Alan: There is something fundamentally wrong about a 5-in-1 apple tree that has reached 25 feet tall. Can you recall how many years it has taken to reach this size, and perhaps the original source of the tree? Multigrafted trees are normally sold on dwarfing or semi-dwarfing rootstocks, and would never be expected to become this large. If the tree came from a dubious nursery source, you may have something quite different from a grafted 5-in-1 tree -- something like a tree on a seedling rootstock, or perhaps not a grafted tree at all. You have not yet told us whether or how much the tree blossoms in the spring. If a tree blossoms freely but does not set fruit, pollination problems may be suspected, but if the blossoms are sparse to nonexistent the tree sounds more like a seedling -- especially given the quality of the few apples as you describe them. You may have been snookered. Also, please tell us where you live in zone 8. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

I have tried organic gardening for years in Baldwin county. Save all organic material possible to add to your soil. Leaves are one of my favorites. Shred them if possible. You can use your lawn mower to shred. Add the leaves to your compost pile, use as mulch, or put them in a pile by themselves and let them rot. You can aid their decomposition by adding a organic fertilizer high in nitrogen. I use milorganite sold in your big box home improvement store. I am also able to get compost at my county waste management site. The compost from my county waste has a lot of small limb fragments that are still far from composted. The compost is quite inexpensive. I believe one can purchase even if not a county resident. I starting gardening at a new home site this year(2011). I,m trying square foot gardening for most of my gardening. I used my counties compost in place of Mel's mix for budget reasons. My beds are filled six inches with county compost. I add milorganite as a top dressing as recommended on bag. My intentions are to use my own compost or rotted leaves to top off my beds as I require more compost. My garden soil is an old field site. The top is sandy loam with a clay subsoil. The topsoil is very poor and quite deplete from conventional farming. The subsoil gets hard as a rock if it dries out. My age and health prevent me from double digging so I try to help nature out by attracting earthworms and other microorganisms to improve my soil tilth and fertility. My four main pests are slugs, pillbugs, caterpillars, and fireants. I use an organic snail bait for the slugs and pillbugs. Like Steve stated in a previous post pillbugs(sowbugs) certainly damage young seedlings. caterpillars are controlled with BT. Fireants are my only pest that I am presenttly trying to contol with nonorganic Amdro. I'm trying to learn more about a parasitic fly to control the fireants. Besides the diccomfort from fireant stings, fireants will farm aphids on your garden plants. My best advice gardening in south Alabama is compost, compost, compost. Hope this is helpful.

Hey Heather, if you can't find a mail order company, I will have some extra's. Not heirlooms this year, with the short season we had last year, I gave up on heirlooms, but lots of others, I'm just south of Calgary, outside of Black Diamond. Just drop me an email and I can send you a list. Cheryl

Not an Alabama grower, sorry, apparently none around. But yes I suppose it would be possible in far southern Alabama to still grow outside. Should still be warm enough. I still have some plants going here outside but not for much longer. Dave