I figured as much. This being my first year to handle the tree, I want to make the most of it. I'll be thinning more as I bag a few more apples. Unfortunately, I can't get high enough to thin out the fruit 18-20 feet high.

You want over 700 apples from one tree? That wasn't healthy to begin with?

seriously consider skipping this years harvest and thin them all. I would at least. It's gaurenteed you will miss some and still get apples. But more importantly the tree will get a chance to recover.

pip313, Thanks for your response. However, I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "the tree will get a chance to recover." This tree is huge. It hadn't been pruned in years, if ever, until I pruned it in late February/early March. It produced hundreds upon hundreds of apples last year and has done so again this year.

This year, I have thus far thinned out countless hundred apples, in addition to the ones that fell naturally, and there are still hundreds more. They are now the size of golf balls. Right now, I have a 5-gallon bucket half-filled with tiny apples. It's the second time I've done it. I'll be thinning out more over the course of the week, as time allows.

Your comments about diseased fruit and neglected tree made me think of a tree that had diseases and dead branches. If not sorry.

my thought was to trim heavy and let it heal. But if its healthy then I misunderstood.

Pics please?

I see what you mean now. I'll try to get a pic tomorrow and upload it.

The tree is beautifully shaped--for a shade tree. Back in early, early spring, I cut out the branches crossing each other, hanging down, growing straight up, etc. The tree then put on new growth like mad.

I did the same to the other, much smaller apple tree, which also responded vigorously but also has hardly borne any fruit. This second tree must tend toward biennial bearing.

The original tree, however, has fruited out at least as abundantly as last year, when we first moved in. I started spraying this spring, but too late for the plu curculio, which hit both trees hard. This tree, though, has so many fruit, that many, many apples were unscathed.

Per Stark Bros, a tree like this could produce 10-20 bushels of apples. If an average bushel has 125 apples, then this tree is within the range.

After all this discussion, I believe I'll thin some more, including, perhaps, some of the apples already bagged.

Pics to come within a day or so.

A big old tree can carry a heavy crop. But thin as much as you can. That will make bigger higher quality fruit that remains. It also increases the chances of annual bearing. Leaving too many fruit is the leading cause of biennial bearing. 700 doesn't sound like too many. I won't pull off any you already worked so hard to protect.

It sounds to me like you are doing a great job, congradulations!!

700 sounded like a lot for a tree in distress. But we established that I was mistaken about the condition of the tree.

Well, to be fair, there are a couple of limbs that show some kind of canker or otherwise a disease of some sort. I missed those in the spring when I was pruning. I will definitely prove those limbs out. As I recall there is only one, but it seems that there might have been a second one. When I take pictures of the tree, I will get a picture of what I'm talking about.

Sounds like a mighty big tree. I remember a giant McIntosh tree at an orchard I worked at while in college (many years ago). The biggest apple tree I had ever seen on a standard rootstock. Luckily the owner had a hydraulic lift (cherry picker) so we could reach to the tops. I had to haul all the fruit to cold storage after it was picked. 32 bushels! I will never forget how much fruit some of those old giant apple trees can bear. He had some red delicious on standards left at that time (planted in the late 1930's). They bore a lot too but not anything close to what that giant McIntosh produced.