gloria,
You should check out the fruit and orchards forum on this site. You'll get lots of good info. It's probably too late to start a spraying program this year. You need to start with a dormant spray before before the tree leafs out and then switch to a growing season spray program at flowering time and every few weeks throughout the season. That's if you want edible apples. Everything I read tells me that if you don't spray you'll have wormy apples. There an interesting technique of putting a ziploc baggie on each apple once they form to keep bugs out.
I've got 2 golden delicious and one granny smith tree. One was planted roughly 8 years ago and the other 2 were planted 4 years ago, each a 2-3 ft sapling. Last year was my first year for apples on all 3, a total of 13 apples between 3 trees, so clearly, I am not an expert. I didn't spray last year as I wasn't expecting fruit yet. I did start a spraying program with a fruit tree spray from a big box store this spring. I do have apples this year, but it's too soon to tell how I'm doing. I don't enough about rust to be helpful. I hope you check out the fruit and orchard forum and wish you luck!
Barb

Thanks Barb, I will check out the fruit and orchard forum.

Gloria, I read up on the sprays back when I was considering an apple tree and it looks like some sprays are even okay for organic growing. I'm afraid, from all my previous research, that you can't really have the apples without some kind of dormant spraying.

I hope you get it worked out and your apple tree does better!

Jennifer