Apple Tree Pollination

I have a Honeycrisp and Granny Smith Apple tree in my yard. They are young trees: Granny Smith is about 15 feet high and Honeycrisp is about 6 feet high. The Granny Smith is flowering now but the Honeycrisp looks like itis at least a few weeks from flowering. The trees are in containers and live a few feet from each other. We just had a late cold snap and the flowers on the Granny look a little rough. How should we facilitate pollination?

There is nothing you can do to slow down the granny`smith or really speed up the honeycrisp unless you can move the latter into a warmer spot. They should have enough overlap in flowering to pollinate each other since they are in group 3 and 4 respectively. The good news is the grannysmith doesn't actually need a partner so so long as the flowers have not been to frosted you should get fruit on that tree, but the honeycrisp does need a partner so if there are not any other trees nearby you won't get anything from that tree this year. It might be an idea to look at where they are placed, is one spot warmer than the other?

if there are any other apples in the neighborhood, even crabapples, you may not need to worry about it...

greg mosser wrote:if there are any other apples in the neighborhood, even crabapples, you may not need to worry about it...

Thanks. Local crabapples are at least .5 miles away. We don't seem to be on flight path of local honeybees. should mention we're in a city and nearest hives are 3+ miles out.