This is a topic of mine. My name is Jianing Shao from China. I have an orchard of 50 hectares, mainly growing cherries, chestnuts，sweet potatoes and landscaping trees.
This is the tree of the UFO training system in my orchard.
The rootstock is Gisela 6 and the variety is Summit.
I tried growing kumquats and figs on horizontal tree with no success. I see you are doing very well. What is the purpose of your horizontal trunks? Mine was to be able to protect my trees from freeze death.
Nice of you to share, you have a lovely operation!
welcome! great way to use all the available space.
My purpose is to prevent the cherries from being too strong at the top to reduce the yield, so that the space can be used reasonably and the balance of the tree can be maintained.
Nice. How old are the cherry trees shown in the pictures?
5 yrs
have you started into a branch renewal cycle for UFO? I think 5 years is about the recommended point to stub and regrow about one/year
what’s your yield/acre?
summit is a relatively old variety, have you looked at the newer summerland releases? what’s your best harvest window for marketing (early/mid/late)?
Every year, I will cut 20% of each upright main branch before germination.
About 15-18 tons per hectare,
I do have some newer varieties, but the others are KGB SSA and TSA training systems. I also have many excellent varieties of Chinese cherries. We can exchange scion if you want. I can also introduce what you want to know about Chinese varieties.
Jianing Shao,
Very nice. over the last 13 years, I have traveled to China 1 to 2 times a year. The fruit is always the center pc in every meeting. And is always of the highest quality. Many years ago, I was given a box of peaches as a gift. I was surprised how hard they were. most home growers in the US strive for peaches that will be “chin dripping” good and sweet. But as the years past, I became to really like the crisp firm peach. Now that I have 3 peach trees, I always pick some a bit early, this extends my fresh eating season.
On to a different topic, landscape trees. I have observed very interesting methods of tree planting in China. For example a new road is being built and trees are planted on both sides of the road. but the trees had large trunk diameters and cut off at 10 to 12 feet… So it looked like logs planted. later I noticed well established urban trees all had the same structure, straight trunks to 12 feet, and then spread branches. These trees were 30 to 40 years old.
So the question is; is this method of cutting the top off to allow a much smaller root ball? And if yes, just how small?
Hi,Paddy
Welcome to my orchard next time you come to China.There are many excellent varieties in China, but most of them are not grown on a large scale. Greenhouse cherries are a good ripening pattern on a global scale.
Regarding the question of landscape trees, you asked the right person. Before I started planting sweet cherries, I worked in a greening company and was the person in charge of a large greening project. The reason why large-diameter green trees are cut off at 10-12 feet is that it is easier to transport and can avoid damage to the canopy during transportation. Since most of the greening projects take 2-4 years to complete, new canopies can be grown before settlement and become more lush and complete, which is convenient for Party A’s acceptance. So you look like planted logs.
Thanks for posting, we don’t hear much about Chinese fruit growing methods here.
We have to remind that international exchange of scions is not legal from person to person, it must first be sent through quarantine.
Those are some beautiful trees. I am curious how you induce branching with your TSA trees. Do you use notching or a plant growth regulator (PGR), or both of these methods or perhaps do something different to increase the amount of branching?
I have one customer from China who loves to pick hard peaches, which are pretty green. We generally don’t let people Upick the round peaches, but I let this customer pick because he picks at least a 1/2 bushel at a time and doesn’t knock fruit off the trees.
The first couple times he came out, I tried to tell him the peaches he picked were way too green, but he reassured me he likes sour peaches. I finally gave up trying to help him pick sweet peaches.
Sometime later he told me the reason he likes sour peaches is because that’s what he grew up with in the part of China he was from. He said, the peaches they grow there are naturally sour, which is the way he likes them. He even picks his own tomatoes and picks those pretty green too. He picks tomatoes when they are just starting to turn red.
I wonder @sdguanlv if you’ve ever heard of that?
I used the “Fazhiling” product developed by Professor Zhang Caixi of Shanghai Jiaotong University. This product can induce branching and is very safe. It costs about $30 per piece. Using the method of smearing, one piece can affect about 2000 buds. I don’t know its main ingredients.
Thank you for your suggestion, I will follow the rules. I am also trying to discover some foreign professional planting forums, and want to try some advanced planting methods.
The situation you mentioned is very interesting. This kind of thing does exist, and your customer is likely to be a northerner. In Northeast China, there are indeed several kinds of green tomatoes that are eaten raw. We call them’Strawberry Tomatoes’ or’Green Tomatoes’. They have many similar varieties and have different names, but they are actually not much different. People in the south of the Yangtze River in China like to eat pure and sweet fruits, and people in the north of the Yangtze River like to eat sweet and sour fruits. This tomato product is very low, most varieties can be harvested in the greenhouse 10000-13000 kg, but this variety can only produce about 1000-2000 kg, so its price is very expensive, ordinary varieties are usually 0.6-0.8 dollars per Kg, but the price of this variety is about 3-6 dollars per kg. As for sour peaches, I think this customer should be at least 40 years old. There are many excellent peach varieties in China, and hundreds of varieties are circulating in the market. Can satisfy various tastes.
In China, yellow peaches are rarely planted because people prefer white peach varieties such as Shuimitao, which is juicy sweet. There are also some green peaches (could be close to white peaches but the flesh has a greenish tone) that can be eaten both hard and soft, almost equally tasty and sweet. I think your particular Chinese customer must be missing that green peach so much and the poor guy just pretends that unripen yellow peach is the same thing…no one in China eats sour peaches (yellow peaches even don’t sell). Don’t want to offend anyone here, peaches in the USA are in general pretty bad quality, even the home grown ones are not that interesting. It’s just too difficult to grow any good peaches here.
In the past five years, yellow nectarines have been very popular in China, and the prices are also very good. They are usually grown in bags, so the quality of peaches is very high. The area of white and hairy peaches is decreasing in a large area, and the area of yellow nectarines is increasing in a large area. Customers who eat sour peaches are indeed rare, and most peaches are of very high quality.
Yellow nectarines mostly are sub-acid (as sweet as white peaches), not the same as yellow peaches. Chinese in the USA still prefer white peaches over yellow peaches, if similar quality. I actually like some late ripen yellow peaches such as Loring.
