What’s wrong with my apple tree?

[ilovelibraries]

Novice gardener here.

Last year my husband planted an apple
tree in the back garden (no comments that it’s too close to the fence please …). It was from a good garden centre, was healthy and bushy. This year it doesn’t look unhealthy, has a few apples coming but has far less leaves - unlike a younger tree he planted in the front which has less sun but has lots of healthy leaves and so many little apples (I’m culling them as I understand young trees should put their energy into growing roots and leaves rather than apples).

Am I supposed to be feeding the tree? Or watering less? (I water occasionally when I remember to do the garden). Or water more?

I can’t see any damage on the leaves or evidence of disease or pests.

Any advice very gratefully received. Thanks.

There seems nothing wrong with your tree.

Looks fine to me. Remember that Apple trees belong to different pollination groups, and so go through their yearly routines a different times. If you're comparing the two and they are from different pollination groups that could explain it, your sparser tree may look fuller in a month or two

If you water a tree, put the hose at the base and leave it for 10mins to get a really good soak. That's much better for it than a splash of water every day.

Fabulous, thanks all. I do soak it but maybe not enough. How frequently should I be watering it? I’m worried about over and under watering everything!

I was hopeful it was fine. I should have said, the first picture was the tree last year when we got it. The second was taken today. So it’s the same tree.

You don’t usually need to worry about overwatering something in the ground, excess water will leach away.

Dig into the soil a wee bit - if you find a damp layer at the top and dryness beneath, you haven’t been watering enough.

Unless you are in a drought area regularly, water hardly ever.

I plant my fruit trees, water in well and for the first week, mulch with bark, wood chip or grass mowings and then I leave them be. I want them to put down roots and I don't even stake mine as I want them to rock with the wind to encourage the roots to grip the soil even harder.

If the tree visibly wilts then I'd water. But only very rarely.

We have an apple tree. The year before last we had hundreds of apples on it, I was delighted! But last year we got about three. It seemed happy enough but I was a bit baffled, anyway this year we have hundreds again.

I did a bit of Googling and some seem to not bear fruit every year. We do literally nothing to the tree at all but sometimes the weather can make a difference. The tree I'm talking about was quite mature when we planted it but we also have others that we planted about 7 years ago and it took ages for them to bear any significant fruit.

Great, thanks all. I’ll leave it and stop
worrying about it.