Advice please! - espalier formative pruning
espaliernovice
Posts: 7
in Fruit & veg
Hello! Do you think I should cut out these laterals completely and hope/encourage others to grow? These are quite high (growing just above the first wire) and also are growing at a narrow angle to the stem. I'm worried they'll break when I try to lower them down to the horizontal. This is my first attempt at espalier growing - I'm trying to do it all from books! Thank you in advance!
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Can you not raise the horizontal wire by 3-4 inches? Sometimes you just have to adjust to nature rather than the other way around.
Good idea! Thank you for the reply I have 3 other trees along the same wire - all laterals at slightly different levels - typical! Any thoughts about the angle? Do you think I can get away with lowering these branches?
I'd put an intermediate wire above the lower one. If you lower those branches to the level of the wire in the picture the growing tip of the branches will be pointing downwards which is not what you need.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Thank you Dovefromabove....That sounds a good plan - should also help out a couple of the other trees which have a similar problem.
it will be easier to move the wire than either bending the branches down or chopping them off in the hope that more grow just where you want them
Espaliernovice , I have pear trees on my allotment and I am going to try the same , for the first time ,
intrested to known how you get on?