Get rid of dead or damaged branches and keep the tree's size in check. If you look forward to harvesting fruit from your own apple trees to make jams, pies, and jars of apple butter, the first step is ...

Pruning an apple tree can seem like a daunting task if you have never done it before. Like most other skills, you start out slowly learning the basics to help build confidence. Then once the basic ...

A garden is more than just a pretty backdrop or a source of homegrown produce -- it's a living system, and the plants you choose can play a powerful role in supporting its health and biodiversity.

More than 30 apple trees persist on The Purchase at the national park. They're more than 125 years old, and their DNA is ...

If you plant a seed from a Gala apple, the chances are one in a hundred (or less) that the fruit produced from the tree that grows will be sweet. As Henry David Thoreau remarked, such seedling-grown ...

Every autumn, I begin to crave generic seasonal comforts: the hues of turning leaves, the chill of sweater weather. I’m not really a pumpkin-spice person, but I’m a sucker for a classic u-pick apple ...