You sound like you've given it a good start on life. The tree will probably grow in the limited light on your patio, but for the apples to produce and sweeten up, they'll need more hours of full sun. I'm growing a number of my apple trees in 15 gallon pots, in an area where they get morning and late afternoon sun, and shade mid day. The nice thing about pots is that you can move them around until you get the sun/shade balance right, then plant. The website below is a good one for growing apples in a hot, southwestern, urban area. The book is very good as well. Good luck with your tree. Here is a link that might be useful: Apple FAQs

Nice photo Kendra. Your 1st picture looks like the beginnings of South West injury. To stop this from getting worse paint your tree with a flat white interior latex paint in a 50/50 water to paint ratio. Heres a link if you have any questions. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qJtVd2k_lI With so many trees I would go to a big box store. Tell them what you are doing. Ask them to put a half gallon of interior white flat latex paint in a one gallon bucket. When you get home fill it the rest of the way with water and shake it up and you are ready to go. Most of your trees look like someone had tried to prune them into a Delayed Open Center form which is fine. However the work on some of them was never completed or they were left to do their own thing and the trees have been neglected for along time. There certainly is a lot of pruning that needs to be done. There is also more than one way to go about it depending on what form you ultimately want the trees to take. Here is a link that may be helpful but is not directed at older neglected trees. It will however give you some ideas that may be helpful and has good descriptions of each tree form. http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/hil/ag29.html I see lots of advice and people trying to tell you what you should do. I dont think we are that point yet. There are at least three basic tree forms you should be considering. Each with its own advantages and disadvantages. They all have their merits and only you can decide which one is right for you and your family. A few things to keep in mind.. You do not have to prune them all the same form. Even if you decide to train them all to the same form you do not need to do them all at once. Apples are usually trained to one of three forms. They are "Central Leader" "Open Center" and sometimes "Delayed Open Center" You should read the descriptions from the link I provided above as I will not be describing them in any detail here. Instead I will give my personal take on what I think are important to the home orchardist and your trees in particular. Central Leader Trees trained to this form are tall Christmas tree shaped trees. They have good fruit production. The disadvantage is that they are tall which makes spraying, picking and pruning harder as you will need ladders and long reach pickers. The trees that look like they were left to their own designs from the start may be a good candidate for this form. Not that you cannot train these trees to either of the other two forms but this may be the easiest and quickest form to achieve with these trees. To do this you would start by cutting any dead or diseased wood then move on the crossing branches that rub. After this cut any branches with bad crotch angles then cut any wood that is growing toward the center of the tree. The next step would be to thin out the branches to let in light and air. You dont want to have scaffold branches all attached at the same pint on the trunk. If you can have them spaced vertically on the trunk 6" or more apart and branching off in different directions. Open Center/Vase Trees trained to this form have less production than the other two forms. However this form has other advantages. They are much shorter which makes them easy to prune, easy to pick and easy to spray and easy to inspect for diseases and infestations. I see none of your trees pruned to this form. If you were going to change to this form you would have to severely top your trees and you would not get any fruit the first season. With trees the size you have there would be some debate whether you should top them in one radical cut or over two seasons. If you chose this form and the trees are still dormant I think I would go with the more radical approach on the smaller trees. On the larger trees I would cut off all the small twigs and cut the current scaffold branches back severely to like 2-3 out from the trunk. The following year I would cut the trunk at 24"-30" from the ground. If it were me I would do this with the smaller trees in one cut while still dormant. If you chose to do that there is nothing wrong with doing only 1-5 trees the 1st year. That way you can see the results and how the trees respond and learn the pruning steps and how they shape the trees before doing more of them in proceeding years. Delayed Open Center The majority of your trees are trained to this form and you may wish to keep this form. If it were me I would keep this form on all the larger trees that are currently in this form. They still need a lot of pruning though. Start by cutting all the dead wood then move on to cutting the crossing branches that are rubbing against other branches or that may rub when it gets windy. Always preferring the larger healthier branches so long as they are not 50% or larger than 50% of the trunks diameter where they are attached. Then move onto cutting water sprouts and any wood growing toward the center of the tree. After this cut any branches that will shade out other branches preferring the branches that have better crotch angles. Then cut out any small branches or wood that is necessary to allow for good air flow and light penetration and you are done. Remember if you have to cut something because of a bad crotch angle or because its shading out a lower branch or because its diseased it does not mean new branches will not grow to replace them. This is the beauty of pruning. The pruning you do will spur more growth and more branches will grow. Cutting out a bad one will often cause many more to grow and you can then cut off the ones with bad crotch angles or that will rub or shade other branches and keep the best new ones next pruning season. Its all a learning experience and you will get better and faster at it as years go by. Most of the good videos are on Open Center pruning but there are others. If you would like I will post some of the better pruning videos I have found if you think you will have time to view them.

Spray program requires multiple sprays thought the season. For 1 backyard tree just try bagging the fruit this year. Cheapest way to start is ziplock sandwich bags. Cut 1/2 inch off the 2 bottom corners. Cut the "Tag" above the ziplock so the bag is essentially flush with the ziplock. Cut a notch at the midpoint of the ziplock for the stem of the fruit. After the bloom and when you get fruit set, wait until the fruit is about dime to penny size. Keep only the "king fruit" which is the biggest fruit in the cluster of fruits and pinch off the smaller fruits. Place the fruit in the ziplock and zip it up with the stem sitting in the notch. As growing season progresses some will fall off from wind but also the tree aborts a certain percentage of fruit as well. http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/1467451/bagging-fruit For some photos search for "bagging" at: http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/3841604/m=3/my-backyard-planting-experience-part-2-zone-4a-b-quebec-canada

JP I am not sure on your coddling moth situation in Oregon. Here in SE WI we normally get 2 generations a year. One in mid-late June and the second sometime late July-Late August. You can spray an insecticide for prevention. If you do not want to spray how about growing the apples in bags? Bagging apples works and has been used in Japan for years. Plastic ziplock sandwitch bags work great. Or others use cloth or paper bags made especially for apple growing. The neat thing is if you do not get all the apples bagged in time in spring then use the bagged ones for fresh use and the unbagged for sauce/pie as you may have to cut out the coddling moth damaged parts. No big deal as once made into sauce/cobbler/pie ect they will still taste good. When are the apples ripe? IF you do not know the variety, the best way is to taste them. Also check the seeds in the core. If white, they are usually not ready. If brown or black the fruit is ready. Keep a record of when ripe so next year you know about what time to expect them to be ready. Nothing beats a taste test however to determine when they are ready. Fruit too sour? It may not be ripe enough. Or possibly it is an older variety primarily used for cooking and not for fresh eating.