You can cut away whatever you want if it serves your ascetic needs, as long a you don't create an architecture that dooms the tree to collapse. Definitely favor the apple by cutting away shading branches form the crab part.

You can also graft over the crap portions to nice apple varieties and begin to harvest fruit from the grafts in 2-3 years from time of grafts.

Bienniel cropping is common with neglected and even tended trees. Some varieties are more susceptible than others.

Thanks Harvestman.

Given what you said, I think I'm going to start slow by bringing all the crab apple trunks down to the apple level. That should keep the tree balanced and let the apple trunk get more light. I'll reassess what I should prune in the fall.

Thanks for the grafting idea, I hadn't really considered that. Can I graft quince or asian pear on to crab apple? I can also look that up. I live in coastal southeast Virginia, apples really don't do well here. That's part of the reason I'm so interested in saving a tree that does seem to be doing well.

Thanks again!

Melissa

You hear some stories about interspecies grafting but I've only seen apple on apple.

There's a man who's name escapes me, who devotes much of his time collecting old southern apple varieties and written 2 books on the subject. There are varieties that can grow there without too much fuss, but getting fruit is another question.

If you want fruit, spray will usually be necessary and bagging can be done to greatly reduce that. If you got apples without spraying and/or bagging it may have been a rare event but if it continues to happen, keep us all posted. I'm very interested in insect resistant apple varieties as are many on this forum.

The only varieties that are insect resistant here are quite late ripening ones so yours would be quite a find.