You basically do both; start your grafts on pots and bags, plant in the fall.
For starters starting the grafts in pots/bags lets you get a head start in the season; you can start them indoors or in a protected area while it is still a bit chilly outside. A percent of them won’t take but that’s fine; the ones you put on the ground are the proven ones.
If you plant the rootstocks, wait a year, then graft, a number of those are still not going to take and will need to be re-grafted the following year.
i grafted them and planted them out at the same time but many on here recommend planting in pots, letting them get established for a season and then graft them over the following spring. im lazy so i just grafted and planted them in the field the same day. it helped that its been raining almost constantly since i planted them out.
i put mine on B118. the nursery i got them from says they are good on all soil types and extremely cold hardy and semi dwarf that doesnt need staking. they are supposed to grow 80% of standard size.
You can have your cake and eat it too by planting them in the fall. Basically if you get a 75% take rate planting them straight in the field means that a quarter of them are out before the season is over. Start then on pots and plant then in the fall, at the end of the season 100% of your field trees are alive.
Keep your surplus grafted trees in a shed so whatever winter kills can be replaced with trees the same size.
I’m a Z4a in the Southern Adirondacks in NY. I’m working with sandy soil as well, and have standing water in a portion of the orchard in the spring during melt off. I currently have about 600 trees planted out and have room for more. My orchard isn’t yet producing. I have trees on the following rootstocks: P.18, B.118, M.111, M.106, G.890, G.210, G.222, M.7 and B.9. I prefer to bench graft, it’s just easier. I graft multiple trees, place them in tubs with potting soil (like 50 trees in a tub), keep them cool and wait for bud swell. Then I harden them off and plant them out. I chose to plant my trees in a nursery bed because I didn’t have my orchard rows ready for trees. I have staked trees that needed it regardless of rootstock, most of which is temporary. It’s not unusual to be able to remove the support once the tree matures. I’d recommend you try a few rootstocks and see what does well for you. Check out P.18, it’s a standard root stock that tolerates “wet feet”. You’ll see pretty quickly what root stocks thrive at your property. If you can I would recommend you start doing cover crops now, I didn’t and regret it. Hope you have some reliable machinery, I’d be lost without our tractors and the UTV. Orchard - YouTube
Several things come to mind. First, take a look at this post-
The post is reply to a person that was starting an orchard similar to what you have in mind. I would also look at the entire thread as he got a lot of feedback from a bunch of people.
Second, do as much research as you can before you plant anything. Tree spacing, rootstock and cultivar can’t be changed easily once the trees are planted so you want to get that right in the beginning.
Third, buy a few trees. You may get some excellent advice on the forum but no one here has planted trees on your land, in your climate, and in your soil conditions. That means you orchard is a new experiment and what actually will work won’t be known until after the fact. You want to get a few trees maturing quickly so you will learn what pests and diseases you will face. Buying trees will speed up the learning process by 2-3 years. Some problems like fruit cracking and Summer rots are very dependent on the cultivar of the apple and local conditions. You want to avoid planting large numbers of trees that don’t produce a good crop because of these problems. A few early planted, purchased trees will help you avoid the problem. Here is post that talks about planting a few trees to help learn the what the local conditions are like.
Personally, I would buy say 4-8 trees and then graft 20-50. You will learn a lot from these trees and the grafting experience but at the same time you have a smaller more manageable time commitment. You will make mistakes and have bad luck (I know from experience lol). But since you have fewer trees and grafts these setbacks will not cost you much and fixing problems in a small orchard is easier than doing the same in a large orchard.
I agree with mroot here. I would try some apple trees that are all ready for planting and see what they do. Even try some of the different rootstocks mentioned here or that you are interested in so you can see how they react in your soil and location. I bought four G series rootstocks that all cracked when we had a huge rain one summer day. They all survived but there was only one that is actually doing well. The other three are runted and scrawny looking.
I did bite the bullet this year and planted two on the G890 rootstock to see how they do. I tried a few varieties of rootcocks to see what ones do well here in my orchard.
Once you have them planted make sure to stake them all for a few years. I stake mine for at least 3 - 4 years. Gives them a chance to get their roots established and also get some girth to the actual main trunk. Some rootstocks require staking for their entire life. Either because they are not strong enough to support itself with fruit or the graft part is brittle and will break in a strong windstorm. If the ground stays wet watch out for rootstocks that hate having wet feet or sandy soil. I had an area that stays wet in the spring time so I use a rootstock for wet feet. So far I have not had any issues.
The rootstocks I like and have had success with is mostly M111. It is called a semi-dwarf or semi standard. The M111’s have all been doing very well in my orchard. I have some M 7 and most have started leaning and I have to prop them up with stakes. That sometimes happens with that rootstock variety.
That is interesting, thanks for sharing! We are not planning on getting wealthy from this, but would rather use it to help us live off the land and have an opportunity to work with our children.
There are a few things that can end up biting you, and all of them can be ameliorated by taking a slow approach where you can adjust course without having to redo expensive work and effort. From the practical side, mistakes you make with 10 trees can be corrected before they happen on the next 50.
Plus whatever you think will bring home the money, in willing to take the bet that 10 years from now you’ll discover that it didn’t work so well and you ended up doing something else. There are myriads of ways to monetize an orchard and you have to experiment before you find the mix that works for you. Heck you may find out that the fruit is the least profitable thing in your entire orchard, with things like doing grafting clinics in the spring bringing a significant amount of cash for little time an effort. You may find out that selling plants can make more money than the labor intensiveness of harvesting fruit, and it will take a while to find out what sells like crazy, what you can’t even give away.
There is a demand for cider apples but the cider breweries want to pay wholesale prices. On the other hand you don’t have to worry about the cosmetics that make or break table apples.
A lot of the amazing ones are pretty inedible, one of my favorite apples are true spitters but make the most fantastic juice.
What are your intentions? Some kind of commercial operation? Unless that is definitely your intention I would start small. No more than five trees.
Go for reliable production. At least for your initial planting. A homegrown just about anything is almost guaranteed to be way better than even a Farmer’s Market or Whole Foods counterpart. Check with your local university ag station.
“Heirloom” basically means nothing. There are plenty of modern cultivars that beat the tar out of most heirlooms in just about any category.
I have some on g.890 and so far I like it. But so what? Ultra-Conservatism is the watchword when it comes to rootstock. Let someone else be the Guinea pig, especially if you are planning a commercial operation. Staking a tree is no big deal, especially for a commercial operation.
Basically explore all the different venues and try to work realistic assumptions as to the amount of effort they require. Talking with fellow farmers doing what you want to try should take you a long way forward.
Basically speaking; with enough efficiencies built in it is possible for a one man operation to gross $50k a year. Jumping that to $100 a year would require additional labor which can be seasonal. With that comes all the complications of managing people and diminishing margins as your costs go up and your markups remain the same.
Certainly. But assuming that the taste is automatically better in an heirloom is a mistake.
Besides, what constitutes an “heirloom” these days? Most people would consider the “Haralson” (released in the 1920s, U.Minn) that I’m looking at right now an “heirloom”. So is the “Sweet Sixteen” also from U.Minn. but a much more recent introduction, chopped liver?
Whew.
Lots of sage advice going around in this thread.
G.890 isn’t a rootstock with which I have experience.
It sounds like you’ve your homework. What planting densities is G.890 commonly used in?
Which varieties work well on this rootstock?
(Honeycrisp is notoriously difficult to work with because I hear of nothing but bitter on anything else other than Bud-9)
Are you thinking of making tall spindle trees? Standard trees?
So for fresh sales red apples (or yellow or whatever color other than green it’s supposed to be) fetch the most money…of course I don’t your local market but at every grower’s convention I go to I keep hearing a chant echoing…red…red…red…red…red
There’s a handful of varieties that don’t seem to color red very well that people fawn over…in my area Northern Spy comes to mind…and it’s not a club apple unlike Snapdragon… which people also fawn over but the # of growers is limited because that’s how business works…ggggrrrr…curses
There’s also summer apples that have cult followings…Ginger Gold comes to mind (my baby cousin insists on Ginger Gold…if only children weren’t so darn cute and innocent)
Usually an " heirloom" apple is one that is pre 1930, or so. Probably one that was not designed/originating in a lab but grown from seeds. Just a rough definition.