ANNUAL LARGE LIMB REMOVAL FOR MANAGING THE KENTVILLE FREE STANDING TREE WALL

Pruning is a major cost in apple production therefore an orchard design that utilizes a novel more efficient pruning system throughout the production cycle is an important advance.
It is even more beneficial if the new pruning technique can convert trees with a vigorous rootstock into a precocious, productive, high density system.
In 1985 an orchard management study was designed to explore the potential for using the vigour reducing characteristics of spur type ‘McIntosh’ strains and ‘Empire’ on vigorous and semi-dwarf rootstocks. ‘Empire’ and the Spur ‘McIntosh’ strains ‘MacSpur’, ‘Hartenhof’, ‘Stirling’ were grafted on each of the five self supporting rootstocks MM.106, MM.111, Alnarp 2, Kentville Stock Clone (KSC) 13 and KSC 3. Trees were encouraged to express apical dominance of the main trunk which eventually bent over to 90° and below because of the weight of heavy crops.
After seven years and each year thereafter two or three of the largest limbs on the main trunk were completely removed with a slanted 20° cut.
After eighteen years and across all combinations, trees on KSC 13 were the largest.
No rootstock was consistently the smallest yet the highly spurred strains on MM. 106 did not fully occupy the allotted space.
Tree canopy for ‘Empire’ was approximately mid range between that of the largest and smallest ‘McIntosh’ strain x rootstock combinations.
Cumulative yields in each of three, six-year age periods and on each rootstock are presented.

IX International Symposium on Integrating Canopy, Rootstock and Environmental Physiology in Orchard Systems

C.G. Embree

Malus × domestica, apple, pruning, high density, low cost system, spur-type McIntosh

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2011.903.91