North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["William C. Garthright" <billg@inebraska.com>]

> Wow, interesting document, didn't realise you could get away with cramming 
> trees so close together.
>   


Well, in my very limited experience with this, there are advantages and 
disadvantages:

Advantages:  Basically, this was the only way to grow a *lot* of 
different kinds of fruit in my backyard.* I live alone, and I don't want 
much of any one kind of fruit at any one time. Planting this way, you 
get less fruit of each variety, but you can get a bigger variety. That 
means different kinds of fruit, but it also means different ripening 
times. (That has worked particularly well with my peaches, with one 
variety ending just as another gets ripe.)

If I had a large planting area, I wouldn't even think of using this 
technique. But that's not the intention. (* This wasn't the ONLY way, I 
guess. I could have learned grafting and then grafted different 
varieties onto one tree. That might have been a wiser choice, I don't know.)


Disadvantages:  It's a LOT harder than I expected to keep these trees 
small. OK, I don't do enough summer pruning, but it's usually very hot 
and dry here in the summer, and I worry about stressing the trees even 
more. Or maybe I'm just too lazy, especially when it gets hot. But the 
whole idea of keeping a tree whatever size you want doesn't work nearly 
as well as it sounds.

It's also hard to prune trees that are this close together, especially 
when you can only have branches on one corner of the tree! And it's very 
hard to spray them, especially when you've got different kinds of fruit 
trees, because you have to worry about getting the spray on the wrong 
tree at the wrong time (notably when they're blooming). I can't find 
anything, much, that I can spray on every kind of tree, especially while 
avoiding damage to bees. And note that crowding the trees like this 
probably increases the disease pressure. If you've got the room, I'm 
sure you're much better off keeping them at a distance to promote better 
airflow.

I planted four apples in one spot (in a square 18" apart), four plums in 
one spot, and four peaches in one spot. This has worked, but for each 
tree, you get all the branches - and all of the heavy fruit - on one 
corner of the tree. So I've had to worry about them falling over. I've 
tied the trees together, so we'll see how that works. But I probably 
wouldn't do that again. Instead, I might plant them in a line, close 
together, but so that I could have branches on opposite sides of each 
tree. That way, the weight of the fruit would be balanced.

In other cases, I've planted fruit trees in a row, 8' apart. But even 
there, I'm having trouble keeping most of the trees small enough. Some 
"dwarf" trees are surprisingly vigorous, and there are some fruits which 
are hard to find with dwarfing rootstock (and "semi-dwarf" are VERY 
vigorous here). Again, it's been harder than I expected to keep the 
trees small. Heck, even my fruiting bushes are getting bigger than I 
expected (and since the gooseberries are heavily thorned, I'm paying for 
that in blood).


Would I do this again? Yeah, probably. I just keep seeing all the neat 
fruit that I DON'T have, and I'm still trying to find room for something 
else. It's an addiction, I suppose. But I wouldn't plant this way if I 
had lots more room.

Bill
Lincoln, NE (zone 5)

--
It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never 
reasoned into. - Jonathan Swift