Basicly, you need to provide gradual release of the fertilizer. If you desolve it in the water provided to the trees, my suggestion would be to feed less ferilizer more often during growth periods. I don't know how stakes work, but the goal of gradual release over the growth period would remain. I often desolve fertilizer in water and then water my trees with the solution. For other trees that are larger, I spread the fertilizer granuals around the root absorbment area and then water. The fertilizer is gradually desolve by the water over a period of 3-4 waterings/rainfalls.

wardog Depending on the root stock you may have to keep the trees staked period. The dwarf root stocks don't provide good anchorage and a strong wind could easily topple them. Mike

We don't water it, as we get a mild amount of rain here. Not too much, but just enough to keep the soil a little moist. Our soil pH is 6.5. We have horrible clay soil that, when it gets dry, is like a rock. We don't have any soil imbalances that I know about. We tried some miracle-gro fruit tree fertilizer stakes that we got from our local nursery. The leaves don't have any mottling or spots or other imperfections. They are a light green color, as most plum tree leaves are. They look like these leaves http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRg2VR-rKLwEAAPVEqooo6rV1YWFDcYIQdquzJJWePLH4-x5OkZ Except without the plums, obviously. Now about the apple trees. The bigger one (GD) got the same fruit tree stakes but to no avail. Its leaves have cedar rust, but it is because our neighbors have juniper and cedar trees. It never affected the 6 huge and beautiful McIntosh and GD-Mutsu Hybrid trees we had at our old house, which is about 2 miles away from our current house with the same weather and soil conditions, and the trees were in the exact same amount of sun. There are no visible signs of pest or disease on any of the trees. the only things that have ever bothered them are japanese beetles, which we have only had twice, so that doesn't seem to be the problem. Our average temperature throughout the year is around 79. We get around 40 inches of rain per year and all the trees are in full-partial sun, leaning more towards full. What I am wondering is, do nurseries that supply local nurseries and garden stores with fruit trees, put some substance on/in the trees to force them to produce fruit? It seems like every tree i have ever had, produces fruit the very first year I plant it, then it starts up again 2-3 years later. Do you know the answer to this? Thanks again. Lydia

I'm in Miami and the storm has mostly passed. We partially shuttered (we have weird and very pretty old wooden french doors that can't be replaced, so we protect them.) We're a block from the Bay, so we got some of the worst of it, and it wasn't very bad down here. I lost power for about 20 minutes. I only heard the hurricane howl twice. My neighbors all seem fine. The tree was bound to go down and I feel like its final gift to me was to fall before the worst of this hit so it didn't do expensive damage to our pool. But we will forever miss that fruit. And the shade. I feel like it was my newlywed tree because we served sapodilla rum punch at our wedding last year. I froze every fruit that fell for two months to make that punch. Not sure anyone drank it but me, but it was our little thing. So we'll miss it.