We’re putting our orchard along a lane at the front of our property. Last year we planted two dwarf pears and one semi dwarf in the center of the available space thinking that we would slowly add more pears. Now that we’ve realized we can do apples we want to move the smaller pears to the side.
Our current plan is to put mm111 apples along the lane spaced at 15’ and then a second staggered row about 15’ closer to the house. The lane is on the north side of the property running east west. We’d move the pears (drk blue) to the end of the row (lt blue) to make room to put the apples all together.
So now the questions: Is 15ft enough space for mm111 if we plan to keep them at 10-12ft high or do we really need 20ft? There’s a lot of contradictory information on spacing out there. Is it difficult to keep mm111 that small? Would we be better off with a different rootstock? We don’t want to stake permanently which is why we though about mm111.
Is there are reason for rows that line up or are staggered rows ok? We want to block the view of the neighbor a bit.
And perhaps most importantly how difficult is it to move the pears without damaging them? (two are only about 2ft tall one is at about 3-4ft tall)
I should note that we’re still trying to figure out how close we can get to the woods on the west side of the property without having shade issues.
