I am looking for limb spreaders that work on current-season growth. Most limb spreaders seem to rely on the trunk or main limb being hardened, last-year growth. My apples are branching on current-year growth and I think most commercially available limb spreaders would damage the main stem if I tried to use them, but the branches are WAY too narrow as they are. Any suggestions?
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@BG1977 … if you find something that works great and is easy … I would be interested too.
I had pears persimmons and apples this spring developing scaffold branches and looked around some and could not find anything that looked like it would work well on new branches… soft tissue.
I ended up making a bunch of these from small trees in my woods.
I strapped them onto the tree trunk just below the new branch (with parafilm) and slowly over time pulled the new scaffold branches down to a more horizintal position.
One of my pear trees…
Caution that soft tissue new wood will snap on you quickly if you try to move it too much at a time. Correcting the crotch angle 10-15 degrees at a time… and waiting a week before tweaking again worked for me.
Good Luck !
TNHunter
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TNHunter-Great job with your trees!!!
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Trev, I had a pear tree that I trained in a similar fashion to yours over 10 years ago. The problem I found out later was that the top surfaces of the horizontal branches got sun scald. Later when I took the tree down and examined the wood I noticed that the top half of the horizontal branches wood that got sun scald was dead. Here in north Texas the sun is intense in the summer. Hopefully that is not an issue for you. You could paint them with latex paint if you feel that may be an issue for you.
Another issue I had with horizontal branches was that vertical suckers form on them very easily.
ive made some by just notching a piece of branch on both ends.
@nana7b … I will keep an eye out for sun scald… checked them this morning and no problems so far…
This is what my 2 pear trees look like today.
They have grown nicely… still need more work.
Check out the persimmon below…
That is a graft of H63A that I did this spring. When it grew past 5.5 ft… I tipped it… now all those scaffold branches are developing.
Those are all still quite soft new wood.
Think I will try some traditional spreaders on them… and shoot for more like a 50 to 60 degree crotch angle.
TNHunter
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My first take after seeing the picture was that that graft is not going to work out 
And that the knife work wasn’t up to your usual standard for grafting.
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Drink milk- use gallon filled with water and adjust tension as needed with twine. Free option.
Tie with two half hitches for adjustable tension.
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The older leaves on that H63A got beat up by a hail storm early May.
They are large but a little ragged… the new scaffold branch growth is looking good.
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