1. "Growing Fruit" is a consise book which covers every aspect of fruit-growing including espalier, fan, and stepover pruning methods. It is a good place to start. It would be good if there were a more thorough book but I have not found one that was in-print. There are also many older out-of-print books which have a great deal of information in them; I don't recall the titles now however.

2. Sounds good to me.

3. If you are buying 50+ stocks, Williamette is a good source. For scionwood I keep a suppliers list, here it is:

Richard Fahey Catholic Homesteading Movement Oxford, NY 13830

WSU NSRP5 program

Nick Botner

Lon Rombough

Fedco http://www.fedcoseeds.com/forms/ft29scionOSreal.pdf

Joyce Neighbors, Carlos Manning 681 Maplewood Rd. Lester, WV 25865 jneighbr (at) internetpro.net

Tim Strickland, stricklt at gvsu.edu

Tower Hill, http://www.towerhillbg.org/thwebscion.html

Maple Valley, http://www.maplevalleyorchards.com/Pages/ScionWood.aspx

Richard Fahey is my default source, he has a good list and very good quality and service. Lon is also very good but he has only a couple apples. Joyce has many older southern varieties. Fedco will surely be good but I never ordered from them (or the others). Well I tried to order from NSRP5 once but they were not offering much at all. Nick has the most varieties; I have heard the statistic that 10-20% of his varieties are mis-labeled, but he is the only source for many varieties and I have gotten many true-to-type scions from him.

Scott

Espaliering apple trees is one form of backyard orchard culture and high density planting. I prefer growing a variety of apple trees as fans along a wall, planted four feet apart, making an apple hedge. The fan form seems like less work, and will give more apples than trying to force all the branches flat along a fence. Also, a hedge will give the ripening apples more protection from the burning sun than an espalier.
If you can do your own grafting, that would be wonderful. The above postÂs suggestions for stock and scions should be helpful. An advantage to large trees is that the extra expense buys you time (years of it), and you have some sturdy stock to graft onto. I live in a high wind area, lost my first apple tree in a windstorm, so am trying the M111 rootstock, rather than the more shallow rooted M26, which may need staking, and more frequent watering.
If you do searches of this forum, and the heirloom forum, you will find a lot of good information about apple varieties, rootstocks, pruning, etc. The book Apples for the 21st Century has some good cultivar specific information, as does the e-Book Growing Apples in the City from Kuffel Creek press, with pictures of espaliers. The Dave Wilson website lined to below has a whole section on high density planting. GeneÂs backyard apple orchard website at http://www.midfex.org/yale/intro.html shows what you can do with a small backyard space.
Good luck with your new orchard.

Here is a link that might be useful: High density orchard culture

Thanks for the info!

scottfsmith
Perhapses I'm misreading something but it looks like Willamette Nurseries only sells apple root stock in batches greater than 100. There pricing tables are a bit confusing as they are listed in price per $1000 for 100 count striations... I'll have to give em a call.

Anyone have any recommendations for root stock in smaller batches, like may be 30 max? I'm not dead set on M26 or even any particular sized stock, that is just based on a single recommendation in a single book.

Robert, I have ordered 50 from Willamette in the past even though it always said 100 on their literature. The problem is the price difference is huge, the people selling bundles of 10 charge a whole lot more per rootstock. So the 50 will cost less than 30. Here is my rootstock suppliers list if you want to try other places. I'm not sure about the minimums at the other wholesale places having never ordered from them.

Williamette Nurseries (per 50+), Raintree, Cummins, One Green World, Vintage Virginia Apples, Meadow Lake Nursery (50+), Mellingers, TRECO (50+)

Scott

To years ago I planted about 70 apple trees on Bud-9 rootstock that are planted 18" apart in a Belgian Fence pattern. It has worked out well and I can't see the neighbor's junk pile anymore! We're getting a lot of apples this year.

Applenut