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The University of Vermont Apple Team within the Plant & Soil Science Department welcomes you to the
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Horticultural management of apple trees seeks to balance production of adequate vegetative wood to support the framework of the tree with fruiting wood to produce apples. At the same time, the tree must be pruned or trained to allow for penetration of sunlight to drive photosynthetic production, air for drying of leaf and fruit surface, and spray materials for crop protection and development. An open tree with good sunlight capture and minimal interior shading will produce more fruit and better fruit than a shaded, poorly managed tree. The shaping of individual trees is performed both with annual pruning and in choosing an appropriate architectural orchard system for the planting. Apple trees, like many plants, produce auxin, a plant growth hormone, in their growing meristems, or shoot tips. Auxins flow linearly down a growing shoot and inhibit breaking of buds for a distance below the growing shoot tip. Growers manipulate auxin flow by either not cutting the primary vertical shoot in the tree (the central leader) to avoid excessively vigorous top growth, removing a vertical shoot but only by cutting back to a weaker shoot which can maintain the apical dominance provided by auxin flow, or by bending the leader to slow auxin flow without removing it. On horizontal branches, where lateral bud break is encouraged to generate fruiting wood, branches may be spread to an angle as low as 60° from the trunk to slow auxin flow. This allows the tip of the branch to continue to grow while maintaining good fruit production potential on strong lateral branches. Growers should therefore avoid heading cuts, where a protion of a branch is removed and auxin flow disturbed, but rather focus on whole branch thinning cuts which maintain the vegetative to fruiting wood potential within the tree. Apple tree pruning should happen every year to every tree, such that excessive pruning is never required in the planting. Whenever possible, and especially in plantings over ten years of age, whole limbs should be removed from each tree to open the tree up to light and air penetration. The following links will provide more in-depth information on apple pruning basics:
Pruning and Training Apple Trees, Teryl Roper, University of Wisconsin In the past 50 years, orchard architecture has seen great changes due mostly to reduced tree size and research on training systems to maximize the performance and productivity of intensively grown trees. In Vermont one can find examples of the various orchard designs that have been planted during this time. Orchard systems dictate the training practices used in the planting to address the basic horticultural principles discussed above. Orchard systems are often considered in the context of a puzzle of interlocking pieces, none of which dominate but all of which interact to guide the development of the planting. Orchard system components include: tree arrangement, tree quality, tree support, tree density, variety and rootstock, training and pruning, as well as external factors such as grower skill and equipment, site selection, marketing, and other concerns.
Evolution Towards More Competitive Apple Orchard Systems in New York: New York Fruit Quarterly
By the 1970's and 1980's the use of full dwarf or smaller semidwarf (M 9, M. 26) rootstocks was becoming standard, with orchards planted at densities of 200-500 trees per acre. Most of these orchard were supported with individual tree stakes, sometimes with irrigation. Weed-free herbicide strips were used to improve early tree growth, with orchard now reaching production in five years. Some orchards were maintained to allow nearly all work from the ground, without ladders. These 'pedestrian orchards', however, lost production to reduced tree height while maintaining roughly 16-foot spacings between rows, and at maturity canopy shading again becomes a problem. The cost to establish these orchards would be roughly $4000-8000 per acre today depending on trellising choices and other factors. Many orchards in Vermont are still successfully managed in this fashion. Planting Density
Intensive High Density Systems More intensive orchard plantings have been studied since the 1960's with the Slender Spindle system developed in Holland and Vertical Axe, developed in France in the 1980's. All of these systems are modifications of the basic central leader system, with primary changes in trellis design, tree spacing, and shoot manipulation being the main differences. The development of smaller equipment, including narrow orchard tractors and taller tower sprayers, has further pushed the implementation of intensive orchard systems. Growers began to realize that a tree's photosynthetic energy could produce either wood or fruit, and that trellises could replace much of the structural function of strong trunks. Tightly planted trees with no large limbs, consisting almost entirely of very productive 2-3 year-old fruiting wood borne on the central leader could yield significant quantities of high-quality fruit with excellent light penetration into the canopy. Extensive multi-year research in New York, including work in Champlain Valley orchards, has shown the potential of intensive, high density (1000-1200 trees per acre) plantings in Vermont. Costs associated with establishing these plantings, including trellises, is around $15,000 per acre, but early returns of a few hundred bushels per acre in year two and up to 1000 bushels per acre by year five quickly pay off the high investment required. Highly intensive systems such as these may not be for every grower now, but they will be a major component of the orchard industry in years to come. Cornell Orchard System Training Factsheets:
Tall Spindle System: Planting, Pruning, and Training |
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back to Index of Horticultural Topics for Vermont Apple Growers |
UVM Apple Orchard 
From
the development of commercial orcharding through the 1950's, a typical Vermont
orchard was planted to trees on vigorous seedling rootstock, spaced up to 40
feet apart in either direction, with individual trees reaching up to thirty feet
tall. Labor requirements for these orchards were great; ladders were
necessary for many tasks and spraying was very difficult, time consuming, and
the extreme overhead reach needed resulted in excessive worker exposure to
chemicals. Such trees also took up to 15 years to bear a full crop, and the
interior shading of the large canopies resulted in many fruit not making packing
grade due to poor size of color. Still, these large canopies, particularly
by utilizing horizontal space, were able to produce large quantities of
fruit per acre. Some of these orchards remain in commercial production today,
and through regular management and good annual pruning are able to produce
profitable crops. Still, the labor required to grow apples in such a system, and
the potential for shading and off-grade fruit made smaller trees attractive to
growers.
By
the 1950's, size controlling rootstocks were being planted in Vermont, beginning
with semistandard (Robusta 5, MM111) and semidwarf (MM106, M7) trees that were
planted at higher densities than the old seedling orchards at 125-200 trees per
acre. With these rootstocks and relatively tighter spacings growers would see
increased precocity, with trees coming into production in 7-10 years. Other
benefits included better fruit quality and improved yields during the early
bearing period of the planting. The extensive use of albeit shorter ladders, and
eventual shading of interiors at tree maturity and resulting decline in fruit
quality forced growers to further adopt more intensive systems.