No need. That's how first year apple trees look, and why they are called "whips".

Take away the staking, or at least loosen it so the tree can bend in the wind - trees get stronger in response to bending - without any flexing, they get tall and weak!

why would a whip need staking...

as bob dylan said.. THE ANSWER MY FRIEND.. IS BLOWIN IN THE WIND ... etc ...

and.. did you fertilize them???

4 feet from a seed since last dec .... sounds a bit extreme to me???

but what do i know.. i never lived in z7

ken

BTW .. there is a fruit forum .. and though we are tree peeps.. the fruit peeps.. who look down on us tree peeps.. might have other opinions

ken

Nobody known as a fruit anything has any business looking down on anyone else.

Now, Ken.
I'm in both camps - and I wouldn't say that the fruit & nut crowd 'look down' on the folks here in the Trees forum - it's just that when we get into discussing fruit production, the aesthetics that we're concerned about with regard to landscape specimens or silviculture are out the window. Pruning & management techniques for fruit/nut production don't necessarily gee-haw with ornamental horticultural pursuits.

Legacy,
If & when you post your query at the Fruit & Orchards forum, you'll find that most folks there are not going to be extremely supportive of your endeavor - and for good(in their eyes) reason - seedling apples rarely produce fruit as good as the one the seeds were collected from; yes, they'll be edible, but the vast majority will be inferior to the parent. That, and the fact that 'standard'(seedling) apples will become very large trees - far too big for most residential settings, and you may be waiting 10-20 years for them to grow through their juvenile period, reach maturity, and begin fruiting.
I'd recommend developing some grafting skills and think about putting in about 12" of a dwarfing interstem, and then graft desirable fruiting cultivars on top of these established rootstocks. You'd get fruit of known characteristics in 3-5 years or so; and, ultimately, YOU are in control of how BIG your trees become(prune, Prune, PRUNE!).

Thanks. I really just tried to see if I could produce a tree from the seeds. I'm not really interested in getting any fruit.

I'll take the stakes away and free them up to bend with the breeze as everyone has suggested.