In midsummer and autumn, apples from your own garden are not only a fruity refreshment for fresh consumption, but also the basis for juices and cakes. The foundation for a rich harvest is laid with the apple blossom in spring.
How can you promote apple blossom and ensure pollination?
The apple blossom in spring is crucial for a successful harvest. To promote them, you should maintain two-year-old shoots when pruning the tree, form a light tree crown and fertilize the tree in autumn. Ensure pollination by compatible pollinator varieties or manual pollination with a brush.
The messenger of spring as an indicator of the harvest
From around the end of April, when the fruit trees bloom, many gardens and avenues are covered with a sea of white and delicate pink flowers. Due to the large distribution of apple trees in this country, the apple blossom is an important factor for beekeepers and the nutrition of their bee colonies in spring. The delicate apple blossoms are all the more visible in the landscape because they appear before or at the same time as the first leaf shoots on the apple tree. As the green becomes more and more dense, the petals slowly rain down to the ground with the spring wind. Whether the flowers have been pollinated correctly can be seen when, after a few weeks, the pistil has turned into a narrow apple on the stem.
Promote the formation of numerous flowers
For a productive apple harvest, when it comes to caring for your apple trees, you should know that flowers and therefore fruits only appear on shoots of the apple tree that are at least two years old. You should therefore be careful not to remove all new shoots, especially when pruning the tree in summer. Nevertheless, you should significantly shorten the towering water shoots at the top of the tree crown, as these change the shape of the tree crown unfavorably and rarely produce flowers in the following season. If you make sure that the tree crown is clear when cutting, this will ensure that the fruits that ripen from the flowers and all the leaves receive enough sunlight for he althy growth. Fertilizing the tree with compost or green manure in autumn promotes the formation of numerous inflorescences in the following spring.
Ensuring pollination of apple blossoms
Bad harvest years for apple trees sometimes occur when there are severe night frosts or severe storms right at the time of apple blossom. If a large proportion of the apple blossoms fall off, there will also be significant losses in the harvest. Rainy weather also prevents pollination of flowers, which are normally visited by the following insects:
- Bees
- Bumblebees
- Wild bees
In emergencies, the apple blossoms can also be pollinated by applying pollinator pollen to the respective pistil with a soft brush (€8.00 on Amazon). Since apple trees are usually self-sterile, pollen from another apple variety must be used. If there are no other apple trees in the neighborhood, planting apple trees of compatible pollinator varieties is also an option.
Tips & Tricks
If you copulate the scion of a pollinator variety on an existing apple variety, you can ensure pollination with suitable pollen.
