California is a very different area than others. Real estate is very expenive there. Kansas land has doubled again recently. Land is really going up and i hate to see that. Pretty soon we might need to be a hedge fund to own 1 acre in many places.
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Not sure about apples, but that’s how I do all the pears. I just took a couple 30 footers down to about 15 this year.
I whack the central leader on apples after they have safely cleared deer range.
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It depends on the area in California, San Diego has some cheap areas that are zone for agriculture, but not our county. North of LA county has some cheap areas too. But the problem maybe water here.
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And likewise, standard can be kept to semi-dwarf size with moderate pruning in my neighborhood.
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I think it shows your wealth and ignorance on wealth inequality that you go ahead and say eh I could afford 23 acres no problem so why can’t anybody else. I know after working for years I would struggle to get land where I am.
I know you tried quince from your thread. Sounded like your pear on quince did not make it and suffered from chlorosis anyway. I am guessing your area is heavy clay and that is why yours are kind of naturally dwarfed.
I thought you told me land in Colorado is cheap, maybe you like to complain about inequality. The term easy is really to say I’m no hedge fund person.
For your own information,I started out with zero, no help from my parents, I paid for my own college, paid for my first house, i.e, I hustled when I was younger. Do you do any of that? So stop insulting people, and focus your energy on something else.
My art teacher is not rich but she bought the land, she’s not wealthy either. Some areas are zone for agriculture and they are not expensive relative to other area.
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In many areas of the country you can buy land for less than $1000 per acre. You don’t need to be wealthy to buy 23 acres for 20 grand
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If you go into the mountains high enough where stuff does not grow or fields sure it is cheap. I thought about buying land near my old work but something I learned is they are on limited well water there and they have too short of a growing season. I can go to Grand Junction 200 miles away and it becomes cheaper but is still fairly costly. Not as much land though. Like I said the house in the mountains would have been 300k-500k but no water for the plants and no season. Move towards Haxtun and you can get a house for around 100k but you are 2 hours from a major city for any hospital work. Move to Gran Junction and you can get a house for 300k but you only get 1/4 of an acre of land. 23 acres of land would cost you millions here either way. Even where I used to work I was talking about getting around 2 acres and no where 23 acres. 23 acres is insane.
I think she told me she paid around $250k, it has water right, but she doesn’t have a house there, she’s building one right now while living in an RV.
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I meant open center trees. Yes with intensive management you can make some fruit bare just as well on a large tree, but there just simply isn’t enough labor out there to carry this out.
We used to crank out a few thousand pounds of our full size cherries every day during harvest, but we also had about 12 people picking for us. I’ve seen labor efficiency studies using WSU students that could achieve this with 5 students on smaller management systems, who I don’t imagine are as quick as professionals.
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Oh sorry if I wasn’t clear. The pears are on standard roots, but they are planted at 8x16 spacing so they won’t produce 6 bushels as there just isn’t enough room for that, we have to be able to get tractors don’t the rows, keep the trees shorter for u picking, etc. They produce about 4 but that’s pretty maxed out without causing other problems.
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Van and Lambert, yeah it was crazy when I was young. I was on the sorting belt and we would do about 3000 pounds before lunch. Then the swd came…never been the same.
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Had hoped some bird would enjoy dining on swd , it has not happened yet. We don’t get them here at my place yet. Have seen them in other places. The jb and green june beetles are hard on my first pear crops. That is a different thread.
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Supposedly hummingbirds can keep the population down. I’ll try to find the article, but I think in someone’s blueberries the pressure was cut in half when they added a lot of hummingbird feeders. Also, OSU just started releasing parasitic wasps for it, so hopefully they spread fast.
I forgot to mention another issue with commercial standard sizes trees, which is spray waste and drift. Getting thorough coverage on large tree is difficult especially early in the season when there is not much leaf cover. It requires using an excess amount of spray, which is clearly less than desirable. Those guyot orchards you linked to can cut spray usage dramatically. Which is precisely the reason why I’m converting an orchard to guy right now 
This is also a concern for backyard growers that don’t have the ability to spray larger trees. Plus easier to spray trees mean you can even use less harsh chemicals and have less disease pressure in the first place due to increased airflow.
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I would imagine sprays depend on pears. A Bartlett or Comice will have to be sprayed more than a Seckle, Warren or Ayers pear. I also know sprays can be location dependent. Coddling moth is only an issue is the Grand Junction or palisade area here in CO for example. On the flip side where coddling moth is prevalent is ironically one of the best places to grow peaches or other fruit. I have had the thought of moving there but want to be able to buy in cash so I don’t need to worry about foreclosures and what not.
I just meant in general across all fruit types. Smaller trees equals easier to spray, organic or synthetic. Commercial growers cannot takes the same risks backyard growers can since our livelihood depends on having a marketable crop and since the market wants pretty fruit, our hands are tied. Same reason we need to have labor efficient trees.
The orchard I have been talking about is Bartlett and Comice though haha. An ideal backyard tree is resistant to local disease and pest pressures, but with some fruit types that is impossible in a given location. It is even illegal to have unsprayed backyard trees of certain types in some parts of Oregon and Washington and probably California as well since they will host commercial pests.
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