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growing apples in the midwest

I bought a Honeycrisp tree last spring--that already had small apples on it until my chipmunk neighbor decided to feast on them.
Anyway, I read up on growing apples and sites say you need to have a crab apple or another apple tree around to pollinate. To make a long story longer, one article mentioned getting an early and a late fruit producing tree, so you don't have tons of apples at one time.

My question is, What kind of a producer is a Honeycrisp, and what would be a great tree to add to my, hopefully, two tree orchard?

I can not seem to find this info on the Honeycrisp which seems wild.

Also if you have some general tips for growing apples in your back yard, I'm all ears!

Tags: apple, city, growing, honeycrisp, orchard, orchard., pollinate

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Permalink Reply by Carrie Seal-Stahl on February 11, 2010 at 4:16pm

Stark Bros sells that particular apple, and suggests pollinators. I have the catalog here at home, I knew I'd seen that somewhere! Here's the link:

http://www.starkbros.com/access?action=product&productID=9125&a...

My grandpa used to have 2 apple trees in his back yard about 25 ft apart from each other. I know he pruned them every year. They had so many apples a lot of them ended up going to rot! He had to finally cut them down after numerous bee attacks and all of us grandkids had falled out of them atleast once LOL

My dad has a couple smaller ones they bought a few years back, but they haven't produced that well yet. It takes a few years before they really get established and going :) (We all live in MI)

Good luck!

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Permalink Reply by michelle on February 11, 2010 at 4:21pm

Perfect! My tree is a dwarf. I'm trying the espalier pruning, so it won't take over the yard.

Carrie Seal-Stahl said:

Stark Bros sells that particular apple, and suggests pollinators. I have the catalog here at home, I knew I'd seen that somewhere! Here's the link:

http://www.starkbros.com/access?action=product&productID=9125&a...

My grandpa used to have 2 apple trees in his back yard about 25 ft apart from each other. I know he pruned them every year. They had so many apples a lot of them ended up going to rot! He had to finally cut them down after numerous bee attacks and all of us grandkids had falled out of them atleast once LOL

My dad has a couple smaller ones they bought a few years back, but they haven't produced that well yet. It takes a few years before they really get established and going :) (We all live in MI)

Good luck!