Espaliered Fruit Trees, Part 5
Now for the fun part --- pruning and
training! Basically, pruning and training an espaliered fruit
tree is a lot like pruning and training a free-standing fruit
tree. In both cases, you use judicious cutting to get the tree to
branch or change direction, then you tie the resulting limbs into
place. The trick is that you need to stay on top of it --- no
ignoring the espaliered tree for eleven and a half months then whacking
at it one winter day. Instead, you need to use winter pruning and
summer pruning to create a solid skeleton. Meanwhile, train the
branches onto their support, catching new branches as they form when
they are easy to mold to your will. The
best in depth description I've found on the internet is here.
An espaliered fruit tree
may take up to a decade to train into its eventual shape, and you
should be aware that espaliers will also take longer than a freeform
tree to fruit. But Europeans heartily believe that the resultant
plant is healthier and more productive than its wilder
counterpart. I'm not sure I'm ready to give it a shot, but city
dwellers could do worse than an orchard of fruit trees trained against
the side of their house.
| This post is part of our Espaliered Fruit Trees lunchtime series.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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