I agree- but time is money when you have little to spare. My perspective is as a commercial nurserymen and orchard keeper who has precious little “free time”. A spreader that costs a dollar but takes 10 minutes to fashion is not a bargain for me.
Stiff wire- like twice the stiffness of wire clothes hangers- with sharpened points used to be manufactured on the east coast by handicapped workers and were my spreader of choice until they stopped making them.
On the west coast there is a type with double pointed nails sticking out of sturdy pieces of wood- but shipping to the east more than doubles the price.
Commercial growers with narrow margins could pay help probably about $10 an hour to have their own workers make spreaders but the ones out of factories still sell. How much is your time worth?
How much is my time worth. Well, as a home gardener with 11 trees in all, the time to make spreaders is not such a big deal, but of course I have mostly used weights so far. I might go to the spreaders for the young trees in my front yard because I want to maintain them at a smaller size and want to be more deliberate about how I have them look. With my trees, especially the ones in the front, aesthetics is an important consideration. That’s one reason I bend more for structural strength and flexibility rather than for horizontal limb for productivity. Another issue with limbs that are too horizontal is that they in the way of mowing and the like more. Of course pears drop them right down and they end up in the way anyway. I lost count of the number of times I got clocked in the head by a limb full of Golden Boy Pears this yer which is planted a bit too close to a walking path. God bless.
I’ve made and used limb spreaders. They are OK, but it depends on your goal. If you want an open center trained on a young tree they have their use. But as the tree matures their utility is limited IMHO.
I like the gradual weighting that produces a gentle arch in the limb such that the new wood at the tip is pointing downward. One way to do this (and many other good ideas have also been expressed here) is to tie the end of the limb to a brick such that there is hardly any bend. Then every so often while out doing other tending, I’ll turn the brick such that more tension is on the limb Haven’t broken anything using this method.
As far as ‘when’ to do this, it depends on the tree and the time of year.
‘When’ you have a very vigorous tree, spring is a good time, if there is a lot of growth on it. This will also stress it into producing fruiting buds.
‘When’ you have an established tree that is just not fruiting, gradual limb bending will also stress it into producing fruiting buds. I would do this after the summer solstice as this is when fruiting buds are initiating naturally. Until then allow vegetative growth to store vigor in the roots for the next fruiting cycle.
‘When’ you have a new tree, and it is not established, or, is struggling with vegetative growth, it may not be advisable to limb bend. If it takes off before the solstice, perhaps bending a few limbs would not set the tree back.
I made a half dozen homemade limb spreaders using .75"x.75" pine sticks with finishing nails driven into each end. I then clipped the head and used a grinder to sharpen the ends into points. They seemed to work okay although despite my driving the ends into the tree limbs they would occasionally fall out. I had more success this year by tying the limbs down to large rocks that I set on the ground below the tree. I have to admit though that from a lawncare standpoint I cursed those damn rocks so many times because they were a real pain to trim around and if I got too close I often would cut through the sisal rope I was using for tie downs. After that I then tried to take advantage of the tree itself as an anchor point. I switch to some surplus 550 parachord I had lying around and would tie the limbs down to underlying limbs if they were available. This seemed to work the best. The only problem was that sometimes there just was not anything to anchor to.
When the branch is young you only need to control the tip. Chrome plated nuts can be held on with twist ties and moved from time to time as needed. A loop of that green gardening tape (non-adhesive stuff, you know it) can be tied to the subject branch and a lower branch and the loop can be nudged ahead every few weeks.
The issue of creating yet another mowing obstical in a lawn that has way too many on account of the fruit trees is why haven’t attempted the tie-down method. God bless.
I use many different methods to spread limbs- I bend the majority of them just by taping them to other limbs lower in the tree- or use string if that will give me a better angle. I actually keep temporary branches in the trees for this purpose. But often spreaders are just the ticket to get the proper angle of your permanent few scaffolds. Establishing trees are best served with 5’ rings of mulch beneath so stakes can always be placed there to tie branches down with string with no mower worries.
On upright growing varieties like Fuji and N. Spy I often tape all the branches and shoots of the upper tier to lower branches to create a full weep on top and force early fruiting for the fruit and to calm down the top of the tree. Varieties like this often are very hard to get horizontal secondary and tertiary branching. This is where temporary scaffolds with all their side branches removed pay off as sites to tape secondary branches to a more horizontal position.
Even just taping takes too damn much time, though, when all you are doing all day is pruning and training fruit trees. More than half my days are thus.
If you’re going to use spreaders on pear trees, use the plastic ones .
The metals ones dig into the tree and create an area that invites fb infection.
I lost a pear tree this year, because of this.
Good advice Ray I’ve had similar things happen. I cut a 3" sucker off once in cold weather and then it turned warm and killed that tree to the ground. I put pruning seal on the trees like that now. Any spot that’s open in a Fireblight prone area is asking for it. That was a 12 year hard lesson for me that was an absolutely beautiful tree.
Boy, that is good advice that I was oblivious to because my disease pressure is less here. It has never been a problem for me and I spread pear branches in high volume operation and have for decades using wounding type spreaders.
Clark, are you sure it was FB that killed the tree- did a canker appear at the sight of the wound? I didn’t know it jumped right to wounds and thought it climbed down from growing shoots. This is what UC Davis states in their guidelines, “New infections that originate at pruning cuts haven’t been observed on orchard trees;” but they don’t live in Kansas.
If UC Davis is correct, then metal spreaders shouldn’t be a problem with FB unless the wound somehow is more conducive to the problem than pruning wounds or unless CA is dealing with another kind of FB.
It sure looked like it Alan. Probably only a lab test would determine for sure. The entire tree started turning black from that spot and it was all dead besides one branch right away. That tree was really putting on growth once the warm weather hit which in this area that can be a Fireblight death sentence on any tree.
Well, here is one challenge that comes with putting weights in pear trees, especially pear trees that are in close proximity to one’s house. That’s hurricane season. Oh the hours it took to pain stakingly put the weights in the trees being so careful to scar the twigs and damage buds to then have to rip the same weights out of the trees at a hurried pace so that they don’t tear the tree apart in Hurricane Matthew, and worse possibly go smashing into my house of vehicles. Grrrr.
Thankfully I’m about 60 miles from the Atlantic Ocean here in Statesboro Georgia. Still they are predicting gusts between 50 and 70 mile and hour winds here which is plenty scary. God bless.
Weights made from concrete work well for small branches. We make them in multiple sizes using nursery tray inserts for forms and concrete ties for hangers The concrete ties are inexpensive and they save the extra step of cutting the wire. We use clothes pins to attach the weights to the trees. A 50# bag of concrete will make hundreds of weights. Its easy to move the weights from branch to branch so you do not need a weight for every branch that needs bending.
Well, I had a bit of a frustration in the concrete weight department. The weights I so carefully hung in the trees had to be ripped out before Hurricane Matthew arrived along with a thousand other hurricane preparations. That’s the downside of weights in trees during late summer and fall, especially when the trees are near the house. Of course in spring you have the possibility of tornadoes and there is no way to even reasonably think about removing weights with every tornado watch and warning, not that we get so many of those in comparison to other regions in the country. Fall is the least stormy time over all. It’s a good time to have weights in trees. But weights in trees sound like just an especially bad thing when you start talking about 40 mph winds or higher.
Happy news, no damage was done to my house or orchard on account of the storm. The Lord kindly removed three large hardwoods that were shading some of my muscadines and the two big pear trees on my late Aunt’s property in such a way that they did no damage and I don’t have to bother with removing them or cleaning up after them. We have been blessed with great protection. But for sure, one does need to think about improving the likelihood of storms ripping trees apart and causing other property damage when you put weights in trees. God bless.
The answers here seem to be mostly about what season is best for bending limbs. My question is about what year to bend limbs.
Should I give a 5 foot apple or cherry tree a couple more years to grow to the desired height (8-10 feet) before switching it from growth to fruit mode through bending below horizontal… or start bending down this season?
Curious what you ended up doing and how it worked out? I have a 2-3 yo pear that I’m going to start bending branches after I plant it but gradually until spring.