Question: I am thinking of planting an apple tree this year, what do I do?
Planting trees is always a good idea. Fruit trees are attractive and rewarding and may work in your landscape but falling fruit can be messy and attracts pests. Before choosing the variety to plant, I suggest researching aspects such as mature height and width, hardiness zone and taste. Be careful if you are researching on the internet, a lot of bad advice is out there. I suggest typing in your search “planting apple trees and extension.” This will take you to the extension pages of many states. Even then, you need to be sure of the site’s state because planting and caring for trees in Florida is different than it is for us.
Things to be considered when choosing a variety include the height and width of the tree when it matures. Another consideration is the hardiness zone. I personally try to only choose plants, especially trees, that are hardy in zone four which is hardy to negative 30 degrees. Zone five is hardy to negative 20 degrees. One thing last week should have taught us is negative 30 is possible. Also important is the taste and firmness of an apple. If you want baking or canning apples they need to be firm. In addition, some apples require two or more trees for pollination, sometimes even a different variety.
An apple tree needs to have at least eight hours of sun per day. Trees need to be planted away from buildings, power lines and pavement. The distance needed depends on the variety.
Apple trees are available in standard size, semi-dwarf and dwarf. Standard apple trees generally mature to at least 18 feet tall and dwarf apple trees mature to eight to ten feet tall. Even if you want to plant standard sized trees, think about planting some dwarf trees too. A dwarf tree will produce fruit in two to three years while a standard tree takes about seven years to produce. Of course the number of trees you can plant depends on the space available.
I will discuss planting apple trees next week.
You can send me questions about gardening, lawn, landscape, trees, houseplants or upcoming classes to either bgoekensales@hotmail.com, my Facebook page Brenda Goeken Sales or call me at 402-382-8639 and I will answer them and maybe in the newspaper.
