How To Tell Your Apple Blossoms Are Growing Fruit & When They're Ready To Be Picked

You know how to grow and care for your apple tree and now you're ready to reap the best part — the fruit. But apples do not bloom all year long and sometimes things happen, like weather or even pests. Therefore, it may lead to you having a hard time figuring out when the fruit blooms. Before you do things too late or too soon, here's how you can tell your apple blossoms are growing fruit and when they're ready to be picked.

When growing an apple tree (Malus x domestica), fruit doesn't magically appear; instead, it all starts with beautiful, blooming flowers. But again, this is months' worth of work before you start to see any type of apple growth. To know that your apple blossoms are growing fruit, it starts with the flowers losing their petals, which leads to pollination. A few weeks after pollination, you'll notice some portions of the flower turn red as well as some swelling where the apple will form. Over multiple months, this swelling will continue until you see the apple come out and get ready for picking. The best way to know if your apple is ready to pick is to taste for ripeness; however, another way is to see if any of the apples have dropped. Typically, that means the tree is ready for picking. But even with growing and picking, it is important to remember that a lot of apples have different blooming times depending on their growing groups.

So you've listened to the best time of year to plant your apple tree, according to a professional gardener and are now ready to understand when you should pick. But before that, you should understand that your blooms happen in groups. Overall, your apple blossoms will start blooming a few weeks into spring and continue until the end of the season. What is imperative is understanding blooming times with each group.

You'll have at least five groups when it comes to blooming. Group 1 will bloom early spring, and it will continue down the line until Group 5 blooms in late spring. Each group then will pollinate with each other, but you don't want Group 1 to pollinate with Group 4 or 5 and vice versa. Once the flowers are pollinated, your apples will be ripe from early to late fall. From there, they will begin to droop, meaning it is time to pick. Now that you have one, don't forget to review some tips and tricks you need to help apple trees thrive in your yard.