Garden Digest

Malus domestica (the apple)

It seems the hasty gardener always ends up paying the price somewhere down the seasonal line.  Apples are a very alluring tree to plant.  Who doesn't have a memory of a favorite apple tree at grandma's house or a long afternoon picking Galas at an orchard?  Memories don't always grow the trees however.  There are rules with planting apple trees, and as I found out if you don't follow those rules, they will, as the gardening book says, 'languish.'  The book also says, first paragraph (the one I didn't pay close enough attention to when planting my three), "Best site: Plant in full sun and well-drained soil.  Apples thrive in sandy loam and languish in heavy soil or clay.  Amend slow-draining soil with plenty of compost before planting."

Without fully realizing it, I planted my own trees with an allotted 2-3 foot amendment, not really knowing why, other than the plant tag told me so, but the hole and the dirt / bark mixture was never quite enough that season.  To watch a poor apple sapling languish over the course of the growing season as it is attacked by deer, pillaged by ants, and shriveled by the sun, is a difficult sight to bear.  At one point, by late August, I was able to pull my farthest apple tree right up out of its hole because it had produced so few stable roots despite my daily attention.  The site was not ideal – clay, rocky, and the sun pattern too erratic.  This was one good case of the overanxious gardener's sweet dreams of the perfect slice of apple pie confronting the reality of Mother Nature.