting some crop producing feeder trees like Ash, Eastern Redbud, Black & Honey locust, you can get fertilizer from depths of the soil that you can't normally reach. The Ash provides sugars (from fallen leaves) for the apples, and
eventually lumber, which is becoming a scarce and expensive resource. Honey locust beans are a delightful crop to add to your repertoire as well. The apple gets fed by nitrogen from the locusts, along with them being a strong living support post that you can grow vining crops like hardy kiwis and grapes up the trunks. They don't call Black locust the "fencepost tree" for no reason! You can also grow grapes directly up the apples' trunks! If desired, just string support lines between locusts for the vines to climb across and to train the apples on.

You can also feed the soil with other companion planted feeder crops like comfrey and valerian, which also produce a crop and crowd out weeds. Additionally, by planting things like garlic/common chives, plus perennial onions like walking & Welsh onions, and garlic, you can get some pest and disease protection. Daffodils repel gophers and provide you with cut flowers. Sweet cicely (sugary delight that it is) is good for pest protection too, and planting some along with some Dogwood attracts predatory insects that feed on apple pests.

Shrubs like raspberries, dwarf/apple roses, sea buckthorn, gooseberries and currents make a great shrub layer under apples. Besides producing fruit, you can also make tea from the leaves of the raspberries, currents and roses. Roses are amazing because they attract pollinators, have vitamin C rich hips, vitamin E rich seeds that can be ground into flour, you can make jelly from the petals, the leaves are good in tea, and you can sell cut flowers! They're insane for cash flow!

You can also get some nutrient mining plants to draw up nutrients the apples can't reach at various levels of the soil with root crops; especially deep taprooted plants like the comfrey, lupine (which could give you edible beans in a warm enough USDA planting zone and with the right variety of lupine {white lupine=lupini beans}) and flowers that attract pollinators, besides being a nitrogen fixer. Borage is a good edible accumulator too. Many of the flowers in the system attract pollinators or predators of the pests. Sunchokes do this and give you an amazingly tasty root crop/wind break. You can plant other staple perennial vegetables like rhubarb, asparagus, strawberries, lavender, mint, mustards, collards (and artichokes in the right USDA zone), besides your typical annuals like carrots, beats, mustards, radishes and peas right under the apples to REALLY crowd out weeds, and cover the soil to reduce carbon and water loss, besides giving you way more crops to harvest. You could even grow culinary mushrooms like morels under the trees to increase the symbiotic mycorrhizae in the soil! Healthy soil is nutritious soil!!!

This whole system is way more cost/water/labor/fertilizer efficient. You get the plants to do your job for you, reduce your costs and increase your revenues by mimicking a natural forest system. I'm glad that you've studied this subject deeply, because I can see your passion for growing and teaching. I mean no offense when I say this, but those that gave you your degree steered you wrong. A better, more Sustainable degree, would've been a Permaculture Design Certificate. I would love to talk to you more about this, and I encourage you to do some more research if you're interested.

[susanhall]

I appreciate your information & don’t really care about comedy or tic tok

[journeyoflovelight]

Woow... the front end cost... Good to know. Thank you.. Club variety.. Nice. I learn so much from you.. Thank you.

[cherylmarkwardt]

So how do you spray an herbicide for weed control and not damage the tree??

[heatherm]

What time of year to prune? One of your videos showed how to prune but it was in December. I thought pruning was early spring, before buds/blossoms form?

[silviuneagu]

Can you provide a fertilization schedule?

[kiteclem]

thanks for your vid :) . I'm starting a half-professional apple tree orchard, but I keep away those high density systems which involve lot of cure treatments as trees are touching between each neighbors .. I try to think differently : "which is the correct inbetween distance to make trees not be contamined by neighbors ?" . My goal is not density but fruit quality ( not been covered by Coper, Insecticide..etc ) And the 'empty space' will be filled by other fruit trees ( small fruits : grapes, berrys, gojis etc ) ..so no empty space at the end and mix production. I know it's not the best buisness vision but more 'permaculture' like :) . Anyway thank you for all your advices and explanations ;) . and happy new year !

[gusgalvanini]

Great videos man.
My 2 apple trees are well fertilized, well sunned, well pruned... 1 is a great producer, it flowers beautifully, then out comes the fruit in August-September... the other one which is planted about 7-8 ft away, NOTHING! No flowers, no fruit. They're the same age and same size (approximately). I am confused...

[AstroRef]

Great information
For the weed control can you use mulch ?

[davidsoloninka]

I have 15 healthy apple trees of 5 variety's. They are about 11 years old. They blossom very well but I never get apples. What am I doing wrong?
Thx DS

[eliinthewolverinestate]

I like standard root stocks because far north. We inline u.f.o our cherries and round ufo with apples. Food plot clover helps with nitrogen and less mowing too if any.

[jwilloughby]

Where can I buy those high density apple trees?

[Jonnie_Rich]

Farmer Dre, can you do a video on spraying apple trees? Theres so many fungicides on the market, its almost dizzying.