Feathered trees are profitable This second-leaf Gala tree
produced the equivalent of 300 bushels per acre. Does it pay to
plant a more expensive, but highly feathered tree rather than a
one-year graft, bench graft, or sleeping eye tree? Cornell
University's Dr. Terence Robinson, who has studied the economics
of planting different types of trees, believes that most growers
are better off planting a finished tree. While unfinished trees
are half to one-third the cost of feathered trees, his analysis
of the effect of tree price and its influence on profitability
showed that the differences between the cost of using finished
versus unfinished trees were small when trees were planted at
low densities. At low densities, the feathered trees were the
most profitable. The optimum tree density for feathered trees
was around 950 trees per acre, whereas the optimum density for
low-cost trees was more than 2,000 trees per acre. "In large
measure, you're trading dollars at all the densities—you buy
cheaper trees, you get l