Repairing a young apple tree with a snapped branch

Question

This year I purchased a young "family" apple tree, with three varieties of apple grafted onto a single plant. It was planted in March and has flowered happily and is producing fruit. I staked it when it was planted and the main branch is loosely attached to the stake to minimise movement due to wind (which is low anyway due to a narrow garden with fences on both sides and the predominant wind direction being across the narrow dimension of the garden).

I came out this morning to find that one of the branches bearing apples had snapped and was hanging down to the floor. The branch is bearing the most fruit of any on the tree - 9 fruits in total - and is approximately 8mm in diameter.

My questions:

• Can I save this branch, and if so how?
• What should I do to avoid this in future? Do I need to brace the individual branches, thin the fruit (if so, how do I judge how many to keep) or something else?

Answer 1

The tree looks like it has never been pruned before you bought it.

The branches are MUCH too long and spindly to support ANY weight of fruit. You should have removed all the fruit that set after the tree flowered, to let it put all its energy into growing wood, not apples. A tree as immature as that should not be allowed to produce any apples for at least 2 years, and will probably take 5 years to grow branches thick enough to support a full crop.

Really it should have been pruned hard in March when you planted it, in which case it wouldn't have produced much flower this year to cause any problems.

There is no way you can "save" the broken branch. Just cut it off neatly. Then take off all the remaining fruit NOW, before you break the other branch that is almost touching the ground.

If you decide to keep the tree with one "family member" missing, it needs hard pruning next winter, to start to create its final shape. The harder you prune apple trees, the faster the wood grows - which is what you want to happen, in the short term.

Alternatively, write this off to experience, throw the tree out, and maybe think about buying a replacement from a better quality supplier than where that one came from. If you don't have any experience training apple trees, try to buy one that is at least 2 years old, which will have had its first pruning to establish the basic "shape" of the tree before you buy it.

Answer 2

This just happened to a smaller branch on my husband and my 5 year planted apple tree, due to a hungry deer. This is the first year it has actually set fruit.

We're going to try to tape/tie it back and see if we can save the branch. After researching this on several websites, I'm pretty optimistic that this will work.

As far as branches too weak to bear so much fruit, I agree that apple trees need proper trimming at the right time of year. But once the fruit is developing, I have noticed on local farms here in NC, that they often use whatever is at hand to aid a weaker branch in bearing its fruit without breaking. I've seen ladders and even old wooden chairs to assist.

My favorite apple tree nearby split in two a few years back and rooted itself to the touching ground, making a second and a third tree. It's really cool! It looks like an undulating sea monster with trunks.

Since your tree was a family tree, it'd be nice to save that grafted branch if you can, depending on how many pollinators those varieties will require. (For instance, my tree is an Arkansas Black, which requires 2 additional polinators. In order to get it to fruit, I had to plant 2 other types of apple trees for pollinators this spring, and it finally set apples.)

I would suggest that you remove all the fruit on that branch, so that it can put all its energy into healing. Then trim, prop up, or tie the branch up if it still seems too heavy.

If you decide to remove the branch altogether, you may want to us a wound healing agent on the tidied up wound to prevent the tree from becoming diseased later.

As for the deer, my husband and I are thinking we'll have to spray a deer repellant on/around the tree between rains. It's stinky, but it works. That will hopefully repel the deer until harvest time.

Good luck!

Answer 3

Same break on my 8 ft Chrimson Maple. 2020 September. I snapped it trying to straighten. Carefully positioned it vertical and matched bark. Immediately, applied tight wrap of electrical tape in 3 locations. Topped that with snug zip ties. Used a split wooden paint stir stick as splint secured with tape and zip ties x 3. 2021 Spring budded nicely and by this Sept I redid the task, leaving everything snug for growth and improved my splint to handle wind from 4 directions. Fertilized till July. Again some for winter recently. Will be 2023 before I will consider reducing some of my efforts and let nature take over.