Advice for apple trees

Thanks for any help you can give me. 18 months ago I planted 5 drawf apple trees, one to two inches in diameter, 3 different varieties. I planted them in the fall and the next spring they all had a few blossoms, not many, and two developed fruit which did not make it to maturity. None of the trees appeared to grow much over the next year, and this spring although I am seeing a few more blossoms beginning to emerge these trees overall just don't seemed to have grown at all. Is this normal? Any suggestions? I live in a part of Washington state that grows a lot of apples but I am a newcomer and have never grown apples before .... I'd love some advice !!

For young trees, its not unusual to not get any fruit for the first few years. You actually want to spend the tree's first years training the branches to hold heavy fruit loads without collapsing. Here's some info http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/hil/ag29.html

Since you're here in Washington, WSU does have quite a bit of info on their Mt. Vernon site for fruit tree raising here in Washington State. They also have a commercial orchard site, but its not much help to backyard growers.

Start here http://mtvernon.wsu.edu/ and start looking thru what they have.

The ultimate heigth of dwarf apple trees depends on the variety and the dwarfing root stock. Dwarf fruit trees will grow slower than standard varieties. It takes a few years for the trees to develop sufficiently to support fruit to maturity. A caliper of 1" to 2" in diameter is rather large and sometimes takes longer to get established than trees with thinner trunks. You might find some useful information in these links.

http://eesc.orst.edu/agcomwebfile/edmat/pnw400.pdf
http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/1000/1401.html

And one other thing (a friendly FYI, not trying to scare you) since you are new to apple trees - Washington State law does require you to control fruit tree insects and diseases on your property and commercial orchardists do have the right to lodge complaints with the state if backyard trees are suspected of harboring pests.

Its relatively simple to spray a small number of trees and you can get a spray schedule from the WSU Grant County Extension http://grant-adams.wsu.edu/ A local farm and feed store can hook you up with the correct sprays for backyard orchards.

Thanks for alerting me to the need for spraying. I will contact Grant County. It sounds like you are saying that pruning has a lot to do with how the trees prosper from here ..... I've checked out a few of the websites, thanks -