Ruby:

The leaf damage and droppings are from some type of caterpiller. Not serious unless leaf loss is high or they are eating on the fruit. Bacillus thuringiensis, BT, is a good organic control for many caterpillars. You can also pick them off by hand.

You will need to thin the fruit unless there are very few clusters. You may want to leave as many as two fruit per cluster to as few as one fruit per three clusters depending on how many fruit are now on the tree. If in doubt, remove more fruit. This will assure fruit every year.

You will need to bag the fruit with footies or zip lock bags to control codling moth. You could also spray or use other control methods but suspect you'd rather not in a community garden.

The Fruitnut

Thanks Fruitnut!

The leaf loss isn't bad, so i guess i'll just keep an eye on it. I haven't actually seen any caterpillars to pick off, but they've left evidence that they're there!

I'll thin the fruit out this weekend - all the clusters have 3-5 fruit in them.

When should i put bags on the fruit? Do i just put the bag on and leave it or do i have to put new bags on? How tight do i have to seal up the bag?

This poor neglected tree has had no love in years - i was kind of surprised it actually set fruit!

As for the bagging of the apples, try this link below:

Here is a link that might be useful: for Jellyman pic of apple in bag, right?