Jean:

You have a bunch of cures in search of a disease. A better method is to try to identify what, if any, insects and diseases are troubling your trees and proceed from there.

It is not too late by any means to apply dormant oil, lime/sulphur, or a combination of the two on your trees. I am in a warmer zone than you, and my trees are still in tight bud. Bonide combination fruit tree spray may be good enough for your tree during the growing season if you do not have severe insect pressures. But if you have an infestation of the tough plum curculio or codling moth, you may have to look for something more targeted at those pests. Combination sprays often contain Sevin, Malathion, and a fungicide, but are weak in all these components. You might also consider bagging your apples in ziplock sandwich bags if you want to reduce spray requirements.

You are lumping fungicides/insecticides and fertilizers/soil amendments into the same lump, when they are really quite separate issues. You won't do any harm to fruit trees with kelp or bone meal, but these things are expensive, and your fruit trees may not need it. Osmocote is a dynamite fertilizer for indoor and container plants, but so expensive I would never use it in-ground. My fruit trees receive no targeted fertilizer at all, other than the coverage of 12-12-12 that happens to fall around them as I fertilize the lawn. I keep the area around my trees mulched with stable manure that breaks down and gradually feeds the trees.

Fruit tree spikes are a jolt of nitrogen that I definately would not use around fruit trees, since excessive nitrogen often leads to exuberant leafy growth at the expense of fruit formation. If your apple trees are a couple years old or so, now would be a good time to begin selecting and spreading your scaffold branches.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Thanks for the reply. I will do the Lime Sulfur this weekend. I was asking about fertilizer since I had very few fruit last year. Actually I have had the trees around 5 years. They are dwarfed red delicious and Yellow delicious. Oh the plum does not get any! Of course I only have one plum. So I should not use the Fruit Tree spikes at all? I do buy manure and can use it for the trees. I also have packets of Messenger which I will use this spring. I get the usual fly annoyance on the leaves of the tree and holes in the apples.