PEACH MEADOW ORCHARDS

1. A very dense planting system that will produce a full field cover of canopy in one year.
2. The tree top can always be reached from the ground i.e., the maximum height is 2.2 m.
3. The main scaffold branches are short lived in comparison with to the tree and renewed pruning has to be performed annually.
4. Pruning is the main means that keeps the tree small. It consists mainly of removing large scaffold branches, which entails a small input of manual labor.
5. No excessive shading can build up in the tree canopy with increasing age of the orchard, as the light regime in the canopy is very similar from year to year.
6. Operations in the orchard can be fully or partly mechanized, thus reducing manual labor input.

Over the years three versions of the peach meadow orchard were developed: the mechanized system, the modified system, and the intensive system. These 3 systems differ in the level and timing of pruning.