dirtslinger2, I know it seems like you are taking away from the tree to cut off 24" of wood when you want fruit. When you plant the tree the way it is it will likely put on top growth, have bad crotches and maybe grow all to one side. When you head it off at 40" you select and train 4 main scaffolds that grow pretty evenly and at the right angles to the trunk. If you have a delivered tree that is close to open center and you plant it the way it is then those branches grow out another four feet. Then you have branches six feet long with no branchlets! You cut those long branches back and realize you were better off starting the tree correctly at 40".

Fruitnut, I have 2 methods and I'm sharing my trade secrets here (what the hell- I'm 6 months from 60 and hope to retire in 25 years anyway). I start some plants straight in the ground, planting them way too close in a fenced off area. Planting them close makes maintenance per plant much less expensive given that it's all done by hand (don't ask). For apples in my climate it takes about 3 years to size them up to about 1.5" diameter- at least when planted this close. I carefully dig up these BR and put them in short 20 gallon pots (wide and shallow) in a mix of 1 part peat, 1 composted wood chips or stable waste ( almost pure humus with some carbo lumps) and 1 sand, plus a little wood ash. They limp the first season but I sell them the next for around $180 per. At this point they are bearing, 12' tall and well branched and the foliage is back to mormal. Other trees I transfer to Carl Whitcomb grow bags in real soil and let them grow about another 3 years and sell them for $250 per, or less to contractors. The grow bags I use are his last edition because they allow more root out of the bag and I can grow them without any irrigation at all- even through drought. Irrigation would reduce production by about a year, I'm sure, but in my operation only my potted plants get any and they are set in the soil as well. I always take some trees in the grow bags, remove the bags and put them into 25 Gallon pots with the soil intact but surrounded by my potting mix which allows me to sell some larger trees during the growing season. Surprisingly the soil surrounded by potting mix works very well and you might want to try that method for your trees as the soil gives you much more bang per square inch and costs less. Repotting would require only replacing the artificial soil on the edge of the soil ball. It makes things real heavy though, and my soil is not too fine so I don't know how it would work with a more clay soil but I bet it would work just fine. I'm sure my prices seem outrageous by your regional standards but I'm less than an hour from NYC and here it's more than competitive- it's the best deal around- because I have scores of varieties and they're actually properly shaped for fruit production. They also plug in better than the competitions BB'd trees, especially the ones I have in pots.

Hi Scott, Most in here will tell you not to let your tree get over X feet to make harvest easier. For me, 10 feet seems to be about the magic number (that is about the limit of my reach on a step stool). Last year, at a Master Gardeners lecture, the presenter said that a five foot fruit zone is ideal. Meaning from the lowest fruiting limb to the highest, should be about a five feet distance. I do not remember why they indicated it was ideal, but it does seem to work for me. Whatever height seems most comfortable to you, subtract 6 feet from that and that is about where you want to snip the leading bud (assuming your trees are already as single trunk). Below your cut, you should have 3 or 4 branches going in different directions. These will be the scaffold branches for the crown of your tree. You want to make sure you remove any limbs below your scaffold branches. This will limit the amount of fruit you have early on. After your scaffold branches have a years worth of growth. Prune them to about 9-18 inches (whatever looks good to you). In subsequent years, pinching the new growth after the sixth leaf, as Herman has discussed, is a good method to control growth ~james

@deserthawk, i also live in vegas, and as mentioned by bob z6, you might want to try grafting black mulberries onto your rootstock, especially if you want something that has dwarfing effects, and with no grassy taste typical of most(but not all) white mulberries.If you go to star nursery at cheyenne(diagonally across mountain view hosp), they might still have some black mulberries. I thought i saw them priced at ~39.99 for the smaller ones. You might also want to try grafting with pakistani mulberries which, although not as much 'fireworks in the mouth' as black mulberries, has at least a unique and quite complex flavor profile. Only problem with pakistani's is its rapid growth, which could be a problem for small yards. I have not heard of any other fruit tree which you could graft to mulberries-- besides other kinds of mulberries. Another option would be dwarf gerardi's , which do very well in las vegas, and are quite productive. It is a true dwarf, and will grow not much more than a foot a year here.