Everything that dies is bad luck and everything that thrives is mad skill.
(Or maybe the dirt is special—not to brag or anything, but the USDA soil survey calls my fine sandy loam “farmland of statewide importance.”)
Granny put out some little apples straight away:
Sandy loam is the soil that forgives
The Northwest Fruit Apple and Pear harvest is usually the first week of October. This is for tasting and picking - no sales of rootstock. The sale of scions and rootstock is usually around March 1st. Northwest Fruit publishes a list of scions and rootstocks prior to the event. Lots of people at both events.
Olive with little olives and some new growth
I’ll swap zips ties for twine before the windy season and let you know if it survives.
If it were me, I’d let the olive flop. Keeping the growth closer to ground will help it get through the first couple winters. Once its roots are settled in and it’s ready to start pushing strong growth, it will send up a new shoot that will be much more upright, and will quickly outgrow the original trunk.
Sorry i didnt see your question sooner.
On thinning, sounds like you got a pretty good handle on it and as @Ciderlady says make sure to have a minimum distance between clusters. You can vary this with your own experience as there is wiggle room depending on variety, your own terror, extremes of weather you may be experiencing, etc.
To fertility, a good soil test is a great place to start, maybe you’ve already done that? The basics you get from a soil test like PH and CEC are going to tell you what you need to amend before adding any nutrients so that the nutrients will be available and taken in by the roots instead of just washed through the soil profile.
Regardless of what you end up doing a soil test is good info to have for a base line.
Many people will just amend their soil with compost and hope for the best. If you have sandy loam like i do then adding good compost can never be a bad thing.
Without knowing your soil texture lets just skip to nutrients. If your CEC is low you are always going to have a problem getting your applied fertilizers into the tree. Two ways to up your CEC are with clay or compost.
I purchase compost by the truckload, 18yds, cover it and it lasts me aprox 4 years. I use this in many places but one in particular is orchard replant. Most of my 6+ acres of orchard was planted at way too high of density. I started at 12 trees every 50’ and am now at 3 to 5 trees per 50’ depending on vigor and rootstock. Its been a long struggle with removing trees and problems of replant but using compost has worked best. After digging out the old tree i dig a hole and dump in about 3 cubic ft of compost. Along with this this i put 2 qts (dry meas) of Natures Intent 7 2 4 fertilizer. I rototill the heck out of this and give it 2 years.
Unless you start over from scratch, which you cant with established trees, building up your CEC is a long process.
I would be careful with just applying compost to the surface. You might try applying it heavily at the dripline and tilling it in.
Just found some barnacle scale insects on my flavicarpa passion fruit from mimosa nursery… apparently it’s now hot enough where I’m at for them to thrive.
Considering torching the entire plant now 
Thanks to a heads-up from @z0r I visited Broadacres Grape Nursery on their opening weekend. Wow what a grape growers paradise!
With 43 grape varieties to sample and rooted cuttings of most to buy, it was a fun-filled hour of sampling and then chatting with the personable owner who knew all the ins and outs of growing. Love meeting seasoned growers who want to share their knowledge!
In order to beat the clock in my cool area, I was looking to check out some of their earliest ripening grapes. According to the owner, all of this year’s grapes were ripening about 1 month ahead of time. About 1/3 of the 43 varieties were already ripe and were forming raisins on the vine.
Hubbard Oregon is zone 8b with hot inland summers compared to my 8a maritime summers. So Broadacre’s grapes might take another month to ripen for me.
These were my 9 favorites. I ended up buying rooted cuttings of Thornton and Black Emerald.
Green: Interlaken, Thornton
Pink: Einset
Purple: Venus, Jupiter
Black: Black Emerald, Beauty, Challenger, #4716
Broadacres is open weekends through the month of Sept.
Great signage once you reach Hubbard so easy to find.
Address: 9993 Broadacres Rd., NE, Hubbard, OR 97032
Beautiful apples. Too bad you can’t easily ship them across the pond. I’ve seen them in the Supervalu market here in Ireland.
Thanks, yes shipping is always a problem. Fortunately apples are pretty durable at least compared to some things like stone fruit. We have been shipping 10 lb boxes to the east coast for years now. Sending them USPS flat rate and getting there in 3 days has worked well but anything larger incurres huge price increase.
I noticed recently that the Cloud Mountain nursery in Everson had recently closed permanently. I very much enjoyed going to the yearly tasting festivals. I was able to taste a delicious seaberry, a small pear like fruit (sorry name escapes me) and most importantly my first Karmijn de Sonnaville of which I was able to buy a bag of. Made such a delicious pie too. Best to Tom and Sheryl Thornton and thanks for running a great nursery.
Yes unfortunately Tom signed over his operation to a non profit, Sustainable Connections, many years ago and now, as is so often the case, the non profit has run it into the ground.
This reminds me of a similar instance only much larger in scope when King County decided to turn over their perfectly well running small farm help program, Puget Sound Fresh, to a non profit. This non profit, Cascade Harvest Coalition, immediately turned the program into a whos who club of who could afford to participate. The original mission of helping out start up farmers having been completely forgotten.
Non profits can have the best of intentions but most of the time they are guided by motives having nothing to do with the companies they gobble up or projects they screw up.
It’s sad to build up a great organization and have it run into the ground. Yes, management does matter.
John S
PDX OR
Maybe Shipova was the small pear like fruit, they ripened about a week or two ago here.
touche 
Yes, Shipova it was.
