North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Alan Haigh" <alandhaigh@gmail.com>]

It sounded to me that the question was first posted by a non-commercial grower which is entirely different than if the question was for commercial growing.  Around here commercial growers usually place their semi-dwarf (say M7 to M111 for apple rootstock) in rows spaced 20 feet apart with the trees spaced about 14' between rows.  They maintain 10' sod rows that are mowed only occasionally during the season.  The trees are grown in 10' wide herbicide treated strips with last application in late summer so enough growth of weeds will hold soil through winter.  Whether using a gasoline driven weed badger over say glysphosphate for weed control represents a more sustainable model is a math I'm not qualified to calculate.

 

In the home orchard optimum yield per acre is not the issue.  If  you are going to mow anyway,  just for aesthetics, it is possible to get quite an adequate harvest of most fruit in most soils by mowing around the trees, lopping off interfering branches or tying them up to the tree or a long strong pole (sapling) firmly taped to the tree.  Of course the competition of grass during drought can be a problem.  The shorter the grass is mowed the less competition it will present for water and nutrients.  It is useful to place a collar protector around the tree to make string weeding easy up close to the trunk.

 

If the soil is poor or their is a lot of competition from nearby forest trees you may need to maintain a weed free circle of at least 5' diameter at the base of your trees.  I use 2-3" of wood chips over newspaper of landscape fabric for this.  Peaches are particularly prone to runting out in the face of competition.  Young establishing trees need this help for the first 3 or 4 years in any soil.

 

I have a lot of difficulty managing home orchards in seldom or annually mowed meadows.  Tarnished plant bugs and stinkbugs tend to become problematic when the floor has a lot of broad leaf weeds, at least here in the northeast.  Stinkbugs cause damage very late into the growing season so insecticide applications would have to be tripled to get decent fruit in some sites managed this way.  Tall weeds also increase the dew and fungus problems.