I will follow this thread with interest, as my apples are just not growing as I had hoped for.
I did read somewhere that a shortage of magnesium is very bad for apple growth. So I did add Epsom salts last year. To date there is no growth to see if that has worked or not.
A shortage of Nitrogen also has a similar effect.

Both of you may be shooting in the dark without a soil test- the kind you fill an airline barf bag with soil and send out to a lab (about $40). Your County Ag Extension can tell you who does it. I don't think heat is the culprit, as we hit 113 in September and still get nice juicy apples, and lack of water would manifest itself as very stressed leaves. More likely is high pH or lack of iron (or both) not allowing your trees to process nitrogen, leading to chlorosis. If you are in the desert a layer of salts (caliche?)underground can also make an impenetrable layer that you need to bust through for drainage.

After you irrigate you should be able to take a soil probe (3/8" steel rod about 4' long) and poke three feet deep. If not, you're either not watering deep enough or there's a hard layer undergound you need to break up.

Don't give up; apples like high, dry climates.

Applenut

APPLENUT____We do have caliche here but the leaves seem to be fine no chlorosis yet. I will try some iron anyway. The caliche is everywhere so there is know telling how deep it maybe, so digging around the tree down deep is out of the question,( I could go all the way to china) I will ck. the water to make sure it is going deep enough. Its funny how another tree that gets the same treatment only 15 feet away is growing like a weed. ps My apple trees in San Diego CA never had this problem. Thanks for the input

I'm not really sure what you are describing as wrong with your apples. It doesn't sound like a nutrient or water problem to me. If the tree and leaves look good and the trees are producing lots of fruit, maybe you just don't like those varieties. My conditions are close to yours and I've never had apples that I'd describe as dry.

Any idea what rootstock your apples are on? That could explain the lack of growth. Also, are you thinning the apples? Over cropping will slow vegetative growth.

Fruitnut---I guess some people just like to write to be read.
I have had apples before, this is not my first time(Idaho, California, Arizona)
"I have never had apples I'd describe as dry" then fruitnut perhaps you don't have the same problem as I do.
Please, I would appreciate any info from anyone with the same problem. Dryish not juicy, not crispy

campv:

My answer may be pathetic but it's better than your attitude.

You are not very nice! Please don't respond again if you don't have anything to add to solve the problem.
If you do I would appreciate anything constructive that you may have in mind. Please again, don't tell me how well yours are doing or that you don't have a problem with dry apples, I do and am looking for some answers.
As for my attitude, I don't have one and you don't know me.
I just need suggestions on what to try to solve the dry apple problem. Again please don't respond unless you have suggestions that may help.

Oops. Now I'm afraid to post in case my suggestion doesn't help and makes you irritated.

Maybe if you were a little nicer to them before you picked them it would help. Really though why get on here and insult someone. There are many newbies that come and ask questions and fruitnut has some experience and was just trying to compare it to to give you some suggestions. Im sure he didnt know you had experience growing apples because in your original post you didnt state that you did.

I thought applenut gave very good advice. If you do not want to get a soil test, you might consider calling your county ag agent, who already knows the soil in your area and may have some suggestions. I grow Golden Delicious apples here on their own root and do not water at all and their fruit is never dry. Al

Calistoga-It would be difficult to get a soil test done here. I live in a very very small town and the closest large city is Prescott AZ about 1 hour away. I will use your suggestion and call the county. Thanks for the great idea

I am not the expert after 30+ years of doing this I know I am still in the beginer class. Gramp told me that, when He worked with john marshal in the 50's. I have a seedling apple on my lawn. You can throw a scion at it at 40 mph and it will take and grow (6 apples on one tree) It has a wolf river that has huge apples that you could not press a pint of cider from a bushel. It also has a northern spy that the juice runs down your arm when you bite it.just guessing here but the top graft might need to be changed. I know this isn't mutch just a guess.

Thank you ravenh2001, calistoga and applenut for your help.
Here is what I found out about the soil.
It is slightly alkaline. Not mention the clay,cliche,rock and sand. That about it. Not much to work with. What kind of fertlizer do you think I need? The stuff I am using is not working here or I am not giving them enough water. In some places it drains well in other places not so well. The drip is about 5gl. per hour and during the spring at leaf break I water once a week for about 2 hours. During the summer I water sometimes more than once a week depending on the heat 90+. Do you think I should also hose water just the apples between. Heck guys I am pretty savy but this has got me puzzled. Dry apples don't tast that good and pies are even worse. Thanks again for all you help

Having received my degree in Floriculture and done all my professional work in vegetable crops, as a fruit crop novice I can only think of a couple of things - 1) the fruit are dry because they aren't getting the water, uptake issue at the soil/water interface not root:shoot ratio is out of whack. 2) nutritional disorder.

#1 can be an issue with water quality and/or irrigation practices, especially over years; thinking of continually leaching salts down but not out of the root zone and setting up a saline sodic or saline-sodic zone that the roots can't pull water out of even at field capacity.

Do you ever get leaves shedding during the baking times of the summer or shortly thereafter? If your soil isn't too rocky, use a prod rod to check how deep you are irrigating while irrigating, crude but can be a reliable method once you get the hang of it.

I quit... for now.

campv:

I'm sorry I lost my cool earlier. But no one likes their well intended effort to be belittled. I'll part nicely if you will.

Now to your apple trees. That's not nearly enough water that you are applying. They need a deep soaking every 7-14 days in addition to the drip. In dry country like west Texas about 90% of fruit trees are under watered. I'm sure it's the same in AZ.

I hope your crop improves this year.

A good resource for you would be Desert Gardening by George Brookbank, a guide I've had a couple years. But I'm afraid he doesn't have any shortcuts; he digs a 5-foot deep hole (similar to the ones on the Disney movie "Holes") to bust through the impenatrable layer of caliche that keeps water from draining and carrying off salts with it. He also mixes in sacks and sacks of composted manure, soil sulphur, and ammonium sulphate in the backfill, then makes a dirt ring the size of the dripline he fills with water continually until the probe goes in three feet.

Does your area suffer from Texas Root Rot? High pH soils are prone to it and would also explain some of your trouble.

I agree that it is most likely a water issue. My soil is pretty gravelly and sandy. When I first planted a couple apples I was watering using 2 1/2 gallon jugs which I hauled to the trees. I would give them 5 to 10 gallons a week. The trees put on growth and looked OK, although the leaves were a little more bluish-green than I thought they should be and tended to curl a little.

Finally I put in a drip system, which really doesn't have any drippers but a 1/4" tube from the main line to the basin for each tree. I started giving 20 gal. and more a week with the dripline and the trees made a considerable change. I just didn't realize that I was underwatering before because the trees really looked fine.

If you are giving about 10 gallons a week, you should probably increase to 15 gallons 2 times a week, or if your ground does drain really well, then give them 10 gallons every other day during the summer.

My soil is deep and medium texture but somewhat droughty. I started out with drip irrigation and found it totally inadequate. I was watering 2 hrs every day. My sweet cherries grew less than they do in 15 gallon pots inside my greenhouse.

I've now set up level basins covered with weed barrier. The weed barrier helps a lot by holding the berms in place and reducing evaporation. I water mostly once every 7-14 days when the trees are fully leafed out depending on weather and rainfall. Each application is at least two inches. In the winter I go months without watering and we've had no rain since Sept. In the rainy season, July-Oct, there are times I can go a month or more without watering.

A lot depends on the soil and it's water holding capacity. We can't judge that.

campv said "difficult to get a soil test done here. I live in a very very small town and the closest large city is Prescott AZ about 1 hour away."

Call the lab, obtain the instructions how to sample & to package it, then put it in the mail.

Fruitnut, how is it that the drip was totally inadequate? There are many ways to drip irrigate.

michael:

My soil, like much in the Southwest, lacks organic matter and just doesn't seem to hold much water despite being a loam or clay loam. Everything I plant that I can use as a measuring stick says droughty. For instance sweetcorn needs watering every 3 days in hot sunny weather even if you apply 2 inches each time.

Trees adapt very well to water stress and show few indications until they quit growing or drop leaves. The trees look OK so people think they are getting enough water when they aren't.

In my greenhouse I use 1/2 inch drip line with built in emitters. This works much better than the outdoor stuff I used where you stick in an emitter wherever you want.

Basically I probably wasn't wetting a large enough volume of soil.

Fruitnut: sounds like you live here, right down to the sweetcorn/irrigation issue. All my veggies are on subsurface drip tape, same stuff the commercial growers use, it is great stuff if you match the right tape to the soil and irrigate accordingly. We used drip tape on the sandy soils in FL for all kinds of veggies, talk about soils that don't hold much water.

Last year I finally was tired enough of dragging overhead sprinklers around the 11 young (1st - 3rd leaf) fruit trees to irrigate and got some drip tubing with in-line emitters; the tubing was placed under the mulch at the tree drip lines and worked well. That was just a test to see how the drip tubing worked and how easy it was to work with, having never used the stuff before. This year I'm going to lay it lengthwise down the aisles at 12 - 18" spacings, out to the current drip line edges. Last year's experience showed that the tubing had the emitters at the right spacing and the spacing needed between tubes to get thorough lateral wetting as well as how many hours are needed to run an irrigation cycle. Now, I just have to get off my butt, order the stuff and install it before the dry weather sets in :)

I discovered what happens to a 5th leaf Reliance peach does when it first gets fully leafed out with quarter-sized fruit on it when the soil is bone dry, the leaves start dropping, fast! Oh, and the poor fruit develop big shrunken spots in them. Guess 9 straight months with no moisture leads to dry soil here, DUH, guess it pays to check this time of year in the Plains states no matter what one thinks the soil moisture status is.

I like using a prod rod to check how far and wide the irrigation cycle has wetted, it is fast, easy and accurate in my soil because it is very uniform, no rocks and 40"+ deep clay loam. In a wetted area, the rod easily pushes in until it hits the dry layer where it suddenly requires noticeably more push to get it to go further. Maybe some day I'll chunk down the big bucks and install some Irrometers.

I want to thank everyone for their help in trying to solve this problem with my apples. Great suggestions from all of you! This is what I have done so far
1) increased fertilizer added Iron and nitrogen
2) created a larger basin around the trees, larger than the tree drip line
3) Watering longer on the drip(5gl for 4 hours)PLUS filling up the apples drip basin with at lease 2" of water. I am doing this once a week (unless rain)for now will have to increase as it gets hotter
The only thing I have not done so far is tried to insert a rod to ck water depth. Will try this next week. All the rock is going to be an issue.
Already the apples seem to be leafing real well or maybe I am just being of positive mind. It is going to be in the high 70's this week so I expect to see lots of leafing.
Look for my post the first of Oct 2011(dry apples)and I will let you all know how they turned out. If they are still dry, then I know I did my best but, if nothing else I will have the most gorgious trees.
I think the rest of the fruit trees are also doing better because of all this.
Thanks again everyone for your help talk to ya in Oct. got to go water