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[Claude Jolicoeur <cjoli@gmc.ulaval.ca>]

Tom,
I would guess you don't have children aged between 6 and 12...
They are excellent reasons to grow full sized trees - when you see the amount of pleasure a group of kids have harvesting apples, five or six of them climbed in the same tree, agile and light enough to get to the farthest apples, you can't think anything else than how great a full sized tree is.
In my opinion, it fully compensates for the added difficulty - but I agree it is less efficient. It all depends on what you expect from your trees.

Claude

A 13:27 04.04.06 -0400, vous avez écrit : 
>>>>
> Hi, 
>
> Why don't you want starndard sized apple trees?  I have 3 reasons for you... 
>
> Just finished pruning three old, standard sized apple trees planted in 1918.  My legs are exhausted from being on the ladder for hours, my thighs and legs are bruised, from leaning against the ladder, and I pulled a muscle climbing to the crown of one of them to get suckers inaccessible by ladder. 
>
> A standard tree can reach to 40-45 feet.  I was only dealing with 30' trees. 
>
> Unless you keep a standard sized tree trained low, it takes all the fun out of keeping them. 
>
> Plus, who knows how much spray gets to the top of the tree, or the reduced/spoiled fruit production you cannot reach for harvest. 
>
> Hmmm...  That is 5 reasons; 
> > *  exhaustion from pruning 
> > *  bruising from pruning 
> > *  cuts/scrapes/strains from pruning 
> > *  spraying 40' up 
> > *  unreachable fruit 
> That doesn't go into the sense of joy you feel, way up on a wobbly ladder.  (smile)  I tried not to think about how long a broken bone would take to heal while up on that ladder. 
>
> I hope to convince my inlaws to remove the old trees this summer, and put in more dwarfs. 
>
> Later, 
> Tom