Building an Cherry fan

Greeting all, I am a newbie in northern NJ. I have been backyard gardening for several years and I added my first fruit trees last year. I started an espalier wall last year with trees from raintree and I wanted to add a cherry fan. Found out there pretty uncommon in the US so I decided to DIY. Yea! Sofar I ordered some Krymsk 5 rootsock from raintree. I plan to plant 1 or 2 in there final location and the others in pots. This is about as far as I have planed so far. If you where me what would you do next? Should I graft everything on to the rootstock or should I scion grafted to it first and continue to add verities as it grows larger? Or do you think it might be better too head the central leader when it reaches the desired height and chip graft onto it? Do trees lower branches move up as the tree grows significantly or do they stay relatively at the same height?

The branches will stay at the same height.

@appleseed70 @stan
What did your Krmsky 5 rootstock look like after a year in the ground?

These are my candidates, This is fully a work in process and any suggestions would be a great help.

Nice branching two bad it starts 4" off the ground

Looks Like I can train a new central leader on this one

will just have to wait and see what can become a new central leader

I just don’t know

I think I can see a good central leader growing. Does anyone know a good way to root that side branch.

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I actually like low branching but it’s a personal preference. If it’s too low for you, it looks like the center, top branch could easily be pulled vertical for a new leader and you could just remove those bottom two branches. It looks like it already has shoots coming out that might make good lower scaffolds if the height is right for you.

On this one too, you might be able to pull that upper branch on the right more vertical if you want to u se it as a central leader. Either that or just use one of the new shoots that are developing under it. It looks like at least two would work fine for a new central leader if you need more height on your trunk before branching.

All in all, I think you have some nice rootstocks to work with. Looking forward to seeing what choices you make and how they develop.

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This is how my Rootstocks are looking today. Honestly I expected more growth. I think the fact that I have them above ground in non-woven fabric grow bags has something to do with it. I am not declaring the grow bags a mistake far from it. This is my second year using the grow bags. Year one I planted Honeyberry Starters, Feijoa seedling thinning’s and ground cover raspberry’s. The feijoa growth was phenomenal but the honeyberry and raspberry growth was, well I wouldn’t even call it growth. Come year 2 the honeyberries took off in the spring and when I transplanted them last week the root ball was huge and healthy like the advertisements claim. The ground cover raspberry’s die down to the ground so it was hard to tell how healthy it was when I transplanted it earlier this spring, but after It leafed and grew out its 4x the size it was when I bought it. The raspberries I bought to replace last years failures I put in the ground in spring and I had 70-80% failure on the new plants. My first instances where correct to baby them in the pots the first year and transplant the following spring.

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one year later. I think I learned a valuable lesion. Root stock first year the scaffolds it comes with get larger but they dont feather out. Even if it did the chances of growing them where they are needed is slim. I should have cut the stock back and focused letting a new leader form with scaffolds.

I have to revaluate which stock I choose to form my fan. I did use the second from the right to do some practice hail Mary grafts

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