I decided I would try notching this spring. The central leader on my combo apple has a 16 inch portion where none of the buds have grown since I planted the tree. This particular tree is growing like an espalier all in a single plane. I need a scaffold that is perpendicular to the other scaffolds. So last month before the tree broke dormancy I created a small notch into the wood directly above an ideal bud in an attempt to create a scaffold. I just noticed that the bud that I notched over is now pushing leaves. I don’t know what this will end up looking like but I’m confident the notch pushed growth.
As an additional test I side grafted a granny smith scion 180 degrees from this one a little lower down the leader in an attempt to see if I can get one growing in the opposite direction. We will see.
I had great success with notching apple trees last spring. I’d say 80-90% of the notches produced a branch.
A couple of my 2nd leaf trees also had runaway leader growth. On these I basically ringed the leader with a utility knife after reading that doing so can slow it down. In the photo you can see that I did three on one leader. Interestingly, the tree flowered and fruited adjacent to those cuts, but had few fruits on the rest of the tree. You can see the old attachment points for the apples. Very cool, I can definitely see using this as a means to get a tree fruiting early, but perhaps ringing it much lower on the tree would be better than my upper leader focus here. I should mention that the leader still grew very strong this year, so my original objective was not met, but I’ll take some fruit buds any day. There doesn’t appear to be buds for the coming year though.
Tried the notching method on fig trees with poor results. Tried BAP last year and the results were amazing to say the least. Almost every nub that I applied the mixture to produced new growth and branched. If I didn’t see it I would have believed it.
The guy with the handle ThaiFigs takes the credit for this technique. I just followed suit and glad I did.
I didn’t remove bark. I just ringed it, applying enough pressure that I felt like the blade was going all the way through the bark and cambium layers. I was surprised because I thought doing this would perhaps slow things down and initiate flower buds the following summer, but these flowered the following spring only a month or two after cutting. I did not know that was possible. These were the only flowers anywhere on the leader.
This technique should work for inducing dwarfing and precocity, however once the wound callouses – the effect will be gone. You might take a look at bark inversion.
Good point gsims. We have such a long growing season here that even if the scoring slowed the leader for a month or two there’s still several months left for to put on major vertical growth.
The typical effect of bark inversion is 1) larger/better quality fruits 2) more flowers. However, the effect is not permanent, it must be repeated once new layers of cambium develop. The guy credited with promoting this technique is Karl Sax. A 1957 article from popular mechanics describes his antics – (Popular Mechanics - Vol. 107, No. 2, p 113). This article has already been posted here –
I get a bit of a sick feeling in my stomach seeing him tie those apples into knots, much akin to the same feeling when I see a wolf pacing back and forth in a zoo cage.
This study by Arakawa et al – is a nice demonstration of increase in fruiting wood development and better fruit quality:
"Effects of Five Methods of Bark Inversion and Girdling on the Tree Growth and Fruit Quality of ‘Megumi’ Apple. "Journal of the Japanese Society for Horticultural Science. Vol. 67 (1998) No. 5 P 721-727
One interesting thing they do is bark exchange between cultivars. What I’d like to try is exchanging the bark from a dwarfing rootstock or natural dwarf apple. A slight incompatibility between the topstock and the exchange bark would, I theorize, cause the dwarfing effect to be permanent. Effectively this would be a interstem graft added ‘after the fact.’
Interesting thought on the bark inversion. When is the right time to do this? Would you need to wait until the bark is slipping to be able get it off cleanly?
Out of curiosity, what would happen if you had a runaway leader and just cut off the top foot and grafted it back on upside down? Would it have the same effect as bending the leader over?
I don’t know the answer but the concept is interesting enough to give it a try. Pretty sure this would need to be done while the bark is slipping or at least when the bark being added is slipping.
@zendog, I believe we have someone here that did that with an apple. He grafted a scion on upside down by accident. In the short term it did work! Buds grew downward initially and then bent upwards to produce quite horizontal branch growth. I’ll dig around on the forum and find out the long term health of the scion.
Use the little chain link button below his post, then copy and paste that link. And maybe we’ll call out @Seedy this way, and he’ll update us when he gets an email notification!
