I’ve written before about my travails with my Golden Delicious apple tree( it’s my favorite-). After 5 years of struggling in my orchard without quite enough water, the poor guy went horizontal last October in an early season snowstorm. I pulled it back as close as I could to vertical, which is about 75 degrees, (I don’t know, I don’t have a protractor!) and tied it to 2 stakes. My most recent worry was a late season snowstorm, when rain turned to snow on April 2. I wasn’t so much worried that the buds would freeze, I was worried that branches would break off, or that it would go horizontal again and just keel over completely.
It didn’t. So, that’s good news, I guess, if not exactly worthy of a whole blog post…My worries were groundless. The blossoms look fine, and it is getting warm enough for pollinators, so we should have some apples- Golden Delicious, my favorite.
I am keeping the stakes in place, the tree is still leaning to the north, and the 2 stakes pull is pretty steadily to the south. I may add another stake to take some of the pressure off. This June, I again plan to put paper bags on the fruit to get organic apples– I’m bringing my good stapler home from work.
Strawberry Fields for Breakfast 
Apr 27, 2012 @ 20:10:48
I would keep stakes permanently on your apple tree because it will always be susceptible to going over the larger it becomes.
Apr 28, 2012 @ 03:55:18
That’s what I figured- I also will make sure to thin the fruit this year- I don’t want it to become so heavy that it uproots itself.
Apr 28, 2012 @ 04:03:37
I have an apple orchard with over three hundred trees. The snow storm that we had in October took down some of our trees. Thinning the fruit will help as well as doing some pruning to lighten the tree. When your ground is soft after a rain, you can tighten the lines to the stakes. Pulling it back a little time is better than trying to totally straightening it all at once.
Apr 28, 2012 @ 04:49:09
Should I prune now, or is there fireblight risk? I didn’t want to prune when it was dormant, because I wasn’t sure if it would come back- I figured I would cut out deadwood, if there was any. Good advice about the staking- now if we would only get some rain. 🙂
Apr 28, 2012 @ 05:21:43
I didn’t know that you had fireblight. Do you live in an area that has a University with an agricultural program. They give wonderful help with problems like that. Also if your county has an extension service they can look at your trees and give you advice.