Hello everyone. This is my second year with a backyard orchard, following the DWN style. I’ve pruned the majority of my trees open center, stone fruit to be exact; however, I am struggling with the two apple trees and a Weeping Santa Rose. Last year, upon their arrival, I pruned the apples trees into a modified central leader, and the weeping plum was not pruned. It arrived cut to fit the box. I simply let it leaf and grow out with no summer pruning. Disregard the mulch; I’ll be removing the weeds and laying more down; it’s not usually up close to the trunk.
2 Likes
I’m by no means a pruning expert, but for your 1st apple, I think I’d try to discourage its upward growth habit a bit by pruning the scaffolds back to an outward bud where they start to sharply curve upwards. I’d also take 18-24 inches off the leader.
For the second apple, I’d probably do something similar to the first. I’m a bit concerned about the co-dominant trunks at the top though. You may want to prune the one in the middle completely out to save yourself the trouble later on.
In general for the apples, my goal would be to try to keep the height of the tree under control.
As for the weeping plum: I don’t have any weeping trees, but looking at them online, it seems like the pretty weeping habit is from newer wood branching off of short older scaffolds near the top. So you’re probably going to want to prune those branches back to 12-24 inches to thicken them up (depending on how wide you want the tree to be)
Hope that helps!
6 Likes
What are the rootstocks of the trees and how much space do you intend to give them? I suspect you aren’t allowing enough room for any of them. You might be able to keep them in a smaller space than there genetic predisposition by pulling branches below horizontal- and don’t cut them back, just make them fruit. For the second apple tree you need to remove two of the 3 near equal sized branches at the top, unless you want to try bending two of the three towards the opposite side they are growing (so they don’t split off the trunk) and down well below horizontal leaving the center one straight. When you pull branches below horizontal you need to come back at least twice during the growing season to cut off upward shoots that this management encourages, especially at the bend in the branch. Branches bent below horizontal fruit quickly if you do this, and fruiting has a dwarfing affect on fruit trees when you accelerate it this way. .
If they are on fully dwarfing rootstocks, get back to me.
5 Likes
My trees are roughly 4 feet and a couple of inches apart. The apples are on MM 111 semi dwarf rootstock. The wall behind them is probably 12-14 feet high. I don’t want them to be taller than the wall: under that amount, medium build. I’m new to this so the only thing I can say is if I imagine the trees with fruit right now, picking them around the height it’s at would be nice.
1 Like
M111 is as vigorous as any rootstock commonly used today and not the ideal rootstock for planting tightly. Did D W nursery recommend such tight spacing for that rootstock?
Of nearly equal importance to relative vigor is the variety of apple grafted to the rootstock. There is a very wide range of vigor among apple varieties, with the most vigorous often taking many years to come into production. .
I’m thinking you may need to prune the roots, but that is tricky. Better to replace the trees with ones on a more dwarfing rootstock. Here, commercial orchards give 111 about a 13’X20’ spacing, generally speaking.
1 Like
Well I don’t know anything about apple trees but I would work with what you got. On the weeping Santa Rosa let the central leader grow to a height you want it to start weeping. Head central leader at that point. New branches should weep although some of these trees can lose the weeping trait and grow normal. If that happens follow the standard for open vase type pruning as described in the DWN videos. I have been training my trees as DWN suggests for 10 years now. It works extremely well but every tree is different so still a challenge.
I keep mine at 7 feet including sweet cherry trees plums and peaches. I love this technique. It reminds me why bonsai works. It’s just bigger bonsai.
This tree is ten years old and six feet high. This photo though is in 2020 so six years old in photo. It is still exactly the same now. It is a peach tree with pluots grafted on some branches. Nectarines on others.
5 Likes
I’ll have to bend them horizontally this Sunday when I’m off work. I’ll cut off the competing branches at the top. Should I head back, after choosing the central leader? Do you know of any information that illustrates how to do a horizontal bend? I’d rather not replace the trees; instead, I’ll work with the two that I have.
50-80 fruits a year for one tree sounds perfect. I have an orange tree that can probably fill two to three bushels (this after picking and eating as they ripen) and it’s more than enough. Sadly, the weeping tree was cut at the top when shipped, so it stands at less than five feet, weeping down. I was hoping it would sprout another central leader, but it didn’t. Now I’m wondering whether I should prune it knee high on its second year here—or will I damage it?
I had one that never weeped I still have the tree. I think if it’s weeping at five feet I would probably leave it. You could redo the central leader. But it may not grow or it may stop weeping. If two leaders form pick one and cut the other off. It will grow a little taller if left alone. I wanted mine at 7 feet. It doesn’t fruit much. Only a few each year. It’s not a good fit for here. So I grafted a ton of other fruit on it and it is productive now.
Yes, I have about 15 trees on the property. I also have a second garden with as many trees at my cottage. My stone fruit starts ripening in July and goes on till the first week of November. I love it!
This was the days harvest on sept 1st
2023.
1 Like
Drew, don’t you grow your fruit trees in containers? Container growing is like growing fully dwarf trees, the containers have the same effect as dwarfing rootstock.
Be prepared to mange your trees as non-fruiting, not-flowering ornamentals then. The pruning needed to keep them in such a narrow space will likely keep the trees permanently vegetative, but it is an interesting experiment.
You can keep the trees as low as you like. although if you let them get 40’ tall they’d be more likely to fruit for you within the lateral space you are allowing them. 
Some, trees I have bred to test them. If I like them they will be grafted to in ground trees. I have 11 in ground trees on this property. And about 17 in ground at my cottage. I have 5 in containers.
So no not really. All container trees are all temporary.
Well I would move them myself. I would hate just to kill the tree because it’s on the wrong rootstock. Worse case buy rootstock.
I’m going to research DWN videos on how to keep apples small. I have 27 apple trees to take care of on my daughter’s property. All are whips right now.
Apples must be very fast growing as I have no problems with stone fruit. I don’t care about rootstock at all. I think I have five different rootstocks on my plums and peaches. None of my trees in containers have rootstocks. All are on their own roots. I do keep a couple zone pushed trees in containers to protect them in the winter. Morus nigra and pomegranates. If you count them that would be six more. None on rootstock. The Nigra from seed. The pomegranates are all rooted cuttings.
I love the diversity of pomegranate’s.
You have space to plant them. Most of my apple trees are on 111 and I’m sure his trees could be useful for someone who can give them adequate room, but do you think he can ever get fruit with the space he plans to allow them? I suppose it’s possible with constant tying down of thin shoots if they are non-vigorous varieties, or with annual root pruning, but labor is money and labor misspent can be throwing good money after bad. .
I would graft some on another rootstock. or move the tree. I could not get myself to remove it without saving it first. Seems like drastic measure when a simple fix is all you need. I want to look into it for my own sake as I will be managing 27 apple trees. I’m certainly not ripping any out!
Drew, no one suggested destroying the trees. If dude can give it away or plant it someplace else, of course he should. However, as long as you brought it up, I’ve destroyed many trees that didn’t give me anything I wanted and replaced with ones that did, but that wouldn’t apply to those two apple trees, which can easily be moved elsewhere.
How about whacking the trees off at two feet, grafting on a piece of more dwarfing rootstock and then grafting your preferred varied on top of that? Lets you save the root growth you have. I would expect good recovery in a year, two at the most?
Ok well that sounds fine. After looking at some DWN videos I saw 30 trees planted 8 feet apart on m111 and they were small and loaded with apples. The place only gets 50 chill hour’s to boot. DWN busting myths left and right. Reminds me of Farmer Fred’s 10 rules of gardening rule 7: Everything you know is wrong. Looking at the OP’s original setup I would suggest trying m27 rootstock instead. You can buy it for five bucks each. Keeping it below the wall would be hard with m111. But keeping them small on m111 seems very possible. I’m hyped now! Looks like great rootstock to use. I’m glad with the trees I’ll be working with are grafted and planted so I’m going to do my best to make them work. No matter what rootstock.
They had apples in 2 years. Very impressive and although a little bigger than I like, yet still small enough to remain pedestrian.
So back to @pitayadude you could try and keep them small on m111 but you will be pruning a lot. It can be done. Looking at these videos I would not worry about them not producing. They will produce just fine. The 2nd video is six years after planting. They are loaded with fruit at eye level on m111 rootstock. Those trees are loaded! Look how small they are in the sixth year
You could espalier the apples right on the wall. That maybe the way to to make sure they stay on your side. Check this video out.
Or maybe a Belgian fence?
Sorry for all the videos but they are informative. I’m hyped now to tackle the 27 trees I’m managing.
1 Like
I believe others have commented also that m111 can tend to stay smaller in California. These are my two apple trees on m111. Sierra Beauty in front is in its 5th year in ground and Waltana in its 6th. I think they will be manageable in this space. But if I had more space I would have spread them out more.
2 Likes
They have a business model of selling as many trees as possible and I believe they may push it a bit far. I saw a sales demo they put on at a NAFEX convention about 25 years ago and it was a tacky con job, by my estimation- I’ve never trusted the promotional side of that corporation since. I could keep a tree on 111 small and loaded with fruit if I grew it in a pot, but I haven’t found the dwarfing affect of nearby trees very useful- trees either are not effected or completely runt out. But I grow trees in the humid region, so cannot control vigor with the spigot.
However, if it works even where it rarely rains in the growing season, it seems to me that there should be volumes of articles about how good the system is not related to DW, and other nurseries would be endorsing it.
Don’t get me wrong, I do not know that DW is an unethical business and have limited evidence that suggests it, but their 4-tree to a hole idea does not seem to have caught fire and if it led to decent productivity the commercial industry wouldn’t rely so much on dwarfing rootstocks. Productive spacing has been very well established by research, DW has zero published research to back up this method according to this article.
Incidentally, there are varieties of apples that could likely function here at 8’ spacing on 111- precocious, heavy spurring types like Ark Black and Goldrush. Maybe not 4’ so much.
Yet none planted are sold by DWN, it is part of a formal study too with the extension service. Well the idea of the study was to find what they should sell. Very informative videos on how to do things right.
I have been trying their technique for ten years and it works. But somehow it works on cherry trees but won’t work on apples? I have tried what they said to do, and it works better than I ever expected. I hold them in very high esteem. Just amazing on all levels. It’s only my opinion. I’m very hard to impress. DWN impresses me.
The techniques work, and I call BS it only works in CA. We only get 40 inches of rain, less than Texas, So we are not a good example. I lost trees to drought here.
But also to flooding. live and learn. All trees are watered more, and when wet will be in raised beds from now on. Nothing like the school of hard knocks. Mother Nature bats last.
The days of ladders in orchards is coming to an end. Have you noticed how many new commercial orchards are pedestrian?
