I use a telescoping pool skimming pole to pick my apples from the ground that are up to fifteen foot up. I tape a milk jug to the end of it and cut a v in the plastic after cutting the top off. Just get the fruit in the jug and get the stem in the v and push up. It picks it and it falls into the jug. You can just keep on going till the jug is full or your arm gets tired. It works great for home trees. I wouldn’t want to do a large orchard. A properly pruned tree is the way to go but for people who already have big trees I have found this to be a safe fast easy way to pick the best apples at the top. If the plastic is to flimsy for your fruit you can use a tomato juice can.
I’m not sure where the pruning issue came up. Maybe it was me saying that I wanted them larger. I should have said that I wanted them wider. I would like to use the 10’ spacing that I have.
I intend to keep them about 8-10’ tall . I’m OK with a short ladder.
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Daemon, here is a row of 2nd and 3rd year B-9’s at 4 foot spacing. Higher spacing will ultimately produce bigger trees and more apples, just depends on your goals. For me, I am attempting to grow a lot of varieties of in a relatively small space and I am ok with smaller trees.
Chris
Your trees look great! You may want to tie the laterals down to a more horizontal position to keep them from turning into large scaffold branches.
I use small concrete weights to do that, but here is is video that shows the process used by some large growers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rl1-9AIA1g8&feature=youtu.be
Here is a row of dwarfs (G11, G16, and B9) at 5’ spacing. They were planted in Spring 2011, so they are now in their 5th year.
The first tree on the left is a Williams Pride which I’d done some branch bending, in an attempt to keep it small(er).
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John Trout of southern Indiana is back with a batch of new videos. I like to follow along with his progress and learn from his experiences. Here is the latest on his apple orchard:
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Enjoyed. I like this guys videos.