New location. Zone 6b, acid soil, 30+ inches of water per year.
https://growingmodernlandraces.thinkific.com/?ref=b1de16
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New location. Zone 6b, acid soil, 30+ inches of water per year.
https://growingmodernlandraces.thinkific.com/?ref=b1de16
Growingmodernlandraces.com affiliate
Works at a residential alternative high school in the Himalayas SECMOL.org . "Back home" is Cape Cod, E Coast USA.
Rebecca Norman wrote:Why is there an "eight foot arbitrary limit"? Is that your own decision or comes from outside?
New location. Zone 6b, acid soil, 30+ inches of water per year.
https://growingmodernlandraces.thinkific.com/?ref=b1de16
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Idle dreamer
Tyler Ludens wrote:I am planting standard trees and cutting them at waist height or lower so that I can maintain them at a height that I can reach while standing on the ground. This will mean I'll need to prune them a few times during the summer to keep extra growth down (they tend to make extra branches in response to this kind of treatment). I also plan to stay here into old age. Pruning with clippers is easy work, so I don't mind having to do it, even though it is a little harder with painful hands.
I'm training my Apple branches down with cloth strips on wires anchored to the ground.
New location. Zone 6b, acid soil, 30+ inches of water per year.
https://growingmodernlandraces.thinkific.com/?ref=b1de16
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List of Bryant RedHawk's Epic Soil Series Threads We love visitors, that's why we live in a secluded cabin deep in the woods. "Buzzard's Roost (Asnikiye Heca) Farm." Promoting permaculture to save our planet.
Larisa Walk wrote:If size weren't an issue and you have no $, I would grow seedlings and then graft desired varieties as life can be too short to wait for what may be a poor outcome (we planted grafted seedlings at a previous homestead). We have loads of wild apple trees nearby, probably planted by wildlife over the years, and although a few of them have good fruit, most aren't worth picking.
New location. Zone 6b, acid soil, 30+ inches of water per year.
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Bryant RedHawk wrote:There is also pruning of trees in the ground that works very well for your needs and the two methods would be; 1. pollarding so the trunk remains short and all the branches are new growth every year. 2. espalier where you train the branches to grow in a single plane (like against a wall). Leaving a tree in the soil and pruning back the leader will end you up with a multi leader tree, which makes trees very weak at the junctions.
For keeping a full size tree short the pollard method usually works best for those looking for maximum fruit from a tree, espalier works really well for perfect fruits but since you are limiting the number of branches to three per side or four per side, the amount of fruit will be less.
Redhawk
New location. Zone 6b, acid soil, 30+ inches of water per year.
https://growingmodernlandraces.thinkific.com/?ref=b1de16
Growingmodernlandraces.com affiliate
List of Bryant RedHawk's Epic Soil Series Threads We love visitors, that's why we live in a secluded cabin deep in the woods. "Buzzard's Roost (Asnikiye Heca) Farm." Promoting permaculture to save our planet.
Buster Parks wrote:I think part of your solution will be planting more seeds every year or five so you always have some adolescent trees just starting to produce but not too big yet. You could do well with at least some grafting, keeping branches from trees that are getting too big but have produced good fruit. Over time you'll have a nice genetic pool on site and may find you are growing some really great trees from your own seeds. The SkillCult channel on youtube does a lot with growing apple trees from seed and grafting. His frankentree apples are close to what I'm picturing, but probably could have been trained and pruned to be a bit shorter. A lot of trees may not live or produce long enough anyway, even if you were willing to use a ladder to harvest so having a constant supply of younger trees makes sense to me either way.
List of Bryant RedHawk's Epic Soil Series Threads We love visitors, that's why we live in a secluded cabin deep in the woods. "Buzzard's Roost (Asnikiye Heca) Farm." Promoting permaculture to save our planet.
Bryant RedHawk wrote:hau Lauren, One other pruning technique (I love this one for our own pear trees) is to let the trunk grow to the point of as high as I can reach comfortably from my ladder (10 ft. ladder in my case) and that is where I cut the crown out.
As new leaders grow from this cutoff point I attach weights to the branches about 5 inches from the growing tip with strips of rubber innertube material so they won't damage the bark.
In winter I loosen the strip on each branch and move it out to the 5 inches from the tip point.
Usually it takes about three years of weighting to have the new "crown" spread out for easy harvesting of the fruit.
The draw back is you have to prune those branches back to the main branch wood every fall after the leaves drop so you don't have stand up "hair".
Mine are being shaped to look like an umbrella, I do make sure I have all the minerals the trees need to be strong and healthy by giving them a cup of "sea-90" every spring for four years then I give them two years off before I make the spring additions to the soil again.
As I thought about it, it seemed to me that this might work really well for you, especially as you age into your land. (I'm 67 and we plan on being here to the end)
Redhawk
A build too cool to miss:Mike's GreenhouseA great example:Joseph's Garden
All the soil info you'll ever need:
Redhawk's excellent soil-building series
List of Bryant RedHawk's Epic Soil Series Threads We love visitors, that's why we live in a secluded cabin deep in the woods. "Buzzard's Roost (Asnikiye Heca) Farm." Promoting permaculture to save our planet.
Bryant RedHawk wrote:hau Lauren, One other pruning technique (I love this one for our own pear trees) is to let the trunk grow to the point of as high as I can reach comfortably from my ladder (10 ft. ladder in my case) and that is where I cut the crown out.
As new leaders grow from this cutoff point I attach weights to the branches about 5 inches from the growing tip with strips of rubber innertube material so they won't damage the bark.
In winter I loosen the strip on each branch and move it out to the 5 inches from the tip point.
Usually it takes about three years of weighting to have the new "crown" spread out for easy harvesting of the fruit.
The draw back is you have to prune those branches back to the main branch wood every fall after the leaves drop so you don't have stand up "hair".
Mine are being shaped to look like an umbrella, I do make sure I have all the minerals the trees need to be strong and healthy by giving them a cup of "sea-90" every spring for four years then I give them two years off before I make the spring additions to the soil again.
As I thought about it, it seemed to me that this might work really well for you, especially as you age into your land. (I'm 67 and we plan on being here to the end)
Redhawk
New location. Zone 6b, acid soil, 30+ inches of water per year.
https://growingmodernlandraces.thinkific.com/?ref=b1de16
Growingmodernlandraces.com affiliate
List of Bryant RedHawk's Epic Soil Series Threads We love visitors, that's why we live in a secluded cabin deep in the woods. "Buzzard's Roost (Asnikiye Heca) Farm." Promoting permaculture to save our planet.
Iterations are fine, we don't have to be perfect
My 2nd Location:Florida HardinessZone:10 AHS:10 GDD:8500 Rainfall:2in/mth winter, 8in/mth summer, Soil:Sand pH8 Flat
I do some of my very best work in water. Like this tiny ad:
Learn Permaculture through a little hard work
https://wheaton-labs.com/bootcamp
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