Nursery and Stoolbed Spacing

I’m planting about 50 apple grafts into a nursery tomorrow, where they will grow for one year. How much room do I need to give for each tree?

Also, I have 10 extra rootstocks to plant that I will use as a stoolbed for growing my own rootstocks. They are B118 and M111. How much space do they need?

My first year grafting so don’t want to screw them up. Lol

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I’m planting out approx. 600+ grafted rootstocks with 12" spacing (a 35’ x 35’ bed with approx. 25’ x 25’ planted). They’ll be planted out in an orchard next spring. In my stooling bed I have allowed 2-3’ between trees.

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Thanks!

Looking to start a stooling bed, do you guys have any pictures or steps how you did it? Did you plant the rootstock? Or grow it out and put a bucket around?

I planted my root stocks out in a bed to let them get established. I initially had a problem with deer mowing them off. They’re fenced now, and finally starting to show some vigor. I’ll probably mulch this bed again this year and then determine next spring if I want to begin lopping off the trees to prompt new shoots. Then it’s a matter of waiting for them to get some height and I’ll probably use buckets and sawdust for root formation. This prior post shows my stool bed before I fenced it in with the veggie garden - post #29 in this thread: Stool Beds

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Andy did the 12" spacing work out in the end or would you do it differently if you were to do it again?

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I use 12" spacing between trees in the nursery bed rows. I do two rows 1 foot apart and then a 2 foot row. I found in the original section I didn’t have enough room for weeding, pruning and spraying. By doing a 2 foot isle every other row it gives me enough room to maneuver. I think the entire bed is now 70’ x 70’ (it’s been expanded twice).
In the stooling bed, I think my trees are around 4-5 feet apart in two rows. Those trees have never really taken off, and I have never even lopped them off to stimulate suckers. I may do that this year as I need to re-mulch them with wood chips anyway. When I visited Geneva they had stooled trees crowded up against each other with soil mounded up against the trees in a single row, so I expect my stooling row spacing is unnecessarily wide.

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How did everybody’s stool bed turn out? I’m about to start mine and still have so many questions LOL. Might just say screw it and t a pots rock down to ground level and see what happens!