Can I get away with 10ft spacing for apple orchard with m26 or even mm106 rootstocks?

General Fruit Growing
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Let me preface by saying my goal is to one day reach annual self sufficiency in apples with my intake amounting to 2600 average through the year with a mind to store them. So I will be looking for good keeper desert apples. I do like tartish however if too tart they burn the enamel from the teeth giving awful sensitivity so should be sweet enough not to do that. For reference my favorite store bought apple has historically been Braeburn, but more recently Magic Star, which is a new addition to UK shelves.

After much research the last few days I feel I am starting to get my head around the rootstocks.

I allotted about 70ft x 50ft of my ~2 acre land for orchard. There is more free, most actually, but I want to keep that free for now and plan to grow crops like grains which will take up quite a bit and unsure how much yet that will take up for self-sufficiency for one person. That is the subject of another post perhaps but that is my reason for keeping the space at that for the orchard.

The land is south facing on a gentle slope and this part I chose gets some of the best sun throughout the day, being on the west side of the field.

I chose 10ft pretty arbitrarily at first, not knowing as much when I chose as I do now, but I read various articles and I think 10ft was the tightest spacing I think I read you could do for semi-dwarfing.

Now things I see are not clear cut the more I read as some sites will call one root stock semi-dwarfing, while another will call it dwarfing or even semi-vigorous!

When I learned of the rootstock names it became simpler to lookup those + spacing, yet still there is variance of what is considered allowable.

Due to the limited space I have allowed myself I am of course trying to squeeze as many as I can for my intended annual goal.

I was disheartened initially that, contrary to my initially having seen 10ft somewhere, most recommending 12-15ft when I looked later. Having done more digging though I see others, though the minority, recommend tighter spacing. I have seen one even recommend as close as 3m for MM106 rootstock. So it seems the rules are not hard and fast?

So do yall think I could get away with 10ft spacing? I had honed in on M26 rootstock which seems more generally accepted would allow such spacing but the MM106 is looking more attractive now if I could possibly get away with it as it has more appealing features like general hardiness, particularly since my soil is heavier - high in clay - and also not requiring staking the trees, at least not long term, looks like a big bonus.

Btw I already dug the spaces for 30 trees at 10ft spacing. Would that be enough at a guesstimate to give me 2600 apples a year, ideally with MM106, or otherwise M26? Since I feel committed now with the 10ft spacing, having done the clearing of weeds down to soil for the trees, I would like to make it work somehow.

Oh and I am in the UK in Wales mainland.

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Probably not on either. I hope to fan train 3 MM.106 for fruit production and 11 foot 6 inches is the spacing recommended.

M.26 is 3 meters for fan training. Per Frank Matthews Nursery spacing guidelines.

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The cost of harvest depends on several factors. Two are branch entanglement and fruit height.

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You can do 10 feet on M26. Where I’m at you could do 6-8 feet. So a lot depends on growing conditions. If your site isn’t overly vigorous and you prune appropriately, It should work fine. I have a 10 year old Goldrush on M111 that’s not much more than 6ft tall and wide.

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Yes, I was also thinking that…since my land is heavy clay, which I read is not ideal for apples, or more specifically the smaller varieties then I could perhaps ‘scale up’ the recommendations so a normally larger tree might perform like a smaller one?

MM106 looks better for my soil type from what I have read, being less fussy than smaller varieties, retaining much of the traits of wild type/standards?

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M106 and heavy clay soil don’t go together

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First of all, variety has just as much importance in this equation as rootstock. Precociously bearing spur-type varieties such as Goldrush and Braeburn produce trees at least one rootstock grade down from the likes of Gala or Jonagold.

The preceding comment about 106 being a poor choice in clay should immediately exclude it from your site if drainage is at all a problem. M26 has the exact same reputation. Clay can mean many things and a good draining clay-loam may not be a problem. Do you know about the drainage capacity of your soil- there are simple ways to test it. Wet feet can be the problem, but that is not entirely related to soil texture.

Why are you anxious to have closely spaced trees? M26 is semi-dwarf and at the low end of that spectrum. 106 is more of a semi-standard and generally not considered a great choice for close spacing, but 10’ is no longer considered especially tight spacing and if your soil drains well enough and you use varieties similar to Braeburn in vigor, I assume you could do it. But the closer the spacing the greater skill required of the pruner- if the spacing is closer than its best distance for productivity.

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I covered that in my original post. It is because I have set out a space of 50ft x 70ft so want to fit what trees I can in that space.

I don’t really want to sacrifice more but might if pushed to. Apples are indeed a massive part of my diet so it is not unwarranted to do so.

It is just other areas are less ideal, at least from the perspective of where I would prefer them to be, rather than their growing potential.

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I see local farmers do them super close of only a couple of feet and some look rather tall like half standards at about 15ft high but of course they are playing a totally different game with all the ‘inputs’ as they call it.

Still, perhaps I can do somewhat tighter than the common recommendation while still keeping things organic? 12ft as the norm down to 10ft is not a great difference is it?

I certainly would not call it well draining. Lots of reeds about. :slight_smile: Last winter water would just sit in puddles for weeks/months. That area is the best though and most of it is the small part which has predominantly grassland, rather than thick reeds.

I wasn’t really over that side much last year to know how it compared. The above situation is far over the other side, which was a boggy morass. :slight_smile: In spring and summer though the opposite happened and was baked dry and cracked. Again, not speaking of this ‘prime spot’ which I am not too sure about.

The soil certainly feels more buoyant over there and mostly grass, as mentioned.

Being on a slope must lend a bit to helping drainage eh?

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Just me maybe; but for perennial crops and trees I have zero qualms digging out the bad soil and mixing in loam or clays with organic materials. Then use the waste to sculpt the area to hold/ no longer hold water.

But I can access backhoes cheaply too. And a rotatory tiller to mix.

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Well I planned to use my compost piles on the trees so that is pretty much the same idea?

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If you dig it out in a way that creates bowls it doesn’t tend to work for me. If you bring in a coarser mix to help create raised beds that makes growing fruit trees in poor draining soil doable. Simply mixing in compost when the drainage is as bad as described will be treating cancer with aspirin.

What I mean is why are you trying to fit extra trees in less space when you can grow trees on a rootsock like 111 that is much more tolerant of sub-optimum conditions and get your wide range of varieties by grafting 2 or 3 varieties on same trees.

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It is not the varieties that are as important as much as the yield of 2600 per year. I am not set on that idea so if there are better suggestions to achieve that goal I am open to hearing, hence why I made the post. :slight_smile:

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The idea of closer spacing in the industry is not so much to increase yield per acre long term, it is the desire to quickly recoup the investment required to establish the orchard, an investment that increases the closer you plant the trees. However, the investment in labor can be expected to be higher with more vigorous root stocks. Pruning may be the most expensive single operation in maintaining a commercial orchard, at least in regions with little rainfall during the growing season. If the commercial crop you are growing requires bi-weekly sprays at this time, spraying can be very expensive.

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If your soil doesn’t drain well you can bring in soil and build berms or hills and plant in that so the feet stay dry.
Also you could do a tall spindle or similar high density row to get more trees in a smaller footprint to maximize output per acre. The initial cost is more for setup but in the long term you should be able to get higher output.

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M26 and MM106 are both stocks I have learned to avoid. M26 (EMLA26, actually in my experience) both times seemed to be codling moth magnets, with Liberty and Bardsey (it’s Welsh!) on it. (Both excellent apples, otherwise.) Then there is the question of burr knot.

MM106 is liable to get crown rot unless standing in well-drained soil. Wales is a world apart from the hot dry near-desert concerns I face, so at least that stock would allow growth thru high summer for you if crown rot hasn’t struck yet.
Also, MM106 delays dormancy in fall. Late ripening cultivars might be hard to bring in before winter. That aspect may work nicely if you wish to delay some early ripening varieties.
Lastly, if you emphasize low vigor or heavily spurred cultivars, you may do well with a larger root stock that handles wet and heavy soil. Ask around…

I hope you can find stock that will handle those conditions.

Bear with me as I plug a stock that is losing popularity: Geneva30 for any large vigor trees. Somewhere years ago I ran across an anecdote saying Geneva30 handled wet feet for 2-3 weeks without difficulty. Needless to say, that has not been a concern in my yard.

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I mostly agree with you and was surprised that M26 is susceptible to WAA- but then I don’t grow many trees on it. I now have learned that M111 was built partially to resist WAA. What I don’t agree with is this,

I haven’t noticed later ripening as a result of using 106 and I haven’t found them more susceptible to winter kill either, but then I’m in Z6 and only stonefruit suffers from cold winters here, as a general rule. I don’t think the poster is in a region of harsh winters.

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Good to hear, Alan. I’ll remember that.
What I wrote was an anecdote from someone living far from Spokane, WA, most likely. I tried several grafts with MM106 only to find that stock ceases growing right here in high summer. Same result trying Gen890. Sigh.

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M26 did worse the the 3 Bud’s here. Other then easily rooting it gave little reason to keep it. Bud 10 was the only one of the 4 I bothered to stool out of them.

G30??? Who sells that one these days? I know Treco no longer grows it. They also seem to be phasing out G.210 and have no Bud 10 inventory.

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Yes, based on the replies so far tending towards the more hardy which are also the larger rootstocks I think I now want to open up more land to allow for proper spacing and the bigger rootstocks.

My original area was around 50 x 70 ft, which went half way up the hill but now I am thinking of expanding all the way up to the hedge at the top which would give me something like 50 x 120ft or more in length. Haven’t measured yet.

With the expanded room I will be able to use ‘proper’ spacing and thinking I might as well go for full M25s if they are the hardiest.

Could you all give me a rough guesstimate of how many trees I would want to plant to achieve my goal of 2600 per year, while keeping in mind considerations of perhaps trees not producing or poor yields - I just thought, that more trees would better in this case wouldn’t it as not as many eggs in few baskets but then you still have the risk of diseases. Not that it makes me change my decision.

I don’t want perfection, just enough knowledge to get them planted aiming for general best practices and then I can learn at my leisure the maintenance side.

So estimate to reach 2600 per annum with some kind of ‘buffer’ with both M111 and M25 - I mean a figure for each, not mixing or maybe mixing is also an idea? Then I can do some measuring up and see where I am at. In apples, not lbs or bushels, which I have found most sites use which isn’t really helpful when you have no idea how many apples that would be.

Also with the tallest trees are there ways to pick them from the top without ladders or machinery? Can classic apple picking sticks reach to the top of even the tallest M25s? For safety as I would most likely be alone when I eventually pick them I would want a way to do it from the ground. That is the only real reservation I had about the full size trees.