rocks are good, no issues there... if included in the mix. You have quite a large entry made here with a well thought out plan. Looks like you know what you are doing.
I don't know where to begin to comment. In general how are New England soils?
Please educate me as I'm thirsty to know about different soil types around the world.

Good luck!

Asian Pears:
I was told that Asian Pears grafted on Betulaefolia reach heights between 15-20 ft, but summer pruning can keep them smaller. It has been a struggle to keep them to about 12 feet with frequent summer pruning, and they have not yet borne fruit -- probably because of overly aggressive summer pruning -- although an acquaintance who has the same trees, from the same source, and similar climate (60 miles away, higher elevation) but did not summer prune, got fruit the 2nd spring. The branches of my trees on Betulaefolia are 6 feet wide at 3 years old. So if you use Betulaefolia, you probably want to increase the spacing.

I was also told (by Neil Collins at Trees of Antiquity) that Asian Pears on 333 slow dramatically in fruit production once they reach 7 years of age. I do have one Asian Pear on 333 and it is much smaller than the others, but it also is in a rockier location. I think I'll get fruit from it this upcoming year.

Kokos:
I planted ~55 berry bushes this spring (roughly 20 varieties) and digging in the rocky soil was a real job. It seems that in some places it is almost half rock- it's probably less, but it seems that way...I'm a bit worried about the places where I may find bedrock a 3-12" under the lawn, as the roots wouldn't really be able to go very deep. In other parts of the yard, the rock actually breaks through the lawn. I suppose one option would be to create a 6x60 raised bed. All my later berry plantings (after the first 45 or so...) have used raised beds formed from tree trunks which people put by the side of the road in the spring.

In terms of the soil itself, it is slightly acidic, with a PH around 6.5 (not bad for most things- just add some sulfur for blueberries). There isn't too much organic material- mostly rocks, clay, and a bit of sand, depending on depth. I would be worried about drainage but I think that will be fine because of the hill (the bottom of the hill is another matter- this spring there was standing water for a while).

Maryneedssleep:
Your comment on how hard it is to keep asian pears down to size makes me think that I should:
1.) Buy only semi-dwarf ones and try to get a few extra feet between them- maybe 8.
2.) Buy only one, which would give it about 10 feet on each side.

In fact, maybe I should just get the Korean Giant, as that would be fireblight resistant and seems to have gotten better reviews in the forums. I've been looking for a Korean Giant on semi-dwarf rootstock (ideally 333, or even 513 or 87). If you or anyone else knows where I can find one, please let me know.

OneGreenWorld says that their Korean Giant they will stay 10-12', but when I looked to see the rootstock, it said "p bet", which I take to be pyrus betulifolia (standard size). Burnt Ridge has a "Semi-dwarf" which I am inquiring about.

It's interesting that ToA said that 333 causes pears to slow down at 7 years. Cummins's web page has a the following description for OHxF333 "A semi-dwarfing pear rootstock. It is 1/2 to 2/3 standard size. Its resistance to fireblight, collar rot, woolly pear aphids and pear decline make this a very healthy stock. Precocious, well-anchored. Trees are very productive. Some reports that fruit size is reduced ". Cloudmountain also says "OHF 333 is resistant to pear decline."

try to bust up the rock or hard pan underneath if you can. I don't know how big a project space you want or if a dozzer can fit in this site. Some deep ripping would help.

You will need at least 24" of no hard pan underneath to plant M7 Rootstock apple trees. M7 is more vertically oriented in root growth. If you hit an inpenetrable hard pan at 2 feet tree will runt out early.

some pics would be great

Bob,

You probably need to have 2 pears for pollination -- 8 feet apart should work, since its only one row.

ToA, Cummins, Adams County, and others recommend Betulaefolia for Asian pears, although European pears are often available on 333.

Asian pears on Betulaefolia will be taller than apples on Bud 9 or G16, so depending on the layout of the rest of your yard, you may get more sun to your other trees if you plant the taller trees on the North end. Probably not an issue if you only have one row and no other sources of shade.

Good luck!
--Mary

I've read that many asian pears are partially self-fertile and set about 15% of normal (http://www.aces.edu/dept/peaches/pearasiancult.html). This may not be a bad thing, as normally, a great deal of thinning is needed. Can anyone here confirm this and does it apply to Korean Giant?

Kokos,

I'm not sure how to post a picture in Gardenweb (or even if I can), so I've put up a few links to Picasa.

The Ecos Red apple tree, earlier this summer. The new trees would be in a line between it and the kid's slide.

http://picasaweb.google.com/bobvance/BobSGarden7162010#5494562758523850274

A few weeks ago I (mostly my friend...) took out a big ash tree from the middle of the yard. Here is the immediate aftermath. You can just see the blackberries on the left and on the right you can see the raised bed garden (~20x30) at the bottom of the hill.

http://picasaweb.google.com/104632462324046156177/Garden#5548929776031108258

Bob, your layout looks fine to me. I used 3' between most things to get max. varieties in, but I would now recommend 3' for dwarf apples, and 4' for peaches plums pears and regular apples; more is OK as well but its harder to keep the orchard pedestrian if you get above 6' in spacing. Summer pruning is critical to keep sizes down on all trees, but in particular for any fullsize stocks. I have many pears on BET which are still 8' tall after 8 years. Prune, prune, and prune. Did I say prune? You can keep any stock any size by pruning. I have a seedling apple that is 5' tall after seven years because I keep chopping it back. I have heard stories of various OH rootstocks runting out but they were all told by people in more mild climates and I have never noticed anything myself.

I would plan on spraying Surround from petal fall to when you can bag as the curculio gets going when it is still too early to get the bags on. Well, at least I have never heard of anyone in the east managing to out-run the curc with their bags.

Fireblight can always be a problem. Keeping the trees open will be a big help on that -- look at online pictures of a well-thinned tree and keep that in mind when you thin.

You should also know there are other pests that may come your way and require sprays or other action. Pear leaf blister mite wiped out my asian pears last year. Pear psylla is another problem. Rosy apple aphid can stunt trees. Cedar apple rust loves many of the disease-resistant apples; Goldrush in particular gets it very bad. Then there are the squirrels and deer and other mammals. Overall, while the disease-resistant varieties save one effort, they don't make it go from hard to easy; they cut out about 20% of the work.

Scott

It's a bit down the pike to where you'll be protecting fruit but up where you are it's possible that 3 sprays of surround about a week apart from petal fall may be all you need to protect your fruit. I do it with 4 in southeastern NY.

Scott,

Were the asian pears still able to fruit well at a 3' or 4' spacing? Does the extra pruning delay when it starts fruiting (like Mary's example)?

Also do you have any thoughts on B9 vs G11 vs G16 rootstock? I'm leaning toward as much B9 as possible, as it appears to be smallest. When it isn't available, which of the others is more dwarfing? I've seen conflicting info about this online. Cummins says that G11 is smaller, but the other places I've found online say the reverse. Does the 5-10% difference even matter, if I keep the tree pruned?

http://www.cumminsnursery.com/rootstocks.htm
G11- 30%
G16- 35%

http://www.orangepippin.com/articles/apple-rootstocks
G11- 10 ft
G16- 8 ft

http://www.actahort.org/books/622/622_56.htm
G11- 40%
G16- 30%

http://www.ars.usda.gov/Aboutus/docs.htm?docid=6162
G11- 55-60%
G16- 45-50%

http://www.nc140.org/2004/domotorootstock.pdf
G11- 40-50%
G16- 35-45%

Harvestman,

Are you saying that 3-4 sprays of surround could be enough all on their own, or in concert with bagging?

Bob

Bob, all of M9,B9,G11,G16,EMLA9 are "small" - not really worth distinguishing in size in my mind. The vigor of the cultivar on top will make more difference than one of these vs the other. I have trees on all of them an haven't noticed any significant difference. G16 has virus compatibility problems so I have had problems with my G16s because I added grafts that infected the trees. If you are not grafting this should not be a problem.

Most of my pears were planted in a failed experiment too close -- about 2.5' between each one. The asians can fruit that close but the Euros are hard to get to fruit (I also was not pruning them enough, leaving too many scaffolds). The fact that even with my mistakes my asian pears fruited means that 4' should work. I would do at least 4' since unless you use quince as rootstock any pear rootstock is more like a semi-dwarf not dwarf.

Scott

Why would you plant pears so close when they're so easily grafted? Does the dwarfing affect of competition offer that much advantage?

I have a difficult time obtaining the same quality of fruit here in southeastern NY from trees planted closely, no matter my pruning regimen. I wonder if you'll be sticking by this method in 10 years, Scott, and I wonder if it can work as well further north under a weaker sun. It is by about the 8th year that close plantings begin to be a real liability. Apple you can plant on 9 but nothing else has a comparably efficient dwarfing root stock.

Cummins nursery is not the greatest source....
I haven't had good luck with their trees for some reason, G16 death, crooked trunks on their trees. It is like they were cleaning out their low quality supply and shipped them to me. They died and "Cummins" did not honour the exchange for another good.

I purposely asked for Clean straight trunk trees.

Go with "ACN Nursery" in Pennsylvania you pay about the same price as "Cummins" but they give you flawless trees(at least they did to me). "ACN's" "Super Red Chief" on M26 are very handsome in my orchard. "ACN" will cover the shipping costs at least. Plus "Cummins" nursery charges a "broken bundle fee" $2.00 per tree (what ever that means) and TAX 8% that "Cummins" charges you. In my opinion find a local nursery and you can get trees for the cheapest $14.00 each....the price drops the more quantity you buy. Cummins is over priced and not worth it.

The Dr. who made the rootstocks at Cummins is a good guy though and very helpful along with Alan....but Steve (the son) is a different story. I have talked with a lot of people who feel the same too.

I must say, I have some beautiful trees from Cummins, their service has been great, and I will happily order from them again.
That's too bad about your trees though kokos! Sounds frustrating.
But let's get back on topic.

Scott, I was curious about pruning the branches of close-spaced trees. Do you just make a heading cut when branches get too close to the adjacent trees' branches? Is there anything specific to consider when removing terminal ends of 1- or 2- year old branches -- does it induce lots of new buds, and is that a problem?

Mary, for closely spaced trees the key is to not have as many large branches; they end up shaped like Y's or spindles. I prefer complete branch removal to heading cuts; it usually ends up that one tree will be poking into the adjacent trees' "territory" in one spot and its poking back in the other - its not like each tree has an even rectangle of territory that is "theirs". Sometimes there are hard decisions to be made since both trees want the same sun.

Summer pruning on the other hand consists of heading cuts on one-year wood. Also, peaches and plums I head the 1-year shoots back on in the winter, and I do some heading of 1-year shoots on apples in the winter as well. If you head an older shoot you will just get a new leader growing out of it much of the time, I tried that and decided it wasn't helping.

Harvestman, I don't think it makes a whole lot of difference whether varieties are grafted or there are multiple roots; one reason why I chose the multiple roots is compared to a multi-graft the "branch point" of the multiple varieties is in effect below the ground so you basically have 3' less height than you have on the multigraft (i.e. there is no shared trunk) and so it is easier to keep the fruiting zone low. Another advantage of the multi-root is when one root dies I just graft that variety on the neighbor so it quickly can catch up. I have way more trunks than I will ever need, and there are no holes in my orchard with little replacement trees since when a tree dies the neighbors quickly fill in. With pears my only planting I did too close so I don't have very good data there. Their relatives the quinces I put at 3' and they did extremely well there, fruiting like crazy. They are turing into pears this spring since I am sick of them infecting the rest of the orchard with their fireblight.

Scott

Bob,

Miller nursery has a dwarf asian pear triple play deal. Shinseiki, Hosui, Chojuro, and they stay about 8 feet with out pruning. My dwarfs produce a bushel each, I had one this morning. So sweet still.

I find that heading 2 year wood is less disruptive than one year and that heading one year wood can interfere with the development of flowering wood with apples. Obviously this is not an issue with species and varieties that consistently fruit on last years wood.

I only head into last years wood on trees with inadequate vigor or an inadequate number of less vigorous one year shoots for replacement wood- this mainly happens with some pears when mature where they produce only a few overly vigorous sprouts. Sometimes a few of them will get headed back to leave some new replacement and root nourishing wood. Vegetative wood shares energy while fruiting wood uses most of it locally for fruit.

Well, with peaches I head back new wood all the time, including during the growing season.

I realize I'm going off topic a bit as I'm not talking about managing close plantings but I assume physiological response would be similar. I also manage a few espaliers which involve similar strategy as close spacing.

Hman I think I agree with your observations, I limit heading cuts on dormant 1-year wood when pruning apples (and pears as well). I used to do a lot of them and discovered what you point out the hard way (plus, I was removing a lot of my tip-bearing apple flowers). The time when I use them is e.g. I have a bunch of 5'+ 1-year growths on a tree I just topworked that spring; I thin out many of them and will head that overly long 1-year wood. I should also qualify that heading 2+ year wood is something I do a lot if there is a side-shoot above which to make the heading cut - that will force vigor into the side shoot (basically it ends up being a thinning cut if you think of the side shoot as the main one). Just heading a 2+ year limb will usually result in one or more new and overly vigorous 1-year shoots from that spot the next year heading straight up, not a good thing in most cases (but, if the limb you are heading is not overly dominant you may be OK). For peaches and plums the 1-year heading cuts work very well; in fact on my plums I feel like I am pruning grapes, only 6" or so stubs are left on my 5' growths of the year. Taking off a lot of dormant 1-year wood on peaches and plums also limits the amount of fruit thinning that needs to be done since the blossoms vs leaves ratio is significantly altered.

Scott

Scott, by plums you mean J. plums, I assume. I've always wondered what the response would be with them to head back new wood relentlessly until you've built a compact tree with lots of secondary and smaller wood close to the center.

Training trees this way goes strongly against my general method of coaxing trees without pushing them into vegetative overdrive but I've read that it's one way to successfully train these structurally chaotic trees. They are almost as precocious as peaches- at least some varieties (not elephant heart) so I wouldn't be surprised if this style would work well.

I take it that something like this approach works well for you.

Right, I mean Japanese plums. I haven't really figured out the Euros, I planted them too close like the pears and so I have spent several years playing catch-up on them to thin out enough scaffolds so they are balanced in growth. The Euros I prune more like apples for lack of a better strategy. Apricots I prune like the peaches and Jap plums.

My Jap plums I think of as grapevines where the shoots grow mainly up. I have a "cordon" of the main tree structure of 3-8 year wood and regularly spaced "spurring" points where many one-year shoots came out which I prune back to 6"-1' sticks in the winter (leaving a lot more buds on them than with grape spurs). The previous describes the more dominant top of the tree which needs a lot of work to keep pedestrian height; the sides and lower branches are more pruned like a normal fruit tree since they don't push out so much new growth. My idea for this method came from a picture I saw in some professional fruit magazine of a plum pruned this way, so at least one professional is pruning their plums something like this. They stubbed back their whole tree, I don't recall any higher vs lower distinction in the way they did it.

Scott

I would think the Euros would be trickier because of there delayed fruiting habit. Hope you have them on Citation or something more dwarfing than Myro.

I've been thinking about which apples I want to plant and I want more. I also don't want to squeeze the Asian Pears too much. So, I'm thinking of a 10 foot wide raised bed, with the apples in a zig-zag pattern (3 feet to each side and a 4 foot no mans land in the middle). That way I can still get about 5 feet between each, but only use up 3 linear feet of space.

I've drawn a picture to illustrate:

http://picasaweb.google.com/104632462324046156177/ApplePlan#5550385681732308082

Any thoughts? Am I better off sticking with a straight row, with 5 foot spacing?

If go with a zig-zag, can I use some of the empty ground space between the trees for short berry bushes which can take the shade (currants/gooseberries), or will it cause too much competition?

Bob, I have many zig-zag plantings, you and I are thinking alike! In fact the majority of my trees are in this form. The idea has also been around for some time, I found some Italian researchers exploring this idea in the 1970's, they called it a "double row". My double rows I did more narrowly than yours; I have apples with only 1.5' diagonal, and my pears and Euro plums have a ~2.75' diagonal. These double row spacings have not been a big success, and its one reason why I was above complaining about problems with Euro plums and pears (the apples actually worked out OK, they fruited well, but they are still too much hassle to prune). I didn't mention the fact that they were double rows above, but I think that made the close spacing problem even worse for my problematic Euro plums and pears.

Your double-rows are a lot wider than I made mine, with 4' between the zig and the zag. That may make things work for you, not sure. The one case where I feel a double row has so far worked well is in a peach/plum planting I did a few years ago, I did them at about 5' horizontal spacing and about 4' vertical. So, given how peaches are a bit more vigorous than a dwarf apple I could see 4' working for you. Your pears are only two and have more space on all the other sides so 4' would not be as big a deal for those two; if you had a long row of pears I would make the zig/zag width be 5' or 6' minimum.

Overall I'm not sure how much help if any the zig/zag is over just putting the trees in a straight line at the same net spacing (i.e. putting your apples in a line at 3'), but its worth experimenting with.

Scott

I was out in Brewster Washington (apple country) late summer and saw how close their apple trees were. I expect there were several reasons for this close planting. The irrigation was easier and the amount of desirable land was limited due to the high desert. But, what was interesting was that there was a reflective material running between the rows of trees. I stopped at a roadside stand and was told this was to reflect the sun up on the lower apples. The trees seemed to be pruned to allow them to be close but not to extend the fruit higher on the tree. The rows of trees appeared to be almost hedge like with the reflective material running the full lenght of the rows. Some of the reflective material looked like aluminum foil type in color of material and some looked more like white paper.

I often wondered when looking at commercial apples in the local Safeway how they got the red varieties so uniformly red. I thought maybe they used some type of chemical.

I wonder if something like this on a limited basis would work in the East with red varieties. Might be worth a try.

That reflective material is relatively new; I think the red apples more have to do with the sports that growers grow out there - they plant the super-red sport instead of the tasty one every time. They have also always been good about pruning to let light in even before these reflective coverings were used.

Scott

Hope I'm not changing the subject too much, but I just wanted to reply to kokos message regarding Cummins. I have ordered from them for four years now, along with several other nurseries, and I have always felt their trees were superior. I love Trees of Antiquity also, but they do not have G.11 rootstocks, which I want.

Cummins has always been helpful and they have always replied to my emails quickly. They always leave a good amount of rootsock below the graft, which helps in case the trees settle. I've never lost a tree from Cummins except the ones that were girdled by mice, and that was purely my fault.

My current order has 8 apple trees on it and they average out to be $22.18 each, including broken bundle, etc., with shipping they are $26.62 each.

I'll get off my soapbox now.