The apples you buy in the grocery store have been doused with all sorts of chemicals, in the first place...then of course, they're coated with wax to look nice and shiny.

Good pruning, to make sure all the fruit has ample room and sunlight, and consistent watering and feeding habits help, of course, but unless you want to spray like a maniac, you are going to have some blemishes.

Enjoy your "ugly" apples...they're better for you.

Like the above poster said, a lot of it is spraying regularly for insects and diseases, and proper pruning and nutrition of the tree. However, some of it also is proper pollination (use of beehives in the orchard when in bloom, plus proper combination of varieties to ensure compatible pollen), thinning of fruit, which includes the removal of ill-shaped fruit when about the size of a nickle, and the sorting of fruit at the packing house into those "perfect" enough for the store, and the imperfect ones which end up going for processing into cider, sauce, animal feed, etc.

Of all of the above things, the BEST way to get more perfect fruit is through proper spraying, because its the bugs and diseases that distort the fruit most.

denninmi writes > However, some of it also is proper pollination...

Excellent point! The bees around here have almost all died off. I am so happy to see a bumblebee every now and then. Those babies really do a great job when they sonicate.

Pollination is very important as well as fungal protection and insect pest protection. Store bought apples are 'gassed' to help keep them from spoiling. Fruit tree fertiizer is VERY necessary for apples and a minute amount of BORON is essential for giving fully formed fruit. Here is a link to a a great fertilizer. My two big trees are just 6 years old now, and last summers harvest was the biggest yet, with not a single deformed one, except one that had a small brown scab on it. I do spray my trees in late fall for a dorment winter spray, and also spray again in very early spring before blossoms pop. I use a lime sulfur spray as well as an oil spray. For pollination, I have introduced orchard mason bees to my garden and they are the earliest pollinators, even before regular bees and bumbles. The orchard mason bees do need a special 'house' that contains 6 inch long tubes of about 3/16 inch in diameter. For the fertilizer, I've used the 'build up' product for two years, and now use the 'mainenance' formula. This stuff is also great on red raspberries. NEVER use it in a vegetable garden however.

Here is a link that might be useful: Fruit tree fertilizers

I went on a field trip to an apple orchard with my daughter's class last year. I'm afraid I can't help you with the issue of the shape of the apples, but I did learn how this particular operation stored their apples. They have several large rooms. They keep the temperature at just above freezing and then pump all but some teeny tiny percent of the oxygen out of the room. I think they replaced the oxygen with carbon dioxide but I'm not sure on that point. They lock the room since you would expire pretty quickly if you went in. It keeps the apples in pretty much a state of suspended animation, if you will, so that the natural processes are slowed way down. The apples are ripe before they pick them and store them. The sorting was interesting as well. This was a family run operation so it could be different at bigger operations.

Smart Fresh is a gas treatment that is now used to keep fruits from early spoilage, and this has been going on since 2004. Other harsher, and more dangerous preservation products were also used in the past.

Here is a link that might be useful: Smart Fresh

Well, I asked what I considered kind of a dumb question that I thought there might not be any answers to. Man, am I glad that I did ask. Some really interesting and informative replies. We used some vertilizer spikes one year and since, I have drilled down about 8 inches and filled the holes with 10-20-10 and let it go at that. Never occurred to me that I should be using something else. We are going to order some of the fertilizer mentioned and give it a try. We have also sprayed with dormant oil once or twice but have been really lax about any other spraying. We do get excited when the green Japanese beetles come and we spray them with detergent water cussing every step of the way.

We transplanted 2 trees that were about 15 years old when we moved into this place. We have added 3 other trees that we set out after getting here. One of the transplanted trees is really looking old and decrepted. It has one really good branch that just over does itself with nice red delicious apples. My wife has wanted to cut it down, but it just keeps on giving us good apples on that one branch so it gets to stay one more year each time.

Last year, we got so much rain that the ground under the trees was soggy the whole summer. Still, we got good tasting apples although we had to harvest them wearing boots. We had not done any selective reduction before and we will certainly do that this next year. It was always such a shame to see apples continually falling off the tree and piles of them on the ground. I think that we know why now.

Thanks for all of the comments and we will keep reading and heeding as they continue to come in.

Bob

A few more points. Pruning is very necessary, and you do want an open canopy so that limbs all get the same sunlight exposure. I never use the spikes there, and they have only been pounded in around a small evergreen in my front lawn. 10-20-10 is a chemical type fertilizer, and loses its minimal nutritional value very fast. If you expereience a bitter apple center, that is usually caused by low soil pH. Nearby my apple trees there are some blueberry bushes that need the acid. When I do apply any fertilizers and acid reducers around the blues, I must avoid getting it close to the apples. Never allow the apples that fall to the ground to remain there. They harbor disease and insects. Apple maggot and codling moth are the worst of the enemies. If you have Japanese beetles nearby, dose the soil with some milky spore. Its expensive, but a 10 ounce can will cover about 200 square feet, and lasts several years. A lime sulfur spray at bud break and again after he petals fall will help to reduce some disease. The same company mentioned above also has other orgainic based items for disease and insect control. One of the most useful is the Surround. I had two 50 pound bags of it, and mix it with water and spray a few times throught the summer. It leaves a white coating on the leaves and fruits. This irritates the bugs who land and feed. Its a clay based product and washes right off. I also use a few sticky traps. These are bright red apple shaped plastic devices that I coat with a very sticky goo. This is the same sticky as fly paper. This, along with scent lures attachd to the traps attract many bugs to the fake red apple spheres. By mid summer, the three traps I put out are just loaded with bugs. I have to scrape off all that goo using vegetable oil, and then reapply it, and hang them from other apple tree limbs. Soon, if you follow these guidelines, you should expect a good amount of nice apples. Be sure to apply the ferilzer out to the drip line (the distance out to the tips of the branches).

a friend of mine owns an orchard and I've learned gobs from her, though she doesn't "tutor" me (wish she did!!!) She mentioned once that it takes someting like 75 leaves to feed a high-quality apple. Thus, thinning is very important. The leaves take in oxygen and "food" and pass on to the fruit. Few leaves per apple, lousy apples.

Thats another reason I don't use those high power, concentrated chemical fertilizers like 10-20-10. They are quite harsh and their effectiveness diminishes very fast. A slow release natural based fertilizer with mironutreints and minerals is much more benefical. My apple trees are somehwhat smart, in that they naturally drop about a 3rd of their crop before maturing. This helps the rest to grow larger. I just bought more orchard mason bees too, so that I can add to my colony. These bees are very helful when early fruit blossoms are out, and no other bees have woken up yet. Some of my apple trees are dwarf, but the tallest limbs are more than 15 feet up, so I have to cut the tops off as I don't want to have to use a step ladder to pick. I had to do the same thing with a plum graft on a 4 fruit tree. The peach, apricot, and other plum were all shorter limbs. The tallest one was almost 20 feet, was loaded with blossoms last year, but only one single plum. Its a bit too much for the rest of the trees grafts.