I do all my trees regardless of species to an oipen center.
I’ve done a few @ 18" form the soil line to my bottom scaffold, but I’m considering going up to 24"
What say you folks?
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I perfect scaffold at 24" is better the. An imperfect at 18".
But if you have a perfect at 18" its perfect why question it.
There’s a great video from an extension at university that explains this … let me find it.
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I am starting all my scaffolds at a minimum of 5’ since I need to put tree tubes to minimize deer rubs/browse.
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Thank you
Looks great, how high will you have fruit then on these trees? Seems like a cherry picker is appropriately named.
I have a lot of deer. Where I don’t have fences, I have to start scaffolds near 4’ (and use fences for a few years) so that the scaffolds rise above 6-7’. Anything below 7’ gets eaten. I’ve started pears, mulberries, plums, and persimmons inside fences but then removed them once scaffolds grew >7’.
On the other hand, all of my apples as well a most of my pears and persimmons are inside 7.5’ fences. For those my scaffolds begin at 3-4’. That’s high enough to work under the tree but low enough (assuming an open center) to pick a lot of fruit standing either on the ground or on a low ladder.
I have a similar problem with deer. I plan to fence a large area as I would rather do it that way and keep trees small. But I understand it’s expensive. It’s not my property I’m just managing the trees.
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Drew – FWIW, I gave up trying to grow apples without serious fences. Once I had 5’ fences. Deer would jump them like they weren’t there. I hunt a little nearby, using a bow. One day I “double-lung”-ed a big buck. Running away, he jumped the fence entering the orchard, ran 30 yards, then jumped the fence exiting the orchard, eventually dropping dead. The point is that the fence was no more than a minor inconvenience.
Subsequently, I put in a 7+’ fence from Deerbusters. It was expensive and I did a lot of work – putting a sack of concrete in the hole supporting each post. But there has been no subsequent deer damage. Zero.
With the right chicken-wire skirt around the bottom, the fence will do a pretty good job excluding woodchucks, raccoons, squirrels, rabbits. You still have to deal with mice and voles separately.
I was thinking ten foot. A friend of mine own Michigan fence company. I was going to use him. I can get the fence for cost from him. It’s still going to cost though.
Maybe 8 foot would be enough. I could put the optional
Barbed wire on top for humans.
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I don’t know if it applies, but a vinedresser explained they don’t leave low growth because when the late frosts come, the cold air settles lower to the ground and kills low growth.
Back to the question with height I work with what I got. A young small whip I’ll cut down. An older seedling I will go with existing scaffolds. Once tree matures it didn’t seem to matter much.
My sweet cheery tree 8th leaf has flowers right to the ground.
White Gold Sweet cherry
Not much difference from my Canadian bush tart cherry Juliet.
This tree is Indian free and it was cut low but all scaffold came out next to each other and not staggered. You work with what you got.
On citation 10th leaf. Only six feet tall. Including Indian Free six cultivars on this tree that produce 20 to 40 fruit each. This tree is a workhorse.
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I think that you can put the bottom scaffolds wherever you want, according to your situation. In my urban setting, I keep the lowest branches at head height and prune off everything lower than the top of my head, just to make cutting the lawn easier.
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Here in NE Iowa we have deer regularly jump our 8 foot orchard fence. The other orchard fence is 10 feet, and I’ve never seen a deer jump it. Our deer pressure is pretty insane though. I’ve heard from many folks that deer have never jumped their 8 foot fences.
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No deer to contend with here. In the absence of deer, I agree that you have your scaffold branches at whatever height works for you. Like mentioned already, I prefer to leave room underneath so I can mow and pull weeds or whatever without getting stuck in the face by branches. I don’t need to be doing the crawl for nearly any reason. Also, I want to keep my fruit away from the ground. My only exception to this is bush cherries. But I do prune the Juliet inside a bit just to keep it clean and strong from the get-go, vs trimming later on and then having a problem with collapsing because there were a billion weak branches relying on each other for integrity.
I suppose how tall a tree is going to be managed at could be a consideration as well. I feel like if I can’t safely reach the fruit with a 6’ ladder, then it’s time to do some lopping. Overall though, I would like to have my lowest scaffold on a peach tree be around 24-28". On a pear, probably more like 36".
Sometimes there are less options though, maybe your mail order tree was already topped and you have less choices as to the height, then I would be looking down from the top and make my choices based more of off spacing between limbs.
Thanks ok back up to ten! The deer pressure is bad here too. My daughter saw a heard of twenty the other day.
I wrap my young trees with a simple post and 5’ high plastic snow fence. Then I set up trip wire booby-traps. Scares the ever livin’ shit out of the deer. The word gets out fast.
Cats kill rodents without fail.
Porcupines & other vermin are assassinated on sight.
Exactly what I had to do for deer. And the ground hog will bite through the bottom rabbit wire fence by climbing up the two feet but then with spring fence patrols you can find their entrance and trap them out there.
The only problem with my deer fence was a heavy wet spring snow that sagged the fence low enough for deer to jump it. When surprise discovered it was something to see them climb that fence until it sagged again trying to get out, successfully!
But a 7 foot fence is worth years of: hair bags, soap bars, cayenne sprays and electric fencing with peanut butter tabs and lost buds and fine wood.
Just don’t skimp on the support posts between your corners.
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Very true. Those deer can be standing still and jump over an 8 foot fence with no problem at all. We have a lot of deer here in our area. So you get to see all the acrobatic acts they can preform.
I hate ground hogs especially because they seem to be adept climbers. I’ve seen them perched in peach trees eating fruit and in mulberry trees eating leaves. They have routinely broken branches (and 1 major graft) climbing on my Gerard’s dwarf mulberries. Right now I have a young one running around in back, spending a ridiculous amount of time lounging on a low branch. If I see him before he sees me, there’s a .17 pellet waiting for him.
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