Yes, it will work. If the only shade is from the building itself, you won't even notice a big difference in growth pattern. If there is additional shade from large, nearby trees, the apple will be more open and whispy than it would be in the sun, but it will still grow and bear. You may need to pay extra attention to disease issues in this site, and probably would be a good thing to plant a disease resistant variety, since the afternoon shade will make the tree a bit more susceptible, IMO.

I have a wild seedling apple tree that is growing in fairly dense shade under a grove of mature deciduous trees, oak, Kentucky Coffee, Sycamore. It came up there on its own and I left it. It has a rather open, whispy form, but has gotten about 15 feet tall and bears red, Jonathan-like fruit every year. It's probably been there since about 1994.

Thanks a lot! this is great to hear :) I am gonna plant this fall for sure now!

Not quite so simple in my opinion. Some varieties do better in relative shade than others. Some will be more likely to bear bienielly in this set up. I believe all will bear appreciably less fruit and the quality of some varieties will suffer more than others.

Here in the northeast I've seen Baldwin perform reasonably well on much more shady sites than what your talking about but N. Spy that will barely bare in sites with almost as much sun. These are just anecdotal observations, of course.

Under deciduous trees Baldwin seems to ripen well because it is ripening after leaves drop, but Spy is almost as late and doesn't benefit the same way. You may want to experiment with grafts to find best suited varieties.

Don't expect fruit to be quite as sweet as if it was in full sun and stay away from varieties that tend to biennial fruiting. I don't think disease will become a larger threat because eastern sun is most important for quick drying.

Interesting observations, I'll add a few more. My property is surrounded by oak trees, and I've pushed the envelope by growing fruit trees right up to the canopy. In general, the apples that get Morning sun until noon seem to fruit prolifically, whereas the apples that get no Morning sun, but afternoon sun seem to fruit a lot less, much more biennially. What's interesting is that for example stone fruits like peaches are much less sensitive, fruiting like crazy in the same locations.

As a whole, I've noticed much more open growth near the oak trees. The more the noon sun is blocked, the leggier and less productive the trees are. So noon time sun seems the most critical. I've not seen any issues with northern spy, mine gets sun from AM until about 1PM and is loaded with fruit.

Axel, your observations are probably a better indicator than mine because you can do direct comparisons on one site with gradual reduction of light. Of course, you have a much longer growing season than most of us and that might compensate a great deal for reduced exposure.

The single Northern Spy I based my warning on was nearly fruitless for 15 years- last winter a number of large shading branches were removed from a nearby maple and this season it has a decent crop for the first time- still a fraction of trees in full light. I'm not even sure if this tree gets noon sun. So many trees-so little time.

Harvestman, my northern spy is not under the oaks, but next to them with East facing sun until 1 or 2PM. I think it gets enough overhead light to really fruit well. I don't think this invalidates what you observed. From the sounds of it, yours is actually under canopy of other trees. I've found that apples don't like to have overhead canopy of any sorts. Adjacent is ok, but directly overhead even if only half of the tree is covered is detrimental to any apple tree.

That's what surprised me about these 2 Baldwins. They get absolutely no direct sun and are understory trees but still manage to produce small crops of tasty apples.

I have poor production on a number of varieties that are under too much canopy. Time will tell how well they will produce, the trees are still young.