Help, My Apple Trees are Dropping Leaves!

We have Billy in North Canton, who says, ‘I’ve got probably a dozen apple trees. And three of them have lost probably 90 percent of their leaves. Do you recommend a particular fertilizer?’

That’s not uncommon. We’ve seen that especially this year with apple and crabapple trees. There is a fungus that sometimes gets on the trees called scab, and it doesn’t happen all the time. It’s an environmental thing.

This summer we’ve been cool and we’ve been rainy. And that is one of the environments that encourages those apple trees to drop their leaves early. It will not kill the tree generally. It’s going to be basically going to sleep a month earlier than normal.

We don’t recommend fertilizing this time of year, especially if the tree’s been in the ground for a while and fully established.

Next spring, you can use the all seasons fertilizer, or if it’s an apple tree, we’ve got Fox Farm, which is organic. If you’re eating the apples off of it, we do recommend you stay organic. Our fertilizer can be used on food crops, but our company’s policy is to stay organic if you’re growing the food to consume.

So we do have some different Fox Farm fertilizers that you can use in the springtime that will encourage that plant to be healthier and it has a better chance of holding its leaves if it’s got all the ingredients it needs.

Questions? Email us at [email protected] or call one of our two locations: Portage (330-499-0101) or Everhard (330-492-1243).