Dave: You are correct that apple pollination is a natural process that needs no direct human intervention, and certainly not any specific chemical spray (leaving aside products like bee scent, intended to attract pollinating honeybees). But if your neighbor's apples are reaching at least golf-ball size, pollination may not be her issue, but insects like the plum curculio and codling moth. Incompletely pollinated apples seldom get beyond the small marble stage before they fall off, but even well-pollinated apples, when attacked by insects, will eventually cease to grow and become small, scabby looking, and useless. I will be interested to see how your organic plan works out in a few years when your trees begin to set fruit. There are quite a few people, some of whom post here, who would dearly love to raise their apples "organically", but in the eastern half of the U.S. (and some say the western half too), raising apples with no chemical sprays at all is going to be a very tough row to hoe. Some highly dedicated organically inclined growers go to a great deal of trouble to cover their trees with a kaolin product called Surround, which can be somewhat effective against apple insects, but is not magic by any means. Others, like myself, conduct an intensive early chemical spray program, then bag their apples in ziplock sandwich bags, which makes further spraying of those particular apples uneccessary. However, the insects are always around, especially when there are unspsrayed or uncared for apples in the neighborhood with lots of dropped, damaged fruit. They represent the next generation of insects. You may even find that during the first years your apples are in the ground, and well before they fruit, they are attacked by leaf insects such as aphids, mites, beetles, and a host of others. I am all for organics in theory, but organics will not put apples on the table in New Jersey. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Alan: The timing of your last pruning might turn out to be a happy kind of accident. I am convinced beyond any doubt that my switch to summer pruning about 5 years ago has been responsible for turning the orchard from a light producer to a level that even using most of the apples for cidermaking leaves me with a large surplus. I now realize that several trees I took out because of their busy, bushy growth and low productivity could have been turned around by summer pruning. You should begin to see the difference next spring. I forgot to ask whether your tree had many blossoms, but I assume it did not or you would have more apples. I also assumed that your 10-year tree is probably on the semi-dwarfing M-7 rootstock, and is about 12 feet tall with equivalent spread. That would be about right on M-7. There is nothing wrong with planting a multi-grafted tree, aside from the fact that 2 or 3 (or even one) variety can come to dominate the others, but you can control these differences to some extent by balancing the pruning. I guess at least all 5 of your varieties have survived. Alabama should be just fine for growing a wide range of apple varieties, if you can control early insects like the plum curculio. I bag my apples in ziplock sandwich bags after thinning to one per cluster to frustrate the insects and eliminate spraying with insecticides, although I also dormant spray with oil about 2 weeks before bud break. As to your specific question about applying lime to your slightly acidic soil, it is almost never a bad idea to put down 5-10 pounds of pelletized or ground lime around an apple tree, since apples need calcium. Whether the trees can actually utilize the calcium from lime is another question, but I tend to believe they can to some extent. Every other year, I also apply boron in the form of ordinary 20-mule team borax around the apple trees, using a full box spread around 30 trees, which works out to a little less than one cup per tree spread out to the dripline. Do not overapply borax or it can become toxic in the soil, as it is highly alkaline, and do not apply it on a windy day or it will blow all over the place. I believe the boron helps blossom bud development and fruit set, but again, don't overdo it as boron is a trace element not a fertilizer. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

I am sure no one enjoys spraying fruit trees. If I did not spray my apples, every apple would contain a worm. Some people can live with that, not me. My peach tree would defoliate from peach leaf curl, and any peaches produced would likely be seriously blemished or deformed. Most years the apples would be seriously scabby. Plum foliage would be badly curled with aphids and most years shot hole fungus would be a problem on most of my fruit trees. I guess only time will tell how much disease and pests you can tolerate. Al

Keep it well fed, see the citrus forum for nutrition information. It probably needs time to establish itself in your yard. I have a couple of limes in containers and they do bloom profusely when the temps fall into the 40's. Honey bees usually provide the polination for mine. They produce a bounty of limes,