sea buckthorn spacing

Hi, all.

I've got a male and two female varieties on order which should be arriving sometime in May (I'm in zone 4).  LFD is first week of June.  So I've still got a bit of time to modify my planting plan.

My goal is to use these plants in part for their nitrogen-fixing capability between the other fruit trees and shrubs in my fruit orchard, but also to harvest the berries.

As such, I'd like to space them out a bit among the other fruit trees and shrubs but I want to make sure the pollen from the boy plant can still get to the girls.

My question is for those of you who've grown seaberry/sea buckthorn: what's the farthest distance you'd risk planting the males and females from each other and still hope to get decent pollination?  

In my orchard it's looking like the male will be about 16 feet from one female and about 12 feet from the other female. Each one will be in a separate row with the male plant being in the row between the rows with the female plants.

Thanks in advance for your input!

-Molly

Hi Molly,
Great plant. It needs lots of sun, so be careful not to place it in shade. If you let them grow without teimmin, they will grow pretty huge with time. And, as they are quite prickly, that is a no-go zone.  

Pollination is by wind, so they should be quite close to each other.

Kaarina Kreus wrote:Hi Molly,
Great plant. It needs lots of sun, so be careful not to place it in shade. If you let them grow without teimmin, they will grow pretty huge with time. And, as they are quite prickly, that is a no-go zone.  

Pollination is by wind, so they should be quite close to each other.

Hi, Kaarina.  Thanks for your response.  What's the max I can push the distance, do you think?  will 12-16 feet be too far?  Is it possible to hand pollinate if I were to clip a flowering branch off the male and help out a bit by shaking it on the girl plants?

Given that the plants will start quite small, but grow fairly big and sprawling in time. I would have thought that 16 feet would be OK (depending on weather and wind directions...). It would make sense to plant the male upwind if that is possible.
I'm jealous. I'd love some sea buckthorn, but they just don't seem to like it here - too damp I think.

I would think 15 feet is just fine. I would not clump them together, as that will become a huge prickly blob that only knights in shining armour can enter. Mine form a hedge alongside the vegetable garden.

If they do not get pollinated, you can always add onf more. Just cut a branch in spring, keep it in water for a while and when root buds appear, stick it into the ground.

Nancy Reading wrote:Given that the plants will start quite small, but grow fairly big and sprawling in time. I would have thought that 16 feet would be OK (depending on weather and wind directions...). It would make sense to plant the male upwind if that is possible.
I'm jealous. I'd love some sea buckthorn, but they just don't seem to like it here - too damp I think.

Good points.  The wind here is variable so it's anybody's guess which direction would be best.  I've never grown it before, so we'll see how it does.  

Kaarina Kreus wrote:I would think 15 feet is just fine. I would not clump them together, as that will become a huge prickly blob that only knights in shining armour can enter. Mine form a hedge alongside the vegetable garden.

If they do not get pollinated, you can always add onf more. Just cut a branch in spring, keep it in water for a while and when root buds appear, stick it into the ground.

Good point!  I didn't know they'd root so easily. Thanks for the idea!