Espalier Fruit Trees for Small Gardens with Ron Perry

Fruit trees can be productive, they can be beautiful, AND they can fit in small spaces!
In this episode learn how to create an espalier fruit tree planting where the tree is trained up against a wall or fence.

Our expert guest will be Ron Perry, Ph.D., Professor in the Department of Horticulture at Michigan State University (MSU) (Retired) and Co-Author of Espalier Fruit Plantings for Northern Gardens: Creating Fruit Trees as Art (affiliate link).
By the way, the proceeds of this book goes to the operating budget of their horticulture gardens. Show your support for Ron if you learned anything from this episode!

The host of the Orchard People radio show and podcast is Susan Poizner of the fruit tree care education website www.orchardpeople.com.  

Susan is the author of four books on fruit tree care. Learn more here: https://learn.orchardpeople.com/books

She is also the creator of five-star rated premium online fruit tree care education at: https://learn.orchardpeople.com

HOW TO TUNE IN TO OUR PODCAST

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🌐 Article: Read the article linked to the show "The Art of Espalier Pruning: Four Steps to Creating a Beautiful Fruiting Wall in Your Garden" and find the video and podcast links there too!

 

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FOR MORE INFORMATION ON GROWING FRUIT TREES THAT THRIVE:

✂️ How to Prune Fruit Trees:

https://orchardpeople.com/how-to-prune-and-train-fruit-trees/

🪲 Fruit Tree Pests and Diseases:

https://orchardpeople.com/protecting-fruit-trees-from-pests-and-diseases/

🌳 How to Feed Fruit Trees:

https://orchardpeople.com/how-to-feed-fruit-trees/

🍎 The Best Fruit Trees to Grow:

https://orchardpeople.com/best-fruit-trees-to-grow/

🌱 How to Graft Fruit Trees:

https://orchardpeople.com/how-to-graft-fruit-trees/

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• (00:00) - Introduction
• (01:03) - What is espalier?
• (02:18) - How productive are espalier fruit trees?
• (03:31) - How poor rootstock choice can affect your espalier planting
• (05:08) - Common espalier designs
• (06:38) - Apple trees that don't leaf out early
• (07:37) - Forcing a reluctant apple espalier into fruiting
• (10:41) - Choosing an apple variety for espalier
• (12:06) - Espalier in Canada
• (13:39) - Espalier apple trees and tip bearing cultivars
• (18:41) - Micro-irrigation and fruit trees
• (21:06) - Lorette system of espalier pruning
• (25:20) - Creating espalier without a fence
• (26:38) - Tying down branches to increase productivity
• (31:29) - Trellises or fences for espalier
• (34:41) - Distances between trees in espalier plantings
• (35:19) - How many apples can each espalier tree produce?
• (36:01) - Espalier fruit tree pruning and care
• (38:23) - Water sprouts and espalier fruit trees
• (39:46) - Grafting onto espalier fruit trees
• (41:02) - The best way to restore a broken espalier branch
• (42:08) - Training an established young tree into espalier
• (49:02) - About Ron's espalier fruit tree book

Creators and Guests

Host

Susan Poizner

Author, fruit tree educator, and Creator of the award-winning fruit tree care education website OrchardPeople.com.

What is Orchard People?

Learn how to grow and care for fruit trees with fruit tree care educator Susan Poizner of OrchardPeople.com. Discover how to create permaculture plantings, food forests, and forest gardens in both urban and rural settings. Meet experts on all aspects of comprehensive fruit tree care, including pruning, pest and disease prevention, fruit tree grafting and budding, and soil management.

Show host Susan Poizner, creator of the fruit tree education website OrchardPeople.com, is an award-winning author of three fruit tree care books and an ISA Certified Arborist. This podcast is the winner of the 2021 GardenComm Silver Award of Achievement for Broadcast Media: Radio Program Overall. Learn more and access archived episodes at https://podcast.orchardpeople.com/.

Learn more about Susan's books and courses at https://learn.orchardpeople.com/books.

[00:00:00] Introduction
Susan Poizner: Fruit trees
can be beautiful, and they can also be productive, but fruit trees can take up a lot of space. So if you have a small garden, you might think you don't have room for a fruit tree. But there are ways to grow small fruit trees in small spaces. And one option is to grow your fruit trees espalier style.
Espalier fruit trees are trained to grow up against a fence
fruiting walls.
All you need to grow one of those at home is a sunny backyard.
So today we are going to talk about espalier fruit trees
with Ron Perry, PhD. Ron is a retired professor emeritus of horticulture from Michigan State University. So Ron, welcome to the show today.
Ron Perry: Nice to be with you.
Susan Poizner: I am so glad you're here, and I have lots of questions about espaliered fruit trees, but let's start off with the simple one. What exactly is espalier?
[00:01:03] What is espalier?
Ron Perry: Espalier is a system that basically was developed originally by the Romans. And then further developed in the Middle Ages, and really it was the French who coined the term espalier, and really used it, in around the 14 and 1500s in the various chateaus and estates, in France.
usually it was done in order to save space. in a garden so that they would generally have open space,
for full sun developed for, vegetables and other crops that they needed for their estate or for their castle. and then the walls, became a support system, if you will, for fruit trees.
Susan Poizner: Incredible. So the idea is you've got your sunny garden in this chateau or castle and it's surrounded by walls and along the walls there's this two, these two dimensional fruit trees. So they're not shading your cabbages or your potatoes or your tomatoes. So they are there, they are producing fruit.
[00:02:18] How productive are espalier fruit trees?
Susan Poizner: The question is how productive are espalier fruit trees?
Ron Perry: First of all, it starts with understanding, the type of tree you're growing and then the type of rootstock you're using, to be able to grow that tree on.
some people may not be aware that when fruit trees are propagated in the nursery, they're actually propagated on specific types of rootstock.
It's a totally different genetic component, usually accomplished in the nursery. That, particularly a below ground component, we call the rootstock, the above ground, we call that the scion, that rootstock can be selected for many purposes, but one of them as a key role would be in espalier would be for dwarfing.
So we have a number of rootstocks in apples and pears, sweet cherry. Not so much in many others, maybe some plums that can make the canopy of the tree much smaller.
Susan Poizner: Gotcha. Okay, so the idea is that we want to use a rootstock that will keep our tree compact, so we're not fighting with it, to keep it small.
[00:03:31] How poor rootstock choice can affect your espalier planting
Susan Poizner: What's the worst that could happen if you bought any old fruit tree on a whatever rootstock and it's the wrong rootstock? What are the biggest problems you could encounter?
Ron Perry: That's the most common nightmare, because there's really nothing you can do about it. There are a few things we can do that our commercial orchardists deal with all the time, where they have too close a spacing for the trees they've selected. And of course the rootstock they've selected. So they might actually go in and root prune, for example, or they may do a lot of hedging in order to keep the tree within space dynamics. But once you get into a garden area and you only have a few trees, and if you just go out and select any tree and not paying attention to the rootstock that's utilized,
then what can happen is the tree can be extremely vigorous and then you spend a lifetime of fighting its vigor. And that's something you do not want to do.
So whenever someone sends me a question about the trees and how do I get rid of water sprouts, the first thing I do is start asking questions about what rootstock they have the tree planted on and determine whether or not it still can be restored.
If it's the wrong rootstock and it's a little too vigorous, that's a problem, and you probably need to remove it and start again.
Susan Poizner: So here we have this two dimensional design. And the two dimensional design, you'll use the arms of the fruit tree.
You will train them or tie them to the fence in some design or the other.
[00:05:08] Common espalier designs
Susan Poizner: Can you describe some of the espalier designs that we can create with fruit trees?
Ron Perry: Probably
the most common is just the simple grid of horizontal arms.
you might have several of them and those arms might be, anywhere from 10 to 14 inches apart or somewhere around, 30 to, 40 centimeters apart, in verticality.
And you might have several of those arms, if you will.
That's the most common one. So you have a central leader or a central trunk, and then those radiating off into those arms. there are others,
there's the fan, where basically the central trunk is cut low, and then you force branches to come up at oblique angles from that.
Another that's fairly common is the candelabra, where you elevate one branch and then you turn it at certain points to get verticality on the branch and it looks like a candelabra.
Probably the fourth most common would be something like the cordon or bilateral cordon in grapes, where you have one horizontal arm and then several shoots that go up vertically from that horizontal arm and then grow them.
This is commonly done in a lot of the vinifera type grapes, but not too often in fruit trees.
[00:06:38] Apple trees that don't leaf out early
Susan Poizner: Okay, we have some questions already. A bunch of questions from John. First question. Do you have any last hope resuscitation techniques for an apple espalier that hasn't leafed out by the end of spring?
I have an established espalier that has failed to leaf out this year, yet the cambium seems to be still green in places. How do you check for sure if the tree is dead or can be saved somehow?
Ron Perry: So if you will cut into, on an angle, into a branch and see if you've got any green cambium. You'll see that right below the bark.
And if it's green, you're okay. If it's brown, you've got a problem. You probably have deadwood and you need to prune all the way back until you find green cambium again. If you don't find it, then you're best starting over again.
[00:07:37] Forcing a reluctant apple espalier into fruiting
Susan Poizner: Okay, his second question. Do you have any tricks up your sleeve to force a reluctant apple espalier into fruiting?
He says, I have a 10 year old Belle de Boskoop espalier on EMLA M26 dwarfing rootstock. This year is the first year it had any flowers, and it only had three flowers. I've read online that Belle de Boskoop can be slow to bear, but this seems an abnormally long time. Any theories or ideas?
Ron Perry: The first theory is you got the wrong rootstock.
It's on M26. So M26 is a little more vigorous, and it takes longer to come in productivity than M9 or Budogovsky 9 or CG11 or any of these more dwarfing rootstocks. These dwarfing rootstocks are not only dwarfing, they make the trees more precocious. So they start to flower and fruit much earlier in the life of the tree than on M26 or M7.
So that's one of the problems that's causing that. It is a variety that comes into bearing late, like Northern Spy. There's really not a whole lot you can do about it, except one thing. And that is in springtime and bloom time, you can go in and girdle the trunk of the tree. Usually use a hacksaw blade, a width that'll go right down to the wood.
If you do it during that period, that's a girdling period. And basically you're causing some amount of stress. When a tree goes into stress, it starts going into a reproductive cycle. So some girdling probably right about now, or you may be just getting past it in that window opportunity.
We have fruit growers that do that all the time.
Susan Poizner: So basically Ron, you are suggesting that John actually hurt his tree, cut into it, but you wouldn't cut all the way around, would you?
Ron Perry: It's girdling. Girdling is cut all the way around.
Susan Poizner: Wow. And instead of cutting off its source of nutrition, you're hoping it's going to fruit. Oh my gosh, that sounds very harsh. Okay, a couple more quick questions from John.
Can an apple espalier accidentally be girdled and killed if a tier branch, one of these arms, is tied to its bamboo support too tightly? Or can an espalier only be girdled and killed if the main trunk is girdled low down?
Ron Perry: Oh, it depends on what the tie is. If the tie is elastic, then no. If the tie is not elastic, for example, rope or wire or something like that, yeah, you can girdle it and do exactly what I was explaining earlier about using a hacksaw blade and cutting a groove into the bark down to the wood. So girdling can do that, but once again, it depends on the type of tie you're talking about.
[00:10:41] Choosing an apple variety for espalier
Susan Poizner: Okay. And he has one last question. This is a great one. Okay. If you could only grow one apple espalier in your small space garden, what would your number one choice be based on disease resistance and, of course, great taste!
Ron Perry: Well that's Honeycrisp.
Susan Poizner: Really?
Ron Perry: That's an easy answer. Another one is Gold Rush. The flavor isn't the greatest in comparison to Honeycrisp. Another is CrimsonCrisp. The Honeycrisp is moderately resistant to scab. Gold Rush and Crimson Crisp are completely scab resistant.
So what you want to start with is a variety that is scab resistant. I've got another one that I'm growing called Enterprise, comes from the New York Cornell program that is scab resistant. Liberty. A lot of folks in the New England area grow Liberty apple and Liberty is scab resistant. So you first want to choose a low maintenance variety, maintenance meaning trying to take care of insects and diseases, but mainly diseases. You really can't do much with variety selection for insect resistance.
[00:12:06] Espalier in Canada
Susan Poizner: Gotcha. Okay, we've got a question. Next question is from Howard. Howard is listening to us in Ottawa. So Howard says, Hello, Susan, very interesting topic today. Is this technology used here in Canada?
And he's referring to espalier. And the answer is yes, for sure.
Ron Perry: Yeah, I'm sure of it. Because I had a colleague from New Brunswick who was from Quebec, who basically was one of our colleagues and one's called the NC-140 Regional Project for years, and I got to know him pretty well and he would report on the various rootstock trials he would use and high density systems.
In fact, there was a new variety developed at the Herald Research Station. called by Harold Quamme called Ottawa 3, just for that. The problem was, it wasn't as dwarfing as they wanted it to be. It was more on the M26 to M7 class range as far as influence on dwarfing.
And so it really never saw much of the light of day, but you can probably still get Ottawa 3 in Canada in a Canadian nursery. But it is more cold hardy, can do well. The problem is, it's just a little too vigorous for espalier.
Susan Poizner: Gotcha. So again, we need to think ahead if we want to plant a espalier, we want to make sure our rootstock is dwarfing enough.
So we would do that research and we want to make sure it's an appropriate cultivar.
[00:13:39] Espalier apple trees and tip bearing cultivars
Susan Poizner: Our next question is fantastic to follow up. It's from Barb in Seattle. Barb writes, I work in a public garden and I'm rehabilitating a simple cordon fence of about 15 different apple cultivars. So espalier, cordon style.
Many of them seem to be tip bearing varieties so that they don't bear fruit well when pruned as an espalier.
So here's her question, do you have a list of apple cultivars that absolutely will not be productive when is espalier-pruned or conversely, which apple cultivars are most productive when trained as an espalier. So I think you are going to need to explain to us a little bit about tip bearing apple trees.
Ron Perry: Yeah, terminal bearers. That's the term we use for terminal bearing varieties or tip bearing. That means that the apical bud of a shoot is where all of your fruit productivity is, and it's usually gonna be a little bit longer shoot.
Susan Poizner: Just to clarify, the apical bud is the last bud on the branch.
Ron Perry: Last bud on the branch. And, probably a classic one of that is the Cortland. Another one is the Rome. Those are two older varieties that are terminal bearers. They would not be as good a variety in that system as varieties like Gala, for example, that will actually produce fruit on last year's lateral wood. You want a variety that has a lot of spurs that are, in other words, short shoots that are reproductive. Cortland and Rome are not going to be that way.
If you have those, then the only choice you have is during the growing season, try to get as many of those branches to bend down below the horizontal, using rubber bands or whatever it takes to get them down below the horizontal, as they're being developed, as they're succulent. Get them to go downward.
Then what will happen is there'll be more reproductive plus you get the branch under control. It'll start to slow down. Anytime you get a branch below horizontal, you basically slow it's extended branch growth rate.
Susan Poizner: Fascinating. So by bending that branch that's supposed to be on the horizontal wire and we're pulling it down below horizontal, we're just trying to slow its growth so that we don't have to cut off the tip of the branch when we prune it so that we will have an apple at the tip of the branch.
Ron Perry: Another way to do it is to fool that branch into thinking that it has fruit on it. So fruit on a branch, by gravity, will come down below the horizontal and then so fruit begets fruit. That means that branch will continue to be more of an reproductive cycle for the future. We have a number of fruit growers I used to work with that would actually make little weights.
And they would put a hook on the end of the weight or they'd use clothespins. You could put two or three clothespins and basically attach those to that branch so it would go down below the horizontal without having to use a rubber band. That's just a little technique that growers used to use for years.
Susan Poizner: I have to ask you. So fruit begets fruit. So if the branch thinks, if a branch thinks, that it is a fruit bearing branch, it's going to produce more and more fruit. What's the science behind that? Does that have to do with the hormones in the branch or is there something else?
Ron Perry: Carbohydrates and hormones.
Usually it's a combination of auxins, cytokinins, abscisic acid (ABA), three hormones that are common within a plant system.
Susan Poizner: So we want to trick our fruit trees. Okay. A few more questions. We've got lots of questions today, so let's see what we got next. The next email is from Karen. Hello, Susan, a little off topic here. Does Dr. Perry have any books out on wine education? Oh, that would be great.
Ron Perry: Actually, we do, but we don't have it available to the public. It's a book that is published by Great River Learning out of Dubuque, Iowa, and it goes to our students. And actually, the revenue that's generated from it helps our operating costs to defray the cost of wine in the course.
I no longer teach that course. That was the only way because the university would not give us a budget to be able to purchase wine and support my classroom teachers. So I taught that course for about 10 years.
Susan Poizner: Okay. That's the next book you have to write because your espalier book is coming out again, you've got time on your hands. That's the book that we are waiting for. Okay. We'll do another show when you get your second, that book out.
Ron Perry: Okay.
[00:18:41] Micro-irrigation and fruit trees
Susan Poizner: Another question we have here from Amy listening to us in Washington, DC. Hi to Susan and Dr. Perry. Amy's question. What is micro irrigation?
Ron Perry: Micro irrigation, another term for it we have is drip or trickle irrigation, and that's where we have a usually a half inch diameter plastic pipe that is rolled out along a tree row and we actually puncture that pipe with a small what's called emitter that controls the amount of gallonage of water that can be emitted.
I use it all the time. I have it here around my home and I'm able to control amount of water that goes to each plant in my garden or in the cases of vineyards and orchards that are used all the time.
Susan Poizner: Okay, so there we go. And we can use those on our espalier fruit trees.
Another question, as they are flying in right now.
This one's from Ellen. Ellen writes, I have a young Lapins. Lapins cherry. It's in its second year. It is very healthy. It did not fruit or hasn't fruited yet as it's too young. Now she's noticing two bright little flat nubs on each leaflet. Every single leaflet. She says it looks like a weird scale pest, but it isn't, I believe.
There are a pair on each set of leaves at the ends of the branches. Can you tell me what it is?
Ron Perry: No, I'm not familiar with Lapins that much, but it sounds to me that it could be a disease, could be bacterial canker, because Lapins has some susceptibility to bacterial canker, Pseudomonas syringae, that gets on the leaves. So that's a possibility that's what that is, which can be controlled with some copper or other fungicides that will control that type of disease. Lapins, I'm trying to remember if it's self fertile or not. I know Stella is self fertile, but I'm not sure about Lapins.
I would have to look that up to remember if it's self fertile or not.
Susan Poizner: I will forward you that email. We can continue the conversation after the show. I'm very curious about this. Okay. Another excellent email from Barb again, and I'm really glad you brought this up, because it's something I've been thinking about.
[00:21:06] Lorette system of espalier pruning
Susan Poizner: Barb writes, I recently checked out a 1925 edition of a book called the Lorette system of pruning, which seemed to focus on cutting the growth back when it was pencil diameter, and then almost to the basal leaves, the first set of leaves on each branch.
Do you know what are the benefits of this approach to espalier pruning?
So the Lorette system, tell us about it.
Ron Perry: Actually, that's what I use. I prune back when new branch growth develops, eight inches in length, I go back and cut it back to the two basal leaves. And then what that'll do is it'll either give you a new flush of growth from the leaf axils below, or in some cases, and often it does, depending on the variety, it'll produce new short shoots, in other words, fruiting spurs, so it's actually one of the most productive ways to manage the espalier system.
So I use it in pears. I use it in apples. I don't have any stone fruit on my espaliers in my gardens, but I would imagine that's probably what you'd have to do. And what you're doing is you're cutting back the growth so that you can continue to maintain the definition of the grid or the design that you have.
But instead of cutting it all the way back to the original branch where it's deriving from, you cut it back so that you basically leave a stub, succulent growth. And then you'll get a response. You may get a flush again, which is fine, and you cut it again.
So one of the issues about espalier that people aren't aware of, is how time consuming it can be. It's not something you just want to grow it and then let it go. You need to be there every two or three weeks, cutting this growth back. Otherwise it gets out of hand and you no longer have an espalier design. That's the usual problem for people who want to grow espalier.
If you just want to grow the tree like a commercial fruit producer, that's fine. But don't expect a tree to stay within its confines of the dynamics of the design.
Susan Poizner: So here, in terms of the Lorette system versus what somebody else might do. So Lorette, you're saying you take, once the sprouts from your structural branches get eight inches, you cut them down to basically just past the first basal bud, the first bud.
Ron Perry: I usually like to leave two axillary buds. Yeah.
Susan Poizner: Two buds. Okay. So you want to make sure that there's two buds after. In other systems, do they leave more? Three, four, five buds?
Ron Perry: It just depends on the design you have. If you have a lot of space between the tiers, in other words, the arms, then yeah, you're fine.
But if you don't have, if you have less than say, 12 to 14 inches or less than around 40 centimeters distance between the arms, then you need to bring that down so you can keep the definition of the espalier.
Susan Poizner: Gotcha. Okay,
we have an email here from Jessica. I work on both urban and rural permaculture designs.
I'm experimenting with espalier at my own house in London, Ontario, in a pretty free form way with no wires. I have two three year old pears and one two year old apple. So there's no question here, but I do want to discuss the idea. We've been talking about training your tree into a shape by supporting it and tying it down to some sort of fence or structure.
[00:25:20] Creating espalier without a fence
Susan Poizner: Can you do this without the fence and the structure?
Ron Perry: Yes, that's what the commercial fruit grower does. Many of them do. Not the new ones.
Most of the contemporary orchards today all have a fence. They all have a high density system with three or four wires, and the trees are planted three feet apart.
It's called the tall spindle.
I would say that 75% of our entire apple industry here in Michigan is grown that way. But before that, what growers would do is they grow what's called the central leader system. So you don't have any wires, you might have a post. And then what you do is you use rubber bands or other tie downs.
Kite string, if you will, cotton string. And as the branch starts to develop, you basically tie these branches down to the horizontal or below the horizontal. So if you can think of an umbrella, you're going to keep that umbrella structure going and you're going to have different tiers of those umbrella structure. But yeah, you can do it without, no doubt.
Susan Poizner: Interesting.
[00:26:38] Tying down branches to increase productivity
Susan Poizner: Okay, so next question. This is from Ellen, Madison, Connecticut. And Ellen writes, just started an espalier a year ago. There's definitely lots to learn. I use glass bottles filled with water to weigh down the branches.
Does this work with all fruit trees? I've been doing it for my cherry, pear, and peach espalier. Thanks. Helen.
Ron Perry: So that's exactly what we were talking about earlier when I mentioned that you have terminal bearing varieties and you want to bring the branch down below the horizontal. You can go ahead and weight those branches, and that's just another resourceful way of providing weight to basically fool the branch into thinking it has fruit.
Susan Poizner: Gotcha.
Okay. So here we've got one more. One more quick email from John again, got back to us. John says some follow up.
Ron is correct. My Belle de Boskoop apple on EMLA 26 rootstock is incredibly vigorous. Large leaves, thick espalier branches. Sounds like the grower shouldn't have put a Belle de Boskoop, slow bearer, on an EMLA 26 stock. Too vigorous. He also says, I am really intrigued by Ron's answer to fully ring bark the Belle de Boskoop.
I thought doing a full trunk cut into the cambium would kill the tree, whereas incomplete ring cut, leaving some of the cambium unbroken, stresses the tree but doesn't kill it. So again, let's reassure John that he can do this. He can make a circle around one of those branches and it shouldn't kill that branch.
Somehow, I don't know how, the nutrition will hop over. How will the nutrition get to the part of the branch after the girdling? I don't know.
Ron Perry: Think of the xylem tissue still being intact. So all you're doing is you're disrupting the phloem. That's what you're doing. So it's the outer vascular tissue, the phloem on there right underneath the bark, that's being disrupted.
So you're disrupting materials moving down. And you're disrupting materials moving up, but you're not disrupting the water vasculature. So you can do it two ways. I have a very good friend, who's a commercial fruit grower, who uses a chainsaw and he does a spiral so that he doesn't go all the way around.
And he does that in order to keep the trees under control. And he does that in the spring. This is getting a little too late. So if you go a little bit later, what happens with that type of girdling is you can kill the tree. But if you just do it now and no later than now, then basically there's a chance for recovery from that stress. And that's the reason why.
It's been done for years.
The nectarine growers in California, in order to get size, they did that for years. Still do. I know of commercial fruit growers in California do just that with nectarines in order to get the fruit size they want.
Grapes. That's how Thompson Seedless was a table grape for years is they would girdle the Thompson Seedless grape usually around bloom. So it's usually done around bloom.
Susan Poizner: Okay.
So Ron, there's so many things I want to talk about. But let's see, we've got another email here, and this one is from, Pam. Hello. Does Dr. Perry have a newsletter available or a weekly or monthly update on this subject of espalier?
Ron Perry: No, I do not. Sorry about that.
Susan Poizner: Okay, something to put on your to do list then.
Ron Perry: Okay.
Susan Poizner: Something to think about after you write your book on wine tasting, I think.
Ron Perry: That question about the Lapins cherry. It is self fertile and it, also like Stella, comes from the breeding program at the Summerland Research Station there in British Columbia, but it is a self fertile variety.
Susan Poizner: It's self fertile.
Okay. And we got another email from Ellen here about that very topic. So let's see what she says. Susan, I'm so excited. I just discovered this online. So she was Googling about the bumps on her leaves. My bumps on my cherry tree leaves are not a problem. They actually encourage beneficial insects and don't have to talk about in the air.
Oh, she's saying we don't have to talk about it on the air. We're on the air and we're talking about it. I'm going to look at this further. I'm very curious about that. And who knows, maybe this is a topic for another show. I want to know.
[00:31:29] Trellises or fences for espalier
Susan Poizner: Okay, so now let's go back to espalier pruning. So you get this young fruit tree, making sure you've got the right cultivar and the right rootstock.
And you have to plant it somewhere. If you are going to build some sort of trellis or fence, what's the simplest kind of trellis or fence you can create in order to support an espalier fruit tree?
Ron Perry: Oh, probably the simplest would be the horizontal fence. And that's where you basically have wires about anywhere from 9 to 14 inches apart on a grid, if you will, going vertical.
And so the wires are then stretched between posts, and then you can grow the tree on that. You do not want to grow a tree in espalier directly on a fence, or a rock wall, or a concrete wall, because you'll get a certain amount of deterioration of the fence wall in that particular situation. Plus, you really need to have some ventilation and air movement between the wall or the fence.
And usually it's best to come out within six inches to a foot from that wall if you're going to have it on a fence or a wall. And so you have its own separate support system. In this case, if you're talking about the fence, it's pretty easy. You put a couple of posts together, one at one end and one at the other.
And depending how far apart you can put as many trees as you want, basically in that fence system. But basically our commercial fruit growers don't go farther than around 40 to 50 feet apart, and so that you get plenty of stretch with the wire. Our commercial growers use high tensile wire.
It's much cheaper. What I tell our espalier growers is instead to just get the vinyl coated cable wire that you can get at a local hardware store. And then what you're going to do is use a little clamp so that you can loop as you go through the hole or the staple, connecting that cable up to the vertical post to support it.
Then you can clamp it. And then at the other end, use a turnbuckle or some method, like what the vineyardists do, where they just use an adjustable, clamp at the other end as a tensioner. Because what happens is the wire, over time, or the cable, over time, will start to lose its tension and then you basically lose the ability to train on a surface that is taut. And instead, you get branch growth that starts to loop and bend down simply because the support isn't there.
[00:34:41] Distances between trees in espalier plantings
Susan Poizner: So you've got your two fence posts, let's say they're at maximum 40 feet apart. They could be a lot shorter. How many espalier fruit trees can you fit in that space? If I have a small garden, let's say my small garden is 20 feet deep. Can I get a number of trees there?
Ron Perry: If you were four feet apart, which is, four to five or six feet apart, let's say it's five feet.
That means you can put eight trees between those two posts
if you want.
Susan Poizner: Which means I could have eight different varieties of apples in one small garden.
[00:35:19] How many apples can each espalier tree produce?
Susan Poizner: How many apples do you think I would get out of each of those trees, if they're really that close?
Ron Perry: If they're on M9, or they're on B9, they're on CG11, any of those dwarfing rootstocks.
You're talking, if you do everything right, you can get as much as a half a bushel of apples by either the second leaf or the third growing season.
Susan Poizner: That's fantastic. So you could have a significant number of apples and you can think in advance to have some apples that ripen in August and some in September, some October.
It could be beautiful. As long as you've got the sunny garden and willing to take hands on care.
[00:36:01] Espalier fruit tree pruning and care
Susan Poizner: So you mentioned earlier espalier fruit trees need a lot of fussing and pruning.
Ron Perry: Yes.
Susan Poizner: What is the main time of year? Do you do a lot of that in the winter or you don't touch them?
Ron Perry: All of it during the summer.
Susan Poizner: Okay.
Ron Perry: You'll do a certain amount in the winter and mainly what we do in the winter time is a term we use in the commercial fruit industry called recycling, where basically we will shorten the extended growth, so that we go back to growth that's nearest the arm that supports it. So that if you're extending, for example, growth each year because you'll get new growth, right?
And let's say it's one foot or six inches or eight inches above the branch support system. Now what happens is you're losing the identity of that design. So now you need to cut that growth out and go back to something that is closer to the original branch.
Susan Poizner: So could we say that in the winter, we're looking at the design and we're saying, okay, my arms or branches that are tied up against this fence. They've gotten too long. I can't leave them that long.
That's the winter.
Ron Perry: But you don't just cut with a heading cut. You make a thinning cut. So you're going to cut it as close to the origin of that branch as possible or back to a another fruit spur or something like that, that is down lower near the arm.
Susan Poizner: And you start from scratch. Here you spent years.
Ron Perry: A heading cut means you're making a cut between the terminal bud, that last bud, and the origin of that branch. And so you leave a stub. You do not want to do that. Especially wintertime. You can do that in the summertime and get away with it. You cannot do that in the wintertime. The other thing, excuse me, wintertime.
The other thing you're going to do is remove water sprouts. And in some cases, if you have too strong a rootstock or real fertile soil, you may have a lot of pruning to do just to remove water sprouts.
[00:38:23] Water sprouts and espalier fruit trees
Ron Perry: So water sprouts are vertical vegetative growth, and they are not reproductive.
Eventually, within, say, three years, they can become reproductive. But generally, they're going to be vegetative, and they're an abhorrence to any espalier system or plant.
Susan Poizner: So we want to get rid of them. Yep. And the winter is an okay time to do that.
Ron Perry: It is, and you'll need to do it again during the summer because you'll get some water sprouts to start to take off that are much longer and more vegetative and vertical in habit, and those need to be removed. Almost immediately. A lot of times I do that with my hands. Just rip it out. Pruning is best, but if you happen to be near the plant and you see one, just get rid of it right away. Prune it, pinch it out with your hands.
Susan Poizner: Okay, we got some more questions here. One of them is from Riley. Riley writes, Hi, Susan, love the show today. Excellent advice and information. Love you from Orlando, Florida. Oh, fantastic. That's so great. It is a very interesting show today. And here we have from John. John is our Belle de Boskoop person in Toronto.
[00:39:46] Grafting onto espalier fruit trees
Susan Poizner: So John writes, does Ron graft onto his espalier branches to create multi variety espaliers?
If he does, how many fruiting buds does he usually leave on the scions he is attaching?
Ron Perry: Okay, so I don't graft. I bud. And the reason why I don't graft is because you disturb too much of the infrastructure system. So I usually bud, the limitation to budding is the growth needs to be no greater in age than two or three years.
So you're going to take and either use a chip bud or a T-bud, and insert that bud on a two year old branch, a one year old or a two year old branch of wood. And then force that bud, if you can't that same season, you can force it the following season. And then, yeah, I have, trees that have two or three different varieties on them, and it's a way to provide pollinizer source for pollen for where you need it for those varieties that are unselfruitful.
[00:41:02] The best way to restore a broken espalier branch
Susan Poizner: His second question here is about another established espalier he has. Okay, so John writes, raccoons broke a branch on my established fan espalier, ruining the design. What does Ron recommend as the best way to restore the missing arm of the fan? Try grafting a new scion on? Or cutting back further on the established branch stub, hoping for an existing bud to fire up and create a new branch?
Ron Perry: Yes, the latter, because if you're going to bud or graft, you've got to find a good spot in order to insert that bud or graft. If it's older wood, then you have to graft. You don't have a choice. What are you going to graft on to? What is it going to be that structure that you're going to graft, so you're really a lot better off cutting back to say a four or five inch stub and see if you can get adventitious shoots to grow from it. And then you can choose one of those to be the new leader of the fan element.
[00:42:08] Training an established young tree into espalier
Susan Poizner: Okay, now we have a question here from Julie. So Julie says, can I still train a two year old tree into an espalier?
So Julie has an existing tree she bought last year, just got a few branches on it, and she's oh, maybe I can turn that into an espalier. So no fence there yet, but maybe she can put one up.
Ron Perry: As long as she has the right rootstock. If she doesn't know what the rootstock is, and if it says semi dwarf, she's got a problem. She'll be fighting it. If all she wants to do is grow it as a normal tree, and not necessarily espalier, no problem at all. The problem you get into with branches that are existing, they're woody, is now you still have to train them, but it's very difficult once the lignin starts to set in.
The woody portion starts to set in. And once You have a woody branch, it's very difficult to bend without breaking.
Susan Poizner: And that's such an important point.
Ron Perry: Yeah, a lot of times, you're better off cutting back those branches to a five or six inch stub and then forcing an adventitious shoot growth that you then train how you want it to develop.
So you take the succulent new growth that responds to that heading cut, and then you select one of those, and then train that. Now you're much further along than if you try to take something that's already woody. If it's horizontal, then you may be in luck, and you can train that and continue to train it.
If it's horizontal.
Susan Poizner: And we've got one more question here. Alexis from Ottawa.
So Alexis wants to know when do you prune and shape pear cordons and plum fans in zone 5. I have a pear with one established tier, or horizontal arm, and I'm wondering when I should make the second cut on the central trunk.
So that's for the second wire. And can I cut the outward growing branches off my plum fan all year, or is there a best time to do this? So Alexis's question is great to summarize everything we've talked about today.
Ron Perry: So, let's answer the last question, the second question, first on the plum, and then we can go back to the pear tree.
So on the plum, basically you can prune as soon as you get growth. As soon as you get eight or nine inches of growth, like I mentioned earlier, and you're going to cut back to basal buds, and then you can train. The best time, if you can't do any pruning during the summertime, is going to be mid July in our climate. And so you can train, for sure, during that period. And the reason is, because when you start to prune earlier, you'll get a lot more flush of compensatory growth in response to any pruning cut you make. If you do it in July, you'll get less of that. So you get less water sprouts produced from any cutting that's done in July.
And then you wanna shut it down mid August or later, because what you have to do is you have to live with it and prune it out during the wintertime. Because if you make a pruning cut after mid August, you're subjecting that plant to winter damage and because you're basically delaying the acclimation period because you need to get that tree into an acclimatizing mode so that it's ready to go into fall. If you make that pruning cut late after the 15th of August, 20th of August, then what happens is basically slow that process of acclimation. You may even generate some new growth and that's not good.
So let's go back to the pear. I try to tell all the commercial growers as well as espalier growers that if you're trying to grow a tree and you want branches to develop at various levels and tiers it's best to be patient and allow that apical bud to continue to grow the terminal bud that on the main leader of the trunk and don't cut it. If you cut it, what'll happen is you'll set that tree back on reproductive mode, and instead it'll become more vegetative.
And so you slow the process of fruiting and reproductivity. So if you keep that apical or terminal bud intact as it's growing, then you have more potential for developing the reproductivity. So what'll happen is on that pear tree, on that growth that's above that first tier, is you'll get some axillary leaves, buds that develop at the nodes, and they'll just sit there. They won't necessarily move.
Then what you can do is wait till next spring. They will break out and then you can choose the ones you want to keep to fit into your design. But keep that apical bud intact for as long as you can. And then at a certain point after several years, you don't want it to grow vertical anymore, then you can cut it out during the summertime.
Susan Poizner: It's interesting because some instructions will say that you cut your tree initially right before the wire and then it breaks up and then it keeps growing before the second wire, you cut it again.
Ron Perry: We haven't done that in commercial fruit growing in 20 years. That used to be what we used to do with central leader tree development, where we would make that cut to force the tiers we wanted, but what we learned with dwarfing rootstocks and with high density systems, and you want to start paying off your investment early in commercial fruit growing, is you slow the process of getting your return on investment early.
So we don't do that anymore. We tell the growers to keep the apical bud intact. If it comes from a nursery, they probably cut that top part off to send it to you. Then you take that new shoot as the leader and keep the apical bud intact.
[00:49:02] About Ron's espalier fruit tree book
Susan Poizner: So we've got to wrap up in just a minute, but I want to ask you about your book.
So this wonderful little book that I discovered on Kindle, you guys have just reissued a new version of it. I understand that the money is going to. Tell me where the money goes to that you're raising with this.
Ron Perry: So 70% of the proceeds are going to the operating budget of our horticulture gardens.
And that's really important because our horticulture gardens are self funded, meaning we don't get very much support from the university, and for the gardens we get a little bit, but it's a real kind of a problem and a stress point for us in the gardens to keep them and maintain them as well as we can.
So a lot of donations, a lot of money that comes in for flower testing, and that kind of thing will go in towards the operating budget. And so this is just something we just developed, and we're hoping we can get more books on various topics from various faculty members in our department, to help our gardens out.
That's, the real purpose of it. Yeah.
Susan Poizner: So for listeners who loved this show, and I can tell from the emails, a lot of listeners learned so much from you, Ron. Guys, if you loved this show, go to amazon. com or amazon. ca and grab your copy of Espalier Fruit Plantings for Northern Gardens: Creating Fruit Trees as Art by Ron.
Ron, thank you so much for spending the time. I got another email from John, who says, thank you so much for today's podcast. Incredibly helpful. So we all really enjoyed having this time to talk with you.
Thanks for coming on the show today.
Ron Perry: You're welcome. I thoroughly enjoy the opportunity.
Susan Poizner: All right. thanks everybody for tuning into the show today. If you want to listen again or download other episodes of this show, go to podcast.orchardpeople.com, and you'll learn all sorts of things about growing fruit trees.
You can also go to orchardpeople.com/articles, where I have articles about fruit tree care, and I have my brand new fruit tree care book called Grow Fruit Trees Fast, which is designed for you, for people who are busy. You can read that book in literally one hour, depending on how fast or slow you read.
And it gives you a great overview of how to grow fruit trees to make sure you're feeding them properly, caring for them, protecting them from pests and diseases. And there is a section on pruning as well. So you can find that book, Grow Fruit Trees Fast, on Amazon, or you can find it on learn.orchardpeople.com/books.
So that's it for today's show. I hope you're going to join me again next month when we're going to talk about another great fruit tree care topic. Thank you so much for listening in and thanks for those who participated. I will see you next time.
Bye for now.