Great video! Definitely looking for large trees in my orchard. A large tree provides plentiful room underneath for guilding, and abundant habitat for birds and such. I believe the fruit in reach will out compare the fruit a dwarf can produce, and the ones out of reach will be of no concern.
I learned a neat trick from Mark Shepard, he grafts over the first or second branch of the seedling. In that way he gets the dependability of the cultivar grafted but also gets to see what the seedling give. If good he gathers scions from these bottom branches and grafts them. If not good then just prunes them off.
I am planting a home orchard soon, with trees i grafted 2 years ago. They went on wild root stocks, and it's gonna be interesting to see what size they end up with! :D Especially since some of the cultivars are already described as vigorously growing, and producers of large fruit trees. We've started to have some very dry summers and some super wet autumns, so I picked wild root stocks simply to get a hardy tree with a strong root system, since I will want to keep irrigation to a minimum.
The store around me almost never list the rootstock, but all ways say semi-dwarf. We have heavy clay soil and the root stock really matters so I end up ordering bare root trees every year because I can find out the root stock.
I like a standard or xl rootstock. I like pruning and in U.p. of MI. I use wild pin and choke cherry rootstocks. Also have service berries I use for rootstocks. The service berries keep growing shoots. Will find out if the pears I grafted to the service berries survived next spring. I found a cherry plum that I plan on growing out and using rootstocks off it. I usually do round u.f.o. pruning on apples and u.f.o. inline on cherries. It helps with bird needing on cherries. We planted food plot clover to help with nitrogen.
This cleared up some misconceptions I had about pruning for size! Makes Paul Gouchie's methods realistic and sound. Weighing down the branch to make it grow to accessible heights to pick instead of a different YT view on cut it to fit your space. Pruning is great for many plants/trees for differing reasons but I never thought about the effect on a fruit tree. Thank you for this explanation and for saving me the disappointment as we choose and then plant our new fruit trees this year.
Plant two or three rows of 'dwarf' trees at slightly closer row spacing, and then two or three rows of 'standard' trios... covers the near future cropping (income) and the multi-generational life of the 'orchard'. P.S. also a better playground for the granchildren too : )))))
I like golden russets and ashmead's kernel. Got a nice orange crab apple and a red from very similar tree I use for rootstocks. Clones came from wild beautiful trees with thorns. Really close to each other which makes me think related to each other similar size and structure too. Just a fence row crab apple. But absolutely beautiful alone but together they really pop.
Great video. unfortunately, dwarf and semi-dwarf trees are hard to find in Mexico. If you go to any nursery, you’ll find standard trees most of the time. Those would be great if you Want to grow in containers. I’m growing standard apple trees in containers, some of them come from seeds and were grafted. I’ve heard that It’s not worthy It, but I’ve had a good harvest. Nice video!
I live in eastern Canada and our winters are hard on trees, especially apple trees. Between the 8 foot snow banks, occasional ice storm, and the city snow blowers hurling chunks of ice, we pray yearly that the worst will be avoided. I've learned to always get a size bigger than what I originally wanted with apple trees, because a slightly bigger root stock allows the trees to grow and recover faster from damage. Plum trees branch out higher and the branches are more vertical so they are mostly spared, and our green gage is absolutely thriving. Still waiting on Opal and Yakima to bear fruit, but they are at their 5th year, and supposed to be early bearing cultivars, so crossing fingers!
Great stuff as always I purchased property with multiple crab/apple trees some are 12” in diameter @ base and 50’ tall how much can I prune/cut away for graphing. Thanks so much for you time and sharing
I bought some semi dwarf fruit tree's this yr, couldn't find any dwarf, but was still bummed that they're going to be huge. My folks bought a property many yrs ago that came with a small orchard & the tree's were/are short. Their plums tree's are the only thing that's left (after 35+ yr), but even the suckers have gotten to the same short height naturally. We've got an old orchard too, but we got the gigantic tree's, I wish there was a way to graft a mature branch onto something shorter, we have a broken cherry branch, it's still connected enough it still produces fruit lol but I'd like it to be in a better situation. 😊
There are pickers that have a long reach to pick fruit in tall trees. Whats wrong with leaving the top fruit for wildlife? You get just as much fruit as a little tree.
The best fruit are the ones at the top because they get the most sun. It's going to be harder to prune once you let it get tall. You need everything to be within reach or the amount of energy to prune or pick fruits will be high. You are more likely to maintain the tree if everything is easy. Most people don't need a ton of fruit so there's not really a reason to let it get tall.
I have black leaves on my fruit treaves from blackspot fungus on an infected mature cherry tree.. should I keep growing them or scrap them and start over with something more resistant? Is an infected fruit tree worth growing?
I see you get trees from whiffletree. I've been getting most of my trees from them lately. Last year I got an almond tree from them which I thought was unique. Sadly the cultivar didn't make it past this springs last frost but the rootstock survived and grew what looks like a peach stem. So a question I have for you is should I try grafting a peach cultivar ontocit next year? I've never treid grafting.
Bonjour Stéphan. Je viens de découvrir vos chaînes. Je vois que vous mettez vos vidéos en français sur une chaîne et celles en anglais sur une autre. Moi aussi, je fais des vidéos dans les deux langues. Y a-t-il un avantage de les mettre sur des chaînes séparées au lieu de les garder sur la même chaîne?
Les vidéos français me faisaient perdre des subs. Donc j’ai commencé la deuxième. Mais je n’ai pas ajouté de vidéos depuis presqu’un an. Il faut alimenter une chaîne.
Lorsque tu as une chaîne RU-vid te donne plein de statistiques sur chaque vidéo et sur la chaîne. Vraiment utile. On peut voir combien de subs une video te donne et combien on perd.
New to growing apples, planted seven trees this year. The granny smith was about five feet tall and two and half feet wide in march when planted, now it's November and the tree is over ten feet tall and six feet wide, it grew twice as much as any of the others, now it has a good shape, should I prune it all over are just top it or leave it be ? Not really worried about getting apples from it, just have it for a pollinator for my other varieties.
@@StefanSobkowiak Ok, I'll try bending it.Measured it today with a tape measure and it was 11' 2" and it was 5' 5" in March when planted. Not bad for a Walmart bought tree. Thanks for the info.
