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Column Dig In: Training trees gets a lot into a small space

“Espalier” is a nice, short French word that means “trees grown in one plane to save space.”
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Espaliered fruit trees in early morning sun. A few trees produce a lot of fruit. (Mary Lowther photo)

By Mary Lowther

Woman can’t live on vegetables alone. At least, this one can’t, so I grow a bit of fruit in my small garden; raspberries, blueberries, grapes, cherries, apples, peaches and nectarines. How do I squeeze all of this lot in? The raspberries take up the area along the north fence, the grapes grow up the wall in the greenhouse and the trees are espaliered.

“Espalier” is a nice, short French word that means “trees grown in one plane to save space.” I looked up how to do this in many books and Youtube videos and felt so intimidated that I dithered about it for years before I allowed David to talk me into buying the trees, and now I wish I’d done it sooner. It’s not difficult at all — in fact, it’s fun! The apple and cherry trees we bought at Dinter Nursery are multi-grafted, with several varieties scioned onto the same trunk to ensure good pollination, because these fruits don’t self-pollinate well.

This time of year is ideal for planting out fruit trees. The recommended distance between trees is 12 feet, but we planted ours six feet apart because we’re greedy and are keeping our fingers crossed. On the outside wall facing south, David installed big hooks through which thick wires stretch horizontally a foot out from the wall. There are six tiers of wire, one foot apart and the first tier is two feet above the ground. I trained the branches to go along these wires — OK, most of them — I stupidly cut one off so that leg didn’t happen.

I dug a hole bigger than the root ball, put half a cup of fertilizer in there and mixed it with the soil in the hole, placed the sapling in the hole and held it upright while David filled the hole with water, replaced the soil and tamped it down hard to get out air pockets. Then I attached the sapling to the wires and began the training, encouraging and tying branches along each wire while pruning off branches growing anywhere else.

One of the things that intimidated me was the constant reference to “fruiting spurs”, with helpful pictures showing what they looked like, warning me that if I cut them off I’d never get any fruit. When I looked at my trees, everything looked like fruiting spurs so I decided to throw caution to the wind and just trimmed the trees to what they looked like in the books — long branches stretched along the wires in two directions. I learned enough to leave two or three leaves on each sprouting stem along each branch and that’s what I keep them pruned back to. The peach and nectarine trees are spread out like a fan because the books say they grow better this way — THAT much I can follow. The tops need pruning off too so they don’t grow above the highest wire. I prune whenever the trees look like they need it and again when all the leaves fall off in the winter, but I do make notes in my agenda book to remind me to check on them and for the fertilizing/compost tea schedule.

Another suggestion that daunted me was not to attempt espaliering unless we are prepared to do a lot of upkeep, but I haven’t found them to be time-consuming and I rather enjoy the trimming and thinning, keeping the trees within their framework. I fertilize them in spring and mid-summer with Solomon’s organic fertilizer, spray the leaves with compost tea every three weeks and water them with soaker hoses twice a week for half an hour. Because I haven’t seen bees around in early spring when these trees flower, I use a soft brush and pollinate them myself by brushing the stamens of each flower, although I’ve read that if a flowering heather was planted underneath, the bees will come. I knew heather was good for something besides reminding me of Scotland.

At first the nectarines and peaches suffered from peach leaf curl and hardly produced until I learned to keep the trees dry during spring and early summer when the fungus sticks to wet leaves. Once I installed a removable two-foot-wide plastic awning over the trees, I’ve had no fungus and harvest bumper crops and netting during fruiting season keeps birds away.

To encourage larger fruit, when the fruit begins to develop I rub off all the immature fruit every three to four inches (about the width of my fist) along the branch, leaving each fruit that distance apart from the next one. During the season I check from time to time and rub off the ones I missed. It’s not heartless — I prefer fewer, larger fruit, though I don’t like it when the little ones scream.

I highly recommend growing espalier trees if you have a little space beside the house, and they can be grown in pots, too. Just remember to locate them where they receive at least six hours of sun in the summer. These trees make the place look like the Garden of Eden and when you pick a warm, juicy nectarine off your own tree you’ll feel like you’ve gone to heaven.

Events: Winterizing your pond. Dinter Nursery, Saturday, Oct. 21 at 10 a.m.

Please contact mary_lowther@yahoo.ca with questions and suggestions since I need all the help I can get.