Espalier is the art of training trees to ensure they grow to a desired shape, height, width and depth. It is an ancient process of pruning, and tying down in a particular direction, to a wire, trellis, wall or any suitable frame.
Espaliered tress are best suited to situations where space is limited, and can be great for small yards, balconies, or running along the side of a fence or driveway. You may also like to use a series of espaliered trees to form a boundry, or to seperate different areas.
The benefits of growing espaliered fruit trees are many:
It Increases fruit production
They are Easier to prune, and harvest
They are easy to protect from birds
And They look great, especially when they are in full bloom
Espaliered Josephine Pear
There are two main ways to espalier, formal and informal. Formal espalier is a symmetrical pattern, trained in a particular desired shape, and Informal basically is the opposite taking almost any shape, to suit the area.
To begin, you need to prune to create a main vertical stem, if your tree is a few years old already, choose the strongest leading branch. Choose a style and train the side branches to achieve the desired shape. If you are starting from scratch or with grafted rootstock, you will need to wait a few years to reach this point. If you are grafting onto rootstock, you simply bud graft two scions at around the same height, one to the left, the other to the right.
Your first level should not be lower than 600mm from the ground, this is to protect the tree from bugs, pests and diseases in the soil, which will splash back when it rains. Each level then going up should be around 400mm to 500mm apart. I stop at 4 levels, the top of the tree should be able to be reached by hand without the use of a ladder.
What fruit trees can be espaliered?
Any really, and it deoesnt have to be fruit, it can be any tree that you wish to grow around any area, such as flowering creepers over an arch, or climbing beans, ivy, citrus - anything. In my personal urban garden I have around 12 or so at the moment. I have five stone fruits, the peach and nectarine are espaliered in a left to right horizontal fashion. I have been told that this is not the correct way for peaches and nectarines, but this year alone I got 80 plus peaches, and around 50 nectarines.
Espaliered Anzac Peach, next to Fantasia Nectarine
I have two plums and one apricot espaliered in a pitchfork shape. They are young and have not yet produced fruit, I am hoping next season they do.
Apples and pears are probably the best trees to esplaier. The horizontal style is perfectly suited as it directs the growth away from vertically, and focuses on producing lateral spurs. Spurs are just branches that flower after time, and go on to produce fruit.
Part of my apple orchard, I am growing them in pots untill I am ready to plant out and begin the espalier process.
My older more established Pink lady
Once you have chosen the branches to tie down, you need to find something suitable that won't cut into the branch and damage the tree. Some people like to use stockings or soft twine, its up to you, but one big deffinate no no is any form of wire that has a hard centre.
Using soft material like twine to tie down
Pruning (in Australia) is best done in the Summer time, as winter pruning can be a little bit of a shock for the tree, and you may find that during Spring and Summer, the tree tries to grow back even harder than before in the very place your pruned it. In Summer, the sap is flowing, and pruning promotes more fruit, and heals a lot faster. Winter pruning can lead to the tree producing a lot of leaves at the expense of fruit.
You want to keep the shape of the tree as neat and tidy as possible. When you espalier, you allow equal amounts of sun to hit the entire tree, hence all of the fruit produced can get the same opportunity to grow and synthesise light, which cretes the sweet fructose (sugar). When you let the tree become overgrown, you are limiting its ability to do this.