INFLUENCE OF TRAINING ON GROWTH OF NEWLY- PLANTED APPLE TREES 



William J. Lord 

 Department of Plant and Soil Sciences 



Recommendations for training 1-year-old whips the year of 

 planting have always varied. A pruning bulletin published by 

 the University of Massachusetts in the 1950 's, when trees on 

 seedling roots were being heavily planted, suggested that trees 

 planted early in the spring on good soil required no heading. 

 Other publications suggested that trees should be shortened to a 

 height of 30 inches at planting to cause branch development down 

 to within 18 inches of the ground. At least one publication 

 stated that heading height at planting was relatively unimportant, 

 the important thing being that trees grow well during the first 

 growing season. 



The more current pruning publications, which include sugges- 

 tions for training trees on the more vigorous of the size-control- 

 ling rootstocks, frequently suggest heading heights of 24 to 30 

 inches and removal of growth closer than within 18 to 20 inches 

 to the ground. It is now common to find growers heading trees at 

 24 to 30 inches at planting regardless of variety or whether it 

 is a spur or non-spur type tree. Therefore, we became interested 

 in the influence of training on growth of newly-planted apple trees 



Heading Height 



Our studies show (Table 1) that shorter trees produce fewer 

 lateral shoots and spurs but shoot length may be longer in some 

 instances . 



Table 1. Effects of Heading Height on Growth of Newly-Planted 

 Apple Trees, 1977. 



Length No. of laterals : Avg. length Total 



Heading of Spurs of 



height leader and Shoots shoots Growth 



shoots 



(in.) (in.) (in.) (in.) 



Marshall McIntosh/M7A 



51a 



57a 



34a 

 39a 



39 lib 10a 6a 7b 44a 



36 12ab 9a 5a 7b 48a 



30 14a 7b 3a 9a 54a 



Lateral growth more than 2 inches in length. 



^Values not followed by a common letter are significantly different 

 at the S% level. 



