Rye,
A little background on the picture you are referring to: I am
pretty sure this picture comes from the Penn State Horticulture
research farm and is a row of York Imperial on M.9 rootstock planted
in 1976. The row was removed at the end of the 2002 growing
season. The trees were trained as a Delbard Cross on the Penn State
Low Trellis Hedgerow system developed by Loren Tukey. The Delbard
Cross has been used primarily for tip bearing varieties and the
Oblique Palmette system for non tip bearing and spur type trees, see
http://resources.cas.psu.edu/TFPG/apple_trellis/slide8.htm. The
Oblique Palmette is similar to the Delbard Cross but maintains a
central leader. The trees were maintained at 6 ft with four wires
placed at 1.5, 3, 4.5 and 6 ft. The original protocal calls for
planting whips and heading at 18" to promote branching. With
feathered trees now available from nurseries, I have been placing the
first wire higher from the ground, 2-2.5 ft so that the feathers can
be retained and trained to the wires. This will decrease the amount
of time to initial cropping. The other wires are still maintained at
1.5 ft intervals above the bottom wire. These systems tend to give
high quality fruit and are easy to get spray coverage and maintain
after initial training but tend to have lower yields than some of the
other high density systems due to its low height (less fruiting canopy).
Don
At 02:16 PM 2/19/2011, [email protected] wrote:
Hello, newbie here.
I am planting a small high density orchard. I have bareroots on
order on m9 nic-29. Due to arrive in the next week or three. I'm
planting with 6 foot in-row spacing and looking to maintain a tree
height of about 7-9 feet on 4 (or 5 if they look like they want to
grow to 9 feet) wire trellises for a hedgegrow with the main
branches latticed similar to this photo:
http://resources.cas.psu.edu/TFPG/apple_trellis/images/slide33.gif
Two ways I can think to accomplish this:
1) after planting, cut the scion to about 22 inches (from ground
level) and train two leaders to grow 45 degrees North and South respectively.
2) initially plant trees at a 45 degree angle, leaning to the North,
training a low shoot to grow 45 degrees to the South.
I lean towards option 1) but being a newbie I'm hesitant to cut them
so short. However, that's what it looks like was done in the photo.
Can a newly planted bareroot handle being cut to 22 inches? Also
they will be in grow tubes to protect from the critters. Just
wanted to mention that if it matters that only about 3 inches of
wood will get a full day's sun initially.
Thank you so much for your consideration.
Rye Hefley
Future Farmer's Market Vendor
Private orchard in So. Cal.
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Donald E Smith
Department of Horticulture e-mail:[email protected]
The Pennsylvania State University
102 Tyson Building
University Park,PA 16802
814-692-7605
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