Joe, I've only had one order from Grandpa's orchard (unlike some of the others), but it went very well and I was pleased with the trees. I ordered tree guards to go along with the trees and it turned out that they were temporarily out of stock. They emailed me to let me know they would send them after the main order (no extra shipping cost) and offered me a book or some extra guards as an apology. I chose the extras and they sent 36+ instead of 24, around a week later. Nice deal. Cummins also has a lot of heritage varieties. I think Garedneck has some very good points. It's good to have a few extra trees for any number of reasons. A lot of orchards have dwarf apples at 2' ("super spindle" pruning). That seems a bit extreme to me, but I figure around 5' is a good place to start. If some bomb out I can either graft over, or remove the tree(s), depending on how the spacing is working for me. I've planted so many apples that in a few years, I can afford to screw up quite a bit and still lots of fruit. Of course, I'm not as confident in tight spacing for some of trees without dwarfing rootstocks. Peaches for example seem a bit more chancy to me. Most of mine are on full-size rootstocks, which is what most places sell. I am planting one this spring (Gold Dust- should arrive next week) on Citation, but even that isn't really dwarfing, like the apple rootstocks. So, I'm giving it a try, but it may require a lot of summer pruning to keep manageable. Either way, I'd suggest keeping like trees together (apples near apples, etc). If you have other parts of the yard open, maybe do a row of apples and pears here and stonefruit in another area?

It's interesting you mention Europe Drew. Some of the high density systems did originate there. However apparently many cider orchards in Europe still use low density systems, even in new plantings. There is currently some discussion of this very topic on another forum I follow called "Apple Crop". It's geared toward commercial production. One of the posters mentioned his trip to Europe in the context of cider tree density. I do understand the reasoning behind designing cherry plantings for harvesting equipment. As you know, cherries require a huge amount of labor to hand harvest. They have some mechanically assisted apple harvesters and I admit spindle systems are conducive to that type of harvesting. It's unlikely peaches will be machine harvested in the foreseeable future. Some have experimented with peach plantings to use mechanical thinners (which is where the real labor is in a peach orchard) but I don't think anyone can draw any sweeping conclusions at this point. I should have mentioned in my previous post, that while high density apple systems do obtain more yield per land area, those yields are highly dependent on the appropriate rootstocks for the planting density. The spindle systems Dr. Robinson mentions use very dwarfing rootstocks. More vigorous rootstocks in the same high density planting would have lower yields than a low density planting. The vigorous trees would require too much pruning, turning the trees into "wood machines", as Scott has described. I just want to mention this to prevent someone new from getting the impression crowded trees automatically = more fruit. I would also mention some of the very dwarfing rootstocks require a high level of management and are not at all forgiving of the frequent mistakes of beginners (or even mistakes of veterans). Dr. Robinson glosses over this with the flippant comment, "You have to be able to grow trees." Yeah, sometimes that's easier said than done, even with trees that aren't delicate (as anyone who has grown any amount of tree fruit can attest).

Den- I feel for you, I also have massive vole infestation. They have felled full-grown apple trees loaded with fruit, ate some of my large squash vine's stems through and killed the plants, nip through the stems of my pole beans, etc. Running a water hose under the tree for hours saved a couple of trees. Planting with lava rock in the hole has saved most of my daylilies. Nails and cayenne pepper goes into each bean hole, then the stem is wrapped in foil. Planting in a hardware cloth 1/2" mesh box sticking up 1' above the soil would be my suggestion for the fig tree. I also hate cats but my DD left 2 when she went off to college. One is an excellent hunter and I saw her eat an entire vole except the skull in about 5 minutes. I don't know how much impact they can really make on the populations, though. As for fruit, I belong to the "Love the one you're with" school, a really excellent homegrown anyfruit would be my first pick. I would also add Paw Paws and Mulberries to the list. But I am a healthnut, I would rank fruit by health benefits, such as ORAC (antioxidant) value (see USDA chart, I think Total ORAC value is usually used), so Aronia would be at the top for N. America fruits (but doesn't taste all that great, though I'm learning to enjoy them raw with stevia whipping cream). Taste is very good cooked as in juice. I don't think chilling is a problem here in SW Washington, but diseases in stone fruits are. Most have dwindled and don't bear after a while. Peach leaf curl killed all the peaches but the present 'Indian Free', which has lasted the longest, but all lower branches die so the green wood gets higher and higher. Cherries have done well or even fantastically for a while, especially North Star which was loaded then declined and died. Sweet cherries yielded a few years then started dropping all fruit. Montmorency had good crops the last 2 years but not this year.... Plums have yielded well then declined, though all the plums and the peach had unbelievable bumper crops last year. Methley can taste as good as a cherry, especially cooked. Anyway I'm not planting any more stone fruit. Love that Aronia, such a consistent fruit and so easy to harvest. For flavor I would go for Blueberries, Raspberries, and Illinois Everbearing Mulberries, though, and right now some Paw Paws.:P Nancy Here is a link that might be useful: USDA ORAC scores

Frank: There is no place east of the rockies that even comes close in my opinion. Ya I'm in a good place...for a greenhouse. But compared to CA, well there's no comparison. When I lived in Amarillo I often said that we get more bad weather in April than CA gets all year. Most years that was certainly true. Around lake MI you are looking at a 4 month shorter growing season and what you have is not nearly as good as CA. What I loved about CA is you had a long dry warm summer season that was ideal for ripening high quality fruit. Then you had a mild winter with some rain where everything greened up. It was like another summer only better in many ways than the real summer. You harvested citrus and many other fruits and harvested your cool season vegetables. I harvested sweet peas all winter just for an example. Around here all winter is good for is wind and drought. My peas, the one year I tried them were froze out in early November.