posted 8 years ago
Hi,
I recently watched Stefan Sobkowiak video about his PC Orchard, which I enjoyed very much.
I wonder if anyone in this forum has had a chance to get any documentation about the french researchers that informed his pruning methods?
Also I'd like to know how close to each other can plant the trees given that the place where I will be doing this is quite narrow: 5 meters for most of it length plus a final part which is somewhat wider.
Initially I was bent to think that each fruit tree (given enough land) should have at least a 5x5 meters planting to avoid competition for water, sun access, nutrients and have good ventilation, but doing this would only allow me to plant very few trees there...and I also need to plant pollinator trees....and walk around!
I was initially bent to use espaliered or fan trained trees (different varieties of different species of fruit trees on root-stocks tolerant of high carbonates soil content: so this would be M7 for apples, SL for cherry, etc.) at a spacing of 4 meters each in the line and with a spacing of 2 meters between (the only) two rows possible. But seeing Stefan's video I gather that I could put fruit trees in the same line at a lesser distance between them with appropriate pruning and without the need for using a structure.
Cheers
