Dry Apple farming is totally doable and is in fact practiced in Coastal Central California. One fellow in the CRFG here in Santa Cruz only waters his trees three times a year. Another fellow I know of down in the San Lorenzo river basin dry farms his entire orchard, no added water to any of the mature fruit trees. To do this, I recommend the following: 1) Stay away from standard rootstock, just because it's big doesn't mean it's drought tolerant. Stick with MM111, for some reason, this rootstock is incredibly tolerant of dry soils, so it's the way to go. I did some Summer grafting this year and discovered that many trees on Anknova had bark that was very difficult to peel, whereas MM111 bark peeled really well, indicating that the MM111 trees continue to grow in the driest conditions. 2) Start the trees with drip irrigation that you run for a couple of hours once a month so that the roots go very deep. 3) If you're on a hillside, terrace the hillside so that the locations where you plant the trees are flat. Now I speak from experience here, my orchard is on a hillside, and without terracing, I had a very tough time getting trees going even with regular watering. 4) Get bare root trees with the graft union done high so that you can plant the roots extra deep and bury part of the trunk. It will slow down the trees for the first year or two, but you will have stronger, deeper rooted trees in the long run. You will have to call around to find trees that are grafted a little higher, it's not so easy, because most commercial propagators start with 1/2 inch MM111 sticks that are short, and they bud graft them when they are less than a foot long. 5) Finally, mulch with mulched tree branches - the cheapest is to get tree cutting companies to deliver the branches to you. You do not want to let anything else grow, just mulch everything, because anything that is left to grow will suck the moisture out of the ground. You can use weed barrier under the mulch, or you can go the cheap way and use cardboard and thick layers of newspaper, which is even better than the plastic weed barrier. That's about it. In the third year, you should be able to switch to 2-3 deep waterings for the entire year, and then, you can slowly withdraw watering alltogether. Note, if your water table is below 20 feet, you'll always have to water some.

Hi again Jim - I have communicated with a gardener, who posted in this forum 2 years ago, his style of over-wintering using PVC tubing as frame & mill-felt. I couldn't help but think of how neat & wonderful looking it was, the foundation beds all around his home. With all the Hydrangeas you have to protect & your plans to use tarp on the group of 3, you might like to create your cage w/ PVC tubing, corner joints & wire pins to hold them down ... very easy to create, he said & easy to store as well (plant will be protected but not suffocated) ... a few gardeners would find his system truly great ... neither he nor I knew how to post pix at that time ... just Emailed me 10 step-by-step pix directly!!! Â;) If my collection of marginal bloomers, were not so scattered around, I wouldn't hesitate to copy his system. I think using tarp would be no different than using shower curtain as wind-breaker ... a gardener from Michigan used successfully! Be sure to check back with your results in Spring, OK?

I don't cut holes in my water bottle until the watering process begins, well after the roots develope. It helps retain whatever mositure there is from condensation that build up in the soiless mix from the heat of the sun.... You can see it on the edges of the clear plastic bottles...You can also see the roots develope over time, without ever having to give one drop of water, until it's time..I have yet to fail rooting any plumie in this fashion....:-) The holes are added to the bottles when it's time to water..

I've never tried this, however I would offer the following points: 1. Normally I've seen these types of trellises propped up against a house, or another strong structure. If you did this, half of the plant would likely be in shade, which is less than ideal. This could lead to the shaded area of the plant not drying properly, which is really bad for tomatoes. 2. If you are using the trellis out in the open, I believe it would be OK, however tomato plants can get very heavy when wet and weighed down with tomatoes, so I suspect you would need to support both ends with something else (possibly fence stakes). 3. Since the trellis is 2 dimensional (as opposed to a cage which is 3 dimenstional), you will constantly need to keep pushing the vines back and forth through the trellis structure. Good Luck.