SkillCult posted up a new video about a diagonal apple cordon. I’m intrigued by it and thinking about trying a small section to see if will work here.
Has anyone here done this, and if so, do most apple cultivars work OK with it? SkillCult mentions certain varieties work better, and twiggy and tip bearers may not work so well.
I see one user here posted up a while back about starting a similar project.
“I didn’t get this far by being reasonable”
Love this guy!
If it is predominantly about whether or not they are spur bearers or tip bearers you can look that information up. Pomiferous will usually tell you that and other things about a varieties growth habit. I would imagine that you want something that isn’t too vigorous.
Bernewold Nursery website seems to aways mention if an apple variety is amenable to the cordon/espalier crafts.
Yeah, love that site. Not sure how I didn’t know about it before this season, so thanks for sharing. Makes sense on the vigor. I’m not apple-educated enough to know if that’s the majority or minority of the cultivars, but will dig in!
Thanks, that’s handy Dannytoro1. Makes sense on espalier cultivars working well for cordon.
Pomiferous really is an outstanding source.
Last spring I got to thinking about how to utilize my space best and I turned my west facing fence line into apple cordons. I have about 80ft with 24 trees, about 2 1/2 ft apart, all on dwarfing rootstocks. Too early to tell but they seemed to grow decent/good their first year. I did make sure everything was spur bearing before selecting cultivars. I do have a mix of vigor so we’ll see how that turns out. Surprisingly there are fruit spurs on about half of them after one year in the ground.
Outstanding. That is sort of how I want to train some Howgate Wonders on dwarf stock. Except I’m going to put them on post and cables so they get sun on both sides evenly. Seeing posts like yours lifts my confidence.
That’s awesome, Dave! Really interested to see how it goes. Fruit spurs already sounds great! What dwarfing rootstocks did you end up on, and which direction does that fence face?
Bud 9 works decently here, and Bud 10 sounds really promising. I’m not clear yet if the trees can reasonably be slightly height controlled if a slightly larger rootstock like B10 is used.
I wonder, does anyone know if growing apples in cordons like this causes more intense concentrations of disease, especially fireblight?
The fence runs N-S and the trees are facing west. No morning sun to dry them out except some dappled through the fence so we’ll see, but I think they definitely get enough sunlight. I used bud 9 and g41. Think I have 2 on g11.
That would be ideal for sure with the sunlight hitting both sides evenly. I’m out of luck as the rest of my backyard is dedicated to family use.
I was absolutely considering this myself, but figured I won’t know if I didn’t try. Only issues I had in year one were some minimal aphids and rabbits gnawing on the low branches.
Cool. I’ll be interested to see how the G41/G11 do in the mix.
Sounds like you have the trees pointing south. Was that on purpose? Curious if you’ve read anything about orientation. SkillCult mentions he might have less sunscald if his trees were pointing South, but that didn’t seem to be a fully formed thought.
The trees face west. So they are in a line south-north and get sun from 10am ish to sunset. I planted them with the graft union facing north/north east to avoid damage to the union from too much sun exposure.
That’s a good reason. I would think sunscald of the trunk will also be less than he’s had, provided it fruits fine. Might also make a bit more sense like you have with them getting sun from the top (pointed S) vs bottom (pointed N).
I had extra Bud 9 grafts which I planted around the chicken coup. This pic looks pretty bad, but now that the trees are about 4 feet tall and branching, they look much better. I’ll try and get a more recent shot.
Darren - do you happen to have a link to that website you could share… having trouble locating it.
Thanks so much!
So, regarding tip v.s. spur, most apples that tip bear seem to bear on spurs as well. If it says semi tip bearing, chances are you’ll still get fruit even if you prune off all the tip flower buds. Very few are full on tip bearers, but it is a spectrum for sure. I would avoid full on tip bearers though. I have mother and pink parfait in there and I get fruit off both. Some are also just messy growers though, like Golden Russet and Pink Parfait. PP is not the first apple I’d pick for tidiness in a cordon or espallier system. Types that are not tip bearing and not vigorous growers and set lots of spur wood and then just bear without a lot of growth seem kind of ideal, but they are the minority. Remember, you can always work them over and be back in production very fast.
