Selecting rootstocks for espalier

You might also try Myers’ Royal Limbertwig, which purportedly conforms to espalier pruning without much trouble.

A video on Myers’ Royal Limbertwig from the late Tim Hensley:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TjKY-Seah0s

I have a good number of espaliers on a 6’ 3 wire trellis. Most of them are on M26 and G41 a few are on M111. I think G41 would be a good choice for Belgian fence.

2 Likes

Jamie,

I’m no expert in choosing root stock for espalier apple trees though I have 3 of them in my back yard. One bought already trained and formed from Home Depot and the other two I trained from whip, bought at Wilson Nursery. The Home Depot one fruited twice for the past 6 years but the pair that I’ve trained have not even flowered once for the same time period.

The two that I bought and trained from whip are Hudson’s Golden Gem and Red Fuji. Both were planted 8’ apart against a fence facing south, same pruning treatment, water and sun but their growths are not the same. It seems to me the HGG is exceptionally vigorous from top down. The RF is somewhat limited in growth, especially at the bottom rung. I also have a dwarf Honeycrisp in the front yard with literally all the water and sun that it wants. It’s barely growing much for the past 3+ years in that spot. So it is another slow grower too.

With that said, I think besides your choice root stock, you also want to consider the variety’s growth rate if you want certain look (besides fruits, of course). I’m sure some will give you dense greenery and some with minimal green and more skeleton display…

My experiences is very limited. I’m still learning from the experts on this board…

Good luck with your project.

Tom

1 Like

Thank you to everyone who’s responded - I really appreciate the insights and suggestions. A few things I’ve taken away:

  1. I’m struck by the wide range of suggestions, from Bud. 9 or G 41 (which appear to be the most popular suggestions - Cummins rates them as 25% and 30% of standard, respectively) to @Nick’s experience that something at or above 75% of standard worked out best in his location. I particularly appreciate Nick’s explanation of his thinking on that point.

  2. Looking at the comments from @Nick and @figgrower, location does seem to matter quite a lot (as one might expect). With this in mind, it was helpful to get the comments from @alan and @galinas, who is probably the closest to my own local conditions. I will definitely keep your cautions with regard to vigorous rootstocks in mind.

  3. Variety matters quite a lot, both in terms of vigor and in terms of trainability. Thank you to @figgrower, @alan, and @tomIL for reinforcing this point, and thanks to @Matt_in_Maryland for mentioning the Limbertwigs in this connection - I had been interested in finding out more about them, given their reputation for disease resistance (wonder how they might do further north).

  4. Reading between the lines, there seems to be some suggestion that the particular form of espalier makes a difference: for example, @Matt_in_Maryland suggests B 9 or G41 (Cummins 25%/30%) for a Belgian fence, and G 935 (40%) for a free-standing espalier. Similarly, @39thparallel seems to indicate that he would tend to use a less vigorous rootstock for a Belgian fence than he would for a tiered espalier, and @figgrower suggests that both M7 and M111 would likely produce excessive top growth in a Belgian fence. (If the problem is specifically top growth from the tips of the Y, I wonder if this could be mitigated to some degree by training the tips to form a horizontal top rail (I think I’ve seen diagrams showing this).

This seems to suggest that a Belgian fence curbs vigor (or would it be more accurate to say vegetative growth?) comparatively less than other espalier forms, which makes a good amount of sense. Doing a little probably sketchy math, a single tree trained as a six-foot-high Belgian fence, with the Y starting two feet off the ground, would have a spread of about eight feet and a total scaffold length of about thirteen feet, with two feet vertical and about eleven feet trained to 45 degrees. By contrast, a tree trained as a three tiered horizontal cordon of the same height and spread would have a total scaffold length of about 30 feet (!), with six feet of vertical and 24 feet (!)
trained to horizontal. That would certainly make a difference, I would expect.

Thank you again for taking the time to reply - once again, you all have given me a lot to think about.

Jamie

Yes, planting at a 45 degree angle decreases vigor, as does bending branches. Any buds or branches that face upwards will be more vigorous.

2 Likes

I’m three years in with my attempt at an espalier micro-orchard across my back fence with 7 trees, and had the same exact questions about roots when I was looking to get started. My top wire is 2.3 meters up (somewhat higher than your target height), with about 2.2 meters horizontal space allocated per tree. The forms I am shooting for are an alternating pattern of horizontal cordon and chevron with central leader.

You will learn a lot the first couple years, and probably wish you had done some things differently! At least that is my experience :slight_smile:

My location is an urban lot in Somerville, which is a neighboring town to Boston. So less cold in winter than the folks in Maine and even a bit warmer than @mamuang who is further inland, but still New England.

I think trying to match vigor of the rootstock/scion combo to the space available is a good idea. With a tree that wants to grow way bigger than the space, you are going to have to do a ton of pruning and even then it may take a long time to settle into fruiting if it ever does. You will continually be fighting the natural tendencies of the tree, and let’s say you neglect the trees for a year or two or move away. It would be nice if it became a disaster slowly rather than quickly, right? Of course it is tough to match the tree to the space ahead of time given all the factors at play, and undershooting on vigor is also not great. My current approach is to shoot for something likely to have a bit more vigor than needed.

In my tiny orchard even, the trees on the west side of the fence are doing about as expected vigor wise, but the ones on the east side are not. The east side gets more afternoon sun so it is drier and hotter (haven’t hooked up irrigation yet). So far all the scions I have used are fine for espalier, though I am walking through to pinch unwanted growth and tie shoots to the trellis every couple days through the growing season. Some varieties seem to take less wrangling than others. For instance Goldrush is very well behaved and easily does what I want. Sweet Sixteen is growing really thick shoots and twigs, which makes me have to shape new growth sooner than I might like, and makes it maybe a little harder to graft other varieties on. Ashmeads Kernel is growing very slowly; I probably undersized the rootstock.

I have a number of M.111/G.11 interstems, which Cummins was offering at the time I started. In retrospect I think I’d opt for a single mid to small size root. I have a couple G.30 and one G.222, and next spring I’m going to add another Goldrush on G.222 or a Redfield on G.935 to replace an Opalescent on interstem that got completely destroyed by fireblight this summer.

It is still too early to say if I picked the right size roots. But in general for your application I’d say something like G.30, G.202, G.222, or G.935 for average or lower vigor scion, maybe B.9 for high vigor. But take my advice with a spoonful of salt because mostly I am a novice and don’t have much experience. The other limitation is of course what you can find, unless you want to graft your own (which is more do-able than most people would think, but it will add an extra year or so).

Here are some writeups on my blog about my espalier project:

I have not gotten to my year 3 writeup yet, but if I remember I’ll edit this post to include it when I post it.

2 Likes

Thanks to @HollyGates for your account of your own experiences with espalier - I found it particularly helpful because we’re in a pretty similar situation, both scale-wise and climate-wise. Your rationale for the decisions you’ve made makes a lot of sense to me. I’ve also been reading through the write-ups on your blog, and found them really fascinating - I’ll definitely be spending some time going over them as I work out my own plans, and I look forward to the next annual report!

I also wanted to thank @figgrower for the clear and concise explanation and @tomIL for your examples of different growth patterns from your own experience.

@39thparallel: I was meaning to ask you about the (few) espaliers you mentioned on M111 - how are they working out for you?

For the most part, it seems like the sense of the board is that dwarf or semi-dwarf rootstocks are the way to go for a mid-sized espalier, allowing for differences in variety and local conditions.

Actually, given the emphasis that a number of people have put on the importance of variety, it seems like maybe I need to go back to figuring out what varieties I want to try and then try to find rootstocks that would fit their expected growing tendencies. And then do the best I can at actually finding them. Hm - a lot to think about…

Thanks again,

Jamie

The lower vigor varieties on M111 are runting out and I have planted dwarf trees between them. The high vigor varieties are growing nicely on a 6’ trellis with 20’ spacing in good soil. M111 seems to accentuate the varieties relative vigor. With high density plantings adjustments can be made to account for vigor and rootstock by adjusting spacing or height. Some compensation for over vigorous plantings can be made with pruning.

By all means, research and formulate a plan based on the best information available. At some point, you have to put some skin in the game and plant trees knowing that you have more to learn.

4 Likes

Well, ask ten fruit growers, and you’ll get a whole lot more than ten opinions. Here’s mine: I am a little north of Chicago, Zone 5b-6a. In 1991 I started a Belgian fence grafted on–hold onto your hat!–M27. Two 8-foot panels against a wood fence facing southeast. 2-foot centers, 45 degree split at 2 feet. One panel of 5 trees is Blushing Golden, the other of Empire. This has been both productive and well-behaved all this time. The top of the fence is 6 feet, and very little pruning is needed each year to keep the height at this level, and very little to keep it from getting too much in front, where I put annuals each year that I don’t want to step on.Needless to say, no ladder needed. It may be that varieties of low vigor would be puny on this rootstock, but at least for these two varieties, it couldn’t better.

1 Like

Even low vigor varieties should be able to fill a 20 ft wide 6’ high espalier spacing on 111. Pruning also can stimulate growth by reducing spur wood. Trees runt out when they have too much of it, sometimes even when you carefully thin the fruit. Creating flowers the year before they produce fruit is a huge expenditure of energy- it is vegetative shoots that most feed wood and roots.

Of course, nitrogen, soil quality, heat units, length of season all play into relative vigor as well.

2 Likes

Thank you for sharing your experience, Allen - M27 is really pretty far toward the dwarfing end of things, isn’t it? It’s sounding more and more like there’s a pretty wide range of workable possibilities for this kind of project, in terms of rootstock, from very dwarf into semi-dwarf. Your reference to breaking things down into eight-foot panels has also given me a very useful way of tackling some of the layout questions I’ve been working with, so thank you for that, too!

@Alan, you had mentioned being intrigued that Orange Pippin et al were suggesting such vigorous rootstocks. For what it may be worth, I did a little more digging around, and found this on OP’s web page dealing with espaliers and fan-trained trees: “For apples, growers in the UK will probably prefer the MM106 rootstock. M26 can also be used, and will produce a slightly smaller tree. In the USA MM106 is usually considered too vigorous for espaliers (since most US climate zones have a longer growing season than the UK) and semi-dwarf or even dwarf rootstocks are more suitable.”

In a broader way, your response to @39thparallel and on my initial post have helped me get a better sense (at least in theory) of vigor as something that has a lot of moving parts beyond the choice of rootstock - though that’s obviously one of the harder things to go back and change…

In response to 39thparallel: as much as I learn from everyone here, you’re right, the time is coming for me to go find some trees to learn from, too.

1 Like

HERESY ALERT!!! HERESY ALERT !!! :wink:

I will admit that when I started my now 90 tree 120 variety espalier playpen, I knew practically nothing nor did I pay attention to precocity, vigor, etc and their connection to rootstock.

At that time I was paying attention only to whether a particular rootstock would work in my clay rich soil.

I picked varieties that sounded like ones I would enjoy eating, then filtered by zone and ripening time.

I wound up with mainly M111 rootstock and it has been working very well. For most part I got apples in the second year in the ground all by the third year.

As I read this thread I wonder if, for a non-commercial home orchard, getting lost in the weeds of rootstock selection is a time effective endeavor. Certainly, I suspect, that most of us harvest (when we get them) more than we can use.

I may be mis-reading the gist of this thread but is yield that important an issue?

Mike

3 Likes

A mistake I made years ago in setting up apple espaliers was that I didn’t realize that some varieties have tip-bearing tendencies and don’t lend themselves to the type of close pruning that espaliers require. This has nothing to do with the rootstock. I wasted time and space with Westfield Seek-No-Further, Tomkins County King, and Delcon. (I do have Delcon as a free-standing tree now, and it bears well because I don’t fight its weeping habit. For espaliers, varieties in my hands that bear well are, among others, Winter Banana, Empire, Blushing Golden, Gold Rush. and Esopus Spitzenburg.

1 Like

Perhaps your frequent summer pruning is the ticket. Espaliers I manage don’t enjoy the benefit of regular summer appearances from me and often only get one pruning during the growing season.

For espaliers, yield is often important for home growers because many of them opt for espaliers because of limited space.

Hi Mike,

@mamuang mentioned you as someone who had a lot of experience with espalier, so I’m really happy to get your perspective on this question. And I have to say, I got a kick out of you charging in with the Heresy Alert!!! sirens wailing.

To respond to the question you posed, maximizing yield is not the driving issue for me, personally. I mean, sure, I would like to be able to grow trees that bear relatively early and relatively well, but as you point out, I’m not growing commercially. @alan makes a valuable point about why maximizing yield from an espalier can be an important consideration for home growers with limited space. In our particular situation, though, I think we do have enough space, in theory, to produce as much fruit as we would want to. (In theory…) So for us it’s less about the square footage per se and more about espalier offering an attractive solution to some specific layout constraints, if that makes sense.

In the bigger picture, Mike, it seems like you’re suggesting that I would do better to put the emphasis on choice of varieties and make the choice of rootstock a secondary concern (important to make a good choice, but not necessarily the best.) This seems to be the drift of the thread as a whole, actually, both in terms of the many different rootstocks that people have recommended (all the way from @Allen’s M27 to your M111) and in terms of the point that people have made about different varieties behaving very differently on the same rootstock. (I know I’m slow, guys, but it does sink in eventually…)

This is sort of what attracted me to MM111, in that it seems to be both dependable and widely available, allowing for a wider choice of varieties. My concern was whether it would be manageable in a six-foot-high espalier. It sounds like your experience shows that it can be, and in growing conditions similar to ours here, though it would require diligent summer pruning, as Alan points out. I can see why the pruning requirements might make it impractical or undesirable for some people, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a deal-breaker for me (though it’s certainly something to keep in mind).

Speaking of things to keep in mind, I wanted to thank @Allen for reporting your experience with Westfield Seek-No-Further. That was one I’ve been looking into, because I’ve heard that it’s a really good apple and one that does particularly well in our area (the Westfield in the name is just a couple of towns over from where we are). But I wasn’t aware of its tip-bearing tendencies. Based on your experience, I’d still like to try growing it - but maybe not in an espalier…

Many thanks,

Jamie

1 Like

Never heard Westfield making anyone’s top 10 list. I vetoed it upon sampling the fruit myself. I think what makes it a “seek no further” variety may be more its reliability than taste off the tree- but it’s been years since I tasted it.

Incidentally, if Mike had no trouble bringing 111 to fruit on an espalier, don’t assume he is paying the price of less yield as a consequence of the rootstock once the trees begin to bear. As a free standing tree 111 is usually quite productive once it comes into bearing. Once a tree comes into bearing mode I don’t think there’s much difference in productivity- I’m just surprised Mike got them there that fast.

Mike, do you grow any vegetative types such as Fuji! I have difficulty bringing that one in even as a free standing tree I don’t expect to bear for 6 years.

1 Like

@ALAN,
@JinMA

I do admit that I have the luxury of tending my espaliers on a weekly basis and really do aggressively curtail unwanted growth and encourage the growth that is going my way. But because of the inherent nature of an espalier, it is less time consuming than with a traditional growth tree.

However, as to yield… a 5 tiered espalier with the first tier being 20 inches off the ground and with 18 inch spacing between arms will top out at a height of about 7.5 feet (easily with reach of a 5 foot tall person standing on the ground). With just 6 foot lateral arms you get 60 linear feet of fully sun exposed growing branches. Spacing apples at 6- 8 inches means that you will get 90-120 big beautiful apples per tree.

Adding a sixth tier makes it top out at 9 feet off the ground and could easily be reached by that same person standing on a milk box while adding another 12 linear feet and 24 apples. Oh! and the opportunity to graft varieties …

I think the main complaint of the grower would be that he/she has to thin too much. My main problem is that the espalier method makes it a little harder to protect against squirrels and birds as more of the apples are more exposed. But,being so exposed, fungal and bacterial disease issues are reduced (good ventilation - quicker drying after rain), they color up very well ( sun exposure) and any disease outbreak is easier to spot and treat and spraying is a breeze- just like painting a fence with once of those paint spray guns.

In addition an espalier looks so cool :blush: and I never get tired of the ooohs! and aahs! from first timers looking at the trees.

Ok … so its December 17 and my sore muscles have just finished recovering and I have to wait until April… darn!!!

Mike

3 Likes

@JinMA

Jamie,

Pruning takes up alot less time with an espalier. The exposed nature of the espalier makes it easier.

I had been spending more time weeding than pruning. The shredded woodchip mulch I put down 3 years ago had begun to break down and weeding was becoming a huge problem. This past summer I laid down some weed fabric between the rows and added non-shredded larger wood chips onto the ground between the fabric. The photo below shows what I was busy doing this summer ( but before I put down the woodchip/chunks). I was spending more than 2 precious hours each weekend weeding and never catching up.

SEE PHOTO BELOW

The important thing to keep in mind is that during the first formative years SHAPING IS MORE IMPORTANT than pruning.

As for pruning… LESS is MORE. Get rid of those branches that are absolutely growing in the wrong direction or place. Leave all the others to their own devices. It is always easier to cut off than to add to a tree. And during the early years you want to encourage growth. The more you have the more choices to trim you have.

So… in the first couple of years prune during dormant season to encourage a flush of vegetative growth in the spring so you have more options in the shaping paradigm. Once the tree is pretty much formed you switch to more aggressive summer pruning with the focus of creating fruiting spurs.

Its a great ride!!

SUMMER 2016 PROJECT

Mike

6 Likes

@alan

Alan,

No Fuji The only tree that has not given me any fruit at all is a rescue Gala that I picked up emaciated, dried up and partially uprooted in the pot from HD two years ago for $5.00. All leaves were dried up but the scratch test showed potential life. It just broke my heart to see it. I actually got angry looking at it.

This summer will be third year in the ground for me. I don’t know the rootstock (other than “semi-dwarf”) but it took off like gangbusters once it got water and some good company.

Mike

You mustn’t become so emotionally attached to clones. They don’t really have souls.:wink:

2 Likes