Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

nafex - [NAFEX] apple questions - espallier distance

nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Pete Tallman" <pete_tallman@hotmail.com>
  • To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Cc: jakuehn@yourinter.net
  • Subject: [NAFEX] apple questions - espallier distance
  • Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2005 14:45:40 -0600

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






Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page