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  • From: "Alan Haigh" <alandhaigh@gmail.com>
  • To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [NAFEX] Vigorous rootstocks restrained
  • Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:52:14 -0400

I don't have much experience with young apples on seedling rootstock, most of the standard stock trees I manage are somewhere in the vicinity of a hundred years old.  The twenty odd trees on seedling that I installed for a client and have maintained for several years are planted with 25 foot spacing which for seedling is actually a tad close for all but the least vigorous cultivars.
 
I believe the question was originally not about maintaining the trees in close spacing but about whether they could be trained low, to which I say of course.  You could train them to grow at a height of 18 inches if that was your desire- might be a good idea in zone 2. 
 
If the question is how to maintain them as compact trees, say 15' spacing, I would suggest you start with less vigorous cultivars like Goldrush, Jonathon, or Ginger Gold.  The best way after that to deinvigorate without root-pruning is to favor weak wood when you prune, always removing anything over a third diameter of the trunk at the point of attachment when developing scaffolds and follow up with the same math when developing secondary wood.  Branch vigor is strongly based on it's relative diameter to the branch it is attached to.  The larger its relative diameter the greater access to the roots and water and minerals like the big N.  This doesn't completely apply to all varieties as some are so spurry that they go straight to fruiting no matter what the relative diameter of the scaffolds.  Empire, Goldrush and especially Braeburn are examples of this. 
 
The easiest way for an unskilled pruner to maintain a tree in a dwarfing way is to train your trees to weep or a mushroom shape.  Once the trees are of bearing age and the height you desire you simply prune all but the least vigorous upward growing shoots leaving a few upward pencils in the bearing wood and lots of the wood that is bent down from the weight of previous crops.
 
Alan Haigh, the Home Orchard Co.


  • [NAFEX] Vigorous rootstocks restrained, Alan Haigh, 08/12/2008

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