Production Practices and Quality Assessment of Food Crops. Vol. 1

138 S. Pereira-Lorenzo and A. M. Ramos-Cabrer
Figure 14. Grafted orchard to produce nuts and timber pruning intensively over the graft point in
Galicia.
6.4. Forming new trees
Two traditional systems (Pereira-Lorenzo and Fernandez-Lopez, 1995) and three
new ones (Breisch, 1995) have been proposed for new plantations.
(1) Traditional systems:
Nut production. New plants are pruned to form a trunk with four to six branches
well distributed during forming prune, and branches are forced to open. Cutting back
of the four or six branches down to halve their sizes, we can obtain eight or twelve
smaller branches well distributed around the trunk (Figure 16).
Frequently, graft is made in the field after four years to obtain a strong trunk
and a well-developed radical system. Graft is made at 2 or 3 m above ground
using bark graft or cutting back the tree over four to six buds to obtain four or
six small branches where pipe graft is practice (Figure 17).
Nut and timber production. A trunk of 7 m long must be formed from the grafted
plant and pruned to remove branches more than 6 cm in diameter. Grafted plants
with cultivars as Garrida, Loura and Parede are good because of their ease in forming
good trunk. A much higher density than the nut-only orchards is required, 7 × 7
m, for increasing competition between the crowns. No pruning of the crown is