I actually got my " Kool Aid" first from Jon Clements of the Umass Amherst Center for Agriculture. Which they probably got some from Cornell, but they also travel,over to Europe. This system works for me and other people that are space challenged or like me who has a wife that likes my veggie garden too much to let me turn it into a fruit orchard.
John
Your trees in the pictures you posted look great! Are they 3 feet apart?
Here is a picture of my âKool Aidâ. Goldrush starting to bloom in year three, planted about 3X13. I had major fireblight later that year and had to chop up a lot of the trees in the orchard to cut it out. Top wire is 9-10 feet.
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No I did 4 feet apart. Mine are hard to see in the lighting I had that day. Hopefully my spacing doesnât come with more disease isssues.
ââthe way to fabulous richesâ is how one well known extension person described high density Tall Spindle Orchards on his web page. I sure hope its true!
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Now thatâs Kool Aid!
The way to fabulous riches has never been by way of small farm orcharding. If you happen to inherit a thousand acre orchard in WA maybe you have found the way to fabulous riches.
I hope he was being ironic.
Alan
No irony, just a lot of promotion for tall spindle. I get a lot of useful scientific data from many universities. Its has helped me a lot, including research on Tall Spindle, but Tall Spindle Apples is the only case I can recall this degree of promotion.
Tall Spindle really is the way to âfabulous richesâ⌠- for the tree nursery that is selling millions of trees! May be a fast trip to the poor house for the grower if things do not go very well or apple prices decline.
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Our local apple orchard (PYO) is planted with âtall spindleâ trees. He has 100 acres or more. The prices are high, he makes a lot of $$$$. It may not be millions, however if all goes south (which I doubt) his property is worth the value of a new housing land development. He is doing very well with berries, pumpkins, peaches and apples. Amazing. The property also includes a retail shop, vegetable and homemade ice cream shop. Small and large restaurant. Concerts in the summer and is also a âweddingâ venue in summer and fall, for those would like a wedding in the country. Its really pretty. They have a chef and a bakery. It was worth the investment. They close after the first of the year until spring. You can look it up. It is called Sweet Berry Farm. And he is just selling fruit! Not trees.
So true. The growers still a lot of waiting time and risk for those rewards.
Yes in Massachusetts the PYO are testing or changing over to Tall Spindle. One we went to Tougus Farm has so many varieties partly because he can grow more in a smaller space I couldnât remember them all.
Super spindle does lower pruning labor, but of course requires staking/trellising and irrigation, which takes labor/resources to build and maintain (i.e. voles chew holes in the irrigation) And they are more prone to runt out with neglect. Free standing apples just keep producing year after year with minimal care. I only have about 40 apple trees but they are on semi-dwarf or standards and spaced 18â apart.
As an aside, I wonder if apple smoking wood may be a thing of the past for those who are big into barbecue. The spindle apples Iâve seen donât produce much wood.
I may have failed to make my point clearly involving what I call the Cornell Kool-Aid and tall spindle orchards.
Is it appropriate for an agriculture researcher from a state sponsored university to make a statement like ââthe way to fabulous richesâ?
That sounds like something I often hear on house flipping infomercials on late night TV.
NC State, UC Davis and several other colleges of agriculture have published detailed analysis of tall spindle compared with other apple production systems. None produced data that would make the grower fabulously rich. 10 years to break-even and a NPV of around 12K per acre by year 15 is not rich, especially considering the risk.
Olpea
As you know smoked BBQ is huge here, but I believe the fire/smoke is provided by hickory and oak.
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Blueberry,
I agree with you. The spindle system is being overly promoted IMO. As you mentioned there is greater risk w/ the system and requires a higher level of management. With the extra investment, it puts more pressure to achieve those extra yields early to pay that money back. Itâs recognized in years of crop loss, the monetary losses are larger with that system.
I think the system makes more sense in places where land is very expensive and they need to make every square inch productive (i.e. Northeast and West Coast). I read about a winery in CA which used solar power to power their equipment, but they put the solar panels above their irrigation pond. The main reason was that they didnât want to place the solar panels over any valuable crop land.
Here in the lower Midwest, land is still relatively cheap. People have extra land they donât use for anything and let people hay it for free, just to get it mowed. With cheap land, if you want more production, you donât have to crowd more trees in, you just plant more acres.
Who is this âwell known extension personâ. Doesnât sound like a professorial utterance. Hereâs a more toned down explanation from Cornell with some caveats and no hyperbole.
http://www.fruit.cornell.edu/tree_fruit/resources/The%20Tall%20Spindle%20Planting%20System.pdf
I have heard of entire orchards in NY being wiped out by FB when on susceptible dwarfing rootstock. Imagine having to replant before realizing any profit.
Cornell has good reason to promote this method because they have the patents to the only suitable FB resistant rootstock for such closely planted trees.
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I planted a dwarf Honey Crisp and pruned it open center for about 3 year ago. It flowered a little with no fruit set and hardly grow, about under 10", for this year. I thought I probably ruined it until reading this post. So maybe itâs just pouting until next year?
Always next year for us weekend warriors! 
Its my understanding that the orginal use of the phrase comes from T Robinson at Cornell.
Your link leads me to many articles and videos- not a quote.
You may have missed it at the top of the page. I pasted the text below:
Tall Spindle Apple
Links to resources for growing a tall-spindle apple orchardââthe way to fabulous richesâ
Jon Clements
Extension Educator, UMass Amherst
Yup, now I see it. It does seem quite out of place, like a salesmanâs line. I wonder if the rootstock angle plays into it, even if it isnât conscious. People tend to know where their funding comes from- the breeding programs at Cornell have been vastly reduced the last few years for lack of it.
Plant patents may not often be the road to riches but they can only keep you out of the unemployment line if you collect your royalties before the patents run out. If the Honeycrisp patent holders had been able to accelerate the popularity of that apple by a few years they would have probably made many times more in royalties. By the time it was a rock star its Brian Epstein was cut out of the picture.
I dunno. My uncle does trellis trees at, I think about 2000/acre (3 foot spacing on a V trellis, so each tree is 6 feet wide. and only a foot thick.
The trees are wired to the trellis and a lot of his working is done from trailers with stepped platforms. The trailer fits the aisle. So for pruning and thinning there are 8 guys on the trailer. Each does a band of the trees as the trailer passed that part of the tree. Net result is zero ladder time. For harvest, there is fabric chute that lets the apples roll down. Not sure how the bin catches them so they donât bruise.
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