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  • From: Rich Blaha <rich@mossbackfarm.com>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] spindle cut orchards
  • Date: Fri, 01 Jun 2007 22:31:03 -0700

Hi Paul

I worked for a commercial apple orchard and nursery in Bellingham, WA (cloudmountainfarm.com). They used the 'slender spindle' form for their trees, to pretty good effect, from a commercial orchardists standpoint. The trees require specialized pruning, it's true, but they are trained to channel some of their upward growth into side shoots, and trellises support the weight of the fruit. It's esentially a technique that draws on the space efficiency of espalier techniques, scaled to commercial operations.

Trees pruned this low are vastly more cost efficient to manage, especially picking and pruning. Not having crews haul orchard ladders around really speeds the process, not to mention worker's comp advantages.

I had talked to Tom at Cloud Mountain about clover in the rows for nitrogen fixing (he used a creeping red fescue that didn't need much mowing). He'd said that the legumes shed a pulse of nitrogen in fall as they go dormant, just as he's trying to get his trees to shut down for the year. If a warm snap hits after the N-pulse, he'd get a push of growth that will burn back when winter hits for real. He's in a pretty wild weather area, so I don't know if that holds for all regions.

This is one of those commercial vs homestead scale issues....it seems a shame to rip out a bunch of mature producing trees just to introduce some diversity, unless there's a problem, either existing or imminent. Like all of these decisions, it depends on the context of the property...is it a cash crop, or a hobby? Are they all just a couple of varieties, or is there a wide diversity of them? And how big is the orchard? And what's nearby?
Questions just lead to more questions....

Rich
www.mossbackfarm.com/journal

7. spindle cut orchards (paul wheaton)



Message: 7
Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2007 10:31:20 -0700
From: "paul wheaton" <paul@richsoil.com>
Subject: [permaculture] spindle cut orchards
To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Message-ID:
<22d4eb790706011031x37cc7b2n910e9cfd08bc66a8@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Anybody familiar with these?

I was asked to go to an orchard yesterday and give some advice.

Apparently, this approach is considered to be one of the most
productive apple monocultures possible. With about 30% to 40% more
productivity than central leader trees.

I thought it was scary.

The stuff I found through google said that the pruning was less and
easier since everything was kept so short. My impression was that the
pruning would have to be more because you would have to keep
everytthing so short!

I thought I would find something that said "this is not sustainable",
but after an hour of googling, I could only find stuff that said it
was great stuff.

Apparently, a lot of the apple industry is moving in this direction.

Essentially, this stuff looks like apple hedges grown north/south so
that the sun can get on all the leaves. The branches are kept short -
2.5 feet long in the rows, 4 feet long between the rows, but only at
the bottom. The trees are prevented from getting taller than ten
feet. I think they are shooting for a hedge that is has a sort of
christmas tree shape. But not cones - more like the whole hedge is
wide at the bottom and narrow at the top, with a 12 inch gap between
trees.

It sounds like they use dwarfing stock, but the orchard I saw had
trunks that were five to six inches thick. These trees wanted to be
15 to 20 feet tall and were only 10 years old.

The woman didn't like any of my advice. The only thing that she might
consider is to replace the grass growing between the trees with
alfalfa (perennial legume with deep taproot). I think mostly because
she has heard of alfalfa and she could still mow it if she wanted to.

So I got to thinking about what I would do if I owned the property.
Would I kill 90% of these trees so I could introduce some diversity?
Would I go with this odd hedge idea and just let them go taller than
ten feet - and just plant diversity between the rows?

Maybe I'm just ignorant about this approach and should embrace it?

Anybody familiar with it?





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