Leave them, they will rot...some may sprout....almost all won't. I have a hosta bed under a crab and I had another for years until the tree got too big and started hanging on the neighbor's garage.
On second thought, pick them off the tree and make jelly!

Linda C

I have crab apple trees and I've never known the drops to "sprout". IMHO you might want to remove them, because they're going to rot and that attracts slugs and other creepy crawlers.

Donna

Your minis may get damaged by the fallen fruits. I would not put cupped hostas like Love Pat or Abiqua Drinking Gourd under crabapple trees. Under my crabapple I have large hostas.

Papou

I have a Prairie Fire crab, and some years it has LOTS of seedlings under it. Easy to pick out, but a nuisance job. DH heavily mulched it, end of problem.

I always recommend mulch and put preen under each years mulch which takes care of seed germination.

You will get suckers from roots that must be cut off, do not use tree killing chemicals on these suckers. The chemical will translocate to the tree roots and kill or damage the crab apple.

Slugs are not attracted to crab apples or crab apple fruit, slugs move from one spot the other looking for food when they find it they eat it. Get rid of the hosta, slugs love hosta they will starve to death waiting for the crab apple fruit to drop.

Search slug control here, there is plenty of info on control of slugs.

IN MY OPINION ... apples are as bad, if not worse than maples .... highly invasive fibrous roots at ground level ... surprised you didnt run across them while planting ...unless you are in denial ... and a crab is a apple as far as i am concerned ..... i was working under a 50 year old apple tree when my nightmare started .... hopefully your youngish crab will be better ...

BUT ..... since they are all minis .... once a year ... spring .... twice around with your spade until its all the way in.. three times if need be .... and pop the whole ball out.. and let it fall right back in .... or pull it out and make sure all the buried roots are severed ... one of the beauties of minis is.. you can move a giant [relatively speaking] ball of soil.. get the whole plant.. and all the roots ... and plop it right back in ... since the plant is not technically 'transplanted'''... bare rooted ... it should not even notice ... and any roots in the ball are to be left intact to rot .... dont break the ball ...

never fertilize .. and broadcast all water ... never call the roots to your planting hole ...

i guess they are better than maples.. because a maple can get to 100 feet.. crabs .. what 20??? .. so roots are significantly smaller ...

otherwise.. you worked hard on this.. and it looks great .... just keep in mind what MIGHT be happening ...

ken

I have a hosta bed with a couple of Hydrangeas and astilbe under the biggest mistake I ever planted - a crab apple. DH won't let me chop it down so I have to pick up the damn things starting two weeks ago - thousands - I rake every week. Can't keep up with it. If I could get a net around and under it, I would. In years prior, I left them on the ground and had rotten applesauce in the grass and in the hosta bed and as mentioned above, bugs and worms. I wish there was some hormone I could inject the stupid tree with so it wouldn't produce. I will never EVER plant another tree that drops ANYTHING - or another Maple. They're the lowlife's of the tree world.

Westy

I have an old fashion crab tree on the NW corner of my isolation garden. Unless the frost hits flowering time, the tree rains crabs this time of year. I rake the apples into the garden rows and till them in. I have never had problems with sprouts. Sometimes I make a bit of crabapple jelly like granny used to make.
Also, I listen to talk radio while I garden and that keeps the deer away from the dropped fruit. My pig in dog's clothing tries his best to eat them all. Pig that he is. . he doesn't make a dent in them. I am always afraid he will get stung by the yellow jackets that the fruit draws.
I have an ornamental crab in my garden area that drops smaller fruit. That tree will sprout LOTS of babies from the fruit. I use corn glutton under it to keep down the sprouting. Also, I planted very large hostas under it so it hides the droppings.
Truthfully, if I had another crab tree in a garden spot I would probably admit defeat and move the hostas somewhere else. For me it would take less time to move the hostas and plant something there that would hide the yearly drop. That is just my opinion.
You did such a beautiful job. . .

Just a side note. . . I have my minis in halved whiskey barrels placed along paths. It gives me a nice view of them. Also, my sweetie made me a couple brick planters along some of my garden pathways. The minis flourish in them. I have had minis in planters for four years now and never had rot nor lost one of them.

Ken, thanks for the tip on not fertilizing under a maple. . .one of these days that maple will be history. . lol

There are all kinds of crab apple trees. I have one that only fruits every other year. The fruit are large and make great jelly and it never sends up a sucker but when they drop they may break a hosta leaf.
I had another that stayed very small...I believe it was called a cardinal crab, the fruit was very small, like a current and bright red and stayed most of the winter and drew the cedar wax wings like crazy. When they came through on their migration they stripped that tree in a matter of hours!
I also had another that bloomed white, had fruit about like a cherry that mostly stayed for the wax wings...but I think that every seed that dropped sprouted!
Every crab tree is not the same. Some sucker, some don't. Some have sterile seed, some are "self cleaning" meaning they drop their fruit, some keep their fruit for the birds...don't paint them all with the same brush.
Linda C

linda..

i didn't paint them all with the same brush .. as they were not the topic of discussion ...

i warned of a potential hosta problem under a apple/crab ...

its for the reader to do further research ... or if a problem later surfaces ..... to somehow recall that the cra-bapple MIGHT be the problem ...

i have a dozen different crabs.. they are wonderful trees.. but i don't put hosta under them ...

ken

"In years prior, I left them on the ground and had rotten applesauce in the grass and in the hosta bed" Westy

The fruit is wonderful food for hosta.

"Also, my sweetie made me a couple brick planters along some of my garden pathways."Sidney

Do you have photos of these brick planters?

Thanks everyone for all your input. Where can I hire a dozen cedar waxwings, LOL?!

I tried picking some of the fruit up yesterday but there's no way I can get them all...it would take weeks! And there's still a ton of them up in the tree yet. I like the idea of using Preen then mulch even better now after picking them out for 30 minutes and only getting 2 square feet done.

EO, are you saying the dropped fruit are good natural fertilizer or just as another organic material added?

In answer to some of the questions posed, its blooms are a pretty pink. The fruit is the size of a small cherry. It is a mature tree and is approximately 15' high, 15' wide.
In the past, I've had suckers at the base of the tree which I cut off but nothing in the grass that I could see.

Sidney, I'd also love to see pictures of the brick planters you have your mini's in. I like to work with brick/stone so that could be a fun, future project!

Char

"EO, are you saying the dropped fruit are good natural fertilizer or just as another organic material added?"

They provide organic material AND sugars and carbohydrates to the mix that would not be available from most mulches. Some of my best growth is under an ancient full sized apple tree. The plants can do without the sugar, etc but they will do better with it. For example stale beer is a good addition to the soil for other reasons sorry I don't remember what stale beer brings to the soil.

I don't care if they ARE good fertilizer. There are so many in the grass it's impossible to walk without sliding into slop. I leave them in the hosta bed but I have to pick them up BY HAND from the grass while fighting off bees, flies and wasps. I'd give anything for a giraffe.

Westy

if the cra-bapples are falling in the grass .. then the bed underneath should be widened so that they fall in the bigger bed .... make sense??

i also hate the stoned stingers feasting on the fermenting fruit that the lawnmower broke apart.. but i refuse to pick them up by hand ....

ken

These are old pictures . . .taken when my sweetie finished it. Things were still pretty messy. I had just put in the plants and snapped a few pics. This is the first planter he did for me. . nothing fancy. . made with old used bricks. I can try to get some new pictures after I get my grandbabies pictures downloaded. . lol ..granny had at least one grandchild 24/7 this summer. Yesterday was my first free day. Every time I came across one of their toys. . I teared up. . lol
My second brick planter is in a crossing of two paths. Right now it has a pile of mulch and a pile of compost dumped very close to it. I had my sweetie dump a bucket load of each with his tractor the other day. I have
plans to work . .that is if no more grandbabies show up before school starts. . lol I can try to get a picture of it but I may have to wait until I move one of the piles.
These are not the best pictures but it will give you an idea of it. This planter is about fifteen foot long.

Oooh, I LOVE them! Thanks, Sidney!

Char

First, I love Sidney's planters. And Sidney, my dog used to eat them too, though they made her ill and we wound up calling them crapapples.

Second, I really like Westy's giraffe idea.

And just think of the manure! Surely an improvement over wasp-infested crabapple mush.