It is not usually necessary to turn water sprouts into fruiting units as many apple varieties bear best flower buds on undisturbed second year wood (the moderately vigorous annual shoots). Unless you are talking about espaliers. There are also varieties that bear their best apples on the tips of last years wood. I never need to create bud wood by heading back water sprouts- never. Not with any species. It is probably something I could use with super vigorous and vertical growers like N. Spy but I don't have time to keep coming back and prefer just to festoon uprights in the winter. The following winter they've sent up more uprights from the bent wood which I remove all but least vigorous and next harvest season the lower part of bent shoots usually have fruit. After a couple years of doing this overexcited growth usually calms down. There are many ways to skin a cat. Some take more time.

Persimmon is one fruit I'd suggest waiting to see what drops, probably 3-4 weeks. Your tree might drop every one and mine always drops some. If it holds some fruit thin so that the tree can easily support the remaining fruit. And if you want to be conservative cut them all off now. I'd save at least one or two.

Anything composting around your plants can pull N from the soil until properly broken down. I mulch around my fruit trees with grass clippings maybe 3 or 4 times a year but my main reason is for a more natural way of weed reduction around the base instead of using sprays all the time. Another added benefit mulch has is it also attracts worms. The down side is, worms attract birds, so I avoid when fruit is ripening. Also when I do much I also add sheep pellets to help against the initial N reduction. & one thing I didn't see here, so I must mention is grass clippings can make the soil more acidic which is great for the Blueberries but not so much for my other trees, so to battle against that I just add a little dusting of lime also. Lime helps to neutralize acidic soil. Best advice though is educate yourself on the needs of each type of tree, & buy a soil testing kit. Once you know the soil is right for the trees you can then look at other reasons that may be causing problems. Every place around the world is going to be different so I enjoy experimenting with my trees to see what gets me the best results every year. Of course taking into account that you always have an, "on season" then an "off season".

Hi, I have this cherry tree, sweet,red, that had many fruit last year.... this year, I watered it well, has lots of flowers and leaves and it seems healthy. Yet, I see just a few regular fruit showing up (green so far of course), and many smaller, dried out fruit... What could be wrong? Did I water too much maybe? Andrew PS. Please respond to me at my email be236@hotmail.com since I might not read this page a lot.