To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Planting trees 2-3' apart
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2008 10:06:59 -0500
When I started out, I spaced my trees 20' apart. Fourteen years have passed
and I'm now planting 10-12 feet apart and would recommend this kind of
spacing to NAFEXers, or even closer depending on how much you are
experimenting. I'm not the only NAFEXer to find that the trees I planted
aren't what they were supposed to be, or the trees pine and die due to
borers or whatever,or turn out to be unsuitable for the climate or the
quality is not what I want. My rule of thumb has been for many years, for
every mature tree you've got to plant 3 trees. How does the rhyme go for
corn, "One for the something, one for the crow, one to die and one to grow."
So with trees, one for the borers, one one to cull, and one to grow.
Take for example, the mayhaws that I planted 8 ft apart for a hedge like
effect, very funny. One died and was replace with a plum which is cropping
for the first time this year, at about 8 years old. One died last year and
has a peach in it's place. One was too close to a big beech and has never
grown. The other two spindly little trees cropped for the first time this
year, at 13 years old, and we picked about a quart of fragrant rust
distorted haws which I threw in a bucket of water to try to stop the rust
from spreading to the cedars, and never got around to starting wine from
them. Is there something I can topgraft on mayhaws? Donna