[NAFEX] apple questions - espallier distance

Pete Tallman pete_tallman at hotmail.com
Mon Oct 24 16:45:40 EDT 2005


For the question from Thomas on how far apart to plant trees for espallier, 
I don't think there is necessarily one answer. It depends on what you want 
to accomplish. The only way I know to help is to describe my orchard. Hope 
this note doesn't come out too long. My whole orchard is on post and 4-wire 
trellis, top wire a couple inches short of 7 ft. The plan was to avoid 
ladder work for the most part and fit in as many different apple varieties 
on their own rootstock as possible. I planted a lot of Mark rootstock and 
others to be trained as oblique cordon with bamboo stake support to set the 
angle. Mark was the hot rootstock of the day at the time I grafted, and I'm 
still very happy with it 10 years later. Also have some Ott-3, Bud-9 (both 
very nice), M7, Bud-9, Antonovka, and a few other random rootstocks and 
interstems. P22 and M27 samplles were found to be far too weak for my use 
here in Colorado arid conditions, even with vigorous variety. Initially I 
planted the Mark oblique cordons 4 ft apart, but found this wasn't filling 
the space well, so I grew a second oblique arm for each of these trees, and 
some of these second arms are now grafted to second varieties. Later trees 
were planted at 2.5 feet for the oblique cordons. Trees are usually willing 
to fill the space on Mark. Some varieties are more vigorous, need a lot of 
pruning (even on Mark), others quite happy in the space. Constant pruning 
struggle to keep the Antonovka and M7 in oblique cordon form. Good thing I 
like to prune. One attempt at formal espallier on Mark grew the 4 arms on 
each side but didn't have enough vigor to fill out the upper arms to 6 feet 
long apiece before it runted out. M7 with 6ft arms is probably going to be 
fine, giving a row spacing of 12 feet.  I have one "production" row with 
trees formed as informal espallier, kind of a cross between formal multi-arm 
espallier and fan forms. Most of these are at 10 to 12 feet apart. One tree 
on Antonovka had no problems filling a 20 foot space and woud probably have 
taken more if I let it. In hindsight, if I were to do this over, I would run 
cordon for the entire production row instead of informal espallier, which 
would allow fine tuning of production volume vs. interest. Fully oblique 
cordon would also probably give more production. My 20-footer was Black 
Oxford that I had a lot of hope for, but turned out not interesting enough 
to grant the whole 20 feet. That tree is in process of being changed over by 
topworking to Bramley's Seedling which is very interesting here. Leaving a 
couple branches Black Oxford too. The other hindsight is that the trees on 
oblique cordon get heavy, and the oblique trees aren't helping much to hold 
up their own weight, so attachment to the wires is critical. Maybe I should 
have run vertical cordons so the trees themselves can help the support. Way 
too late to make that adjustment now.

Hope this discussion helps a little. Jackie can pick this up as an article 
if she likes.

Pete Tallman
5690 Steeplechase Dr.
Longmont, CO





More information about the nafex mailing list