Too late to start espalier for Asian pear?

[slartibartfast]

Picked up this Tawara Asian pear on sale over the weekend. It’s about 6ft tall, 1.75" dia below the graft and 1" above. There’s a pair of opposing buds at about 3 ft and a pair of opposing branches a bit higher, maybe 4 ft. My understanding is that I should make a heading cut back to the first tier of branches. Alternatively I could head it at the second tier and then use some nicks to promote branch growth on the first tier.

Main questions:

1. which of those two options would be better?
2. are those cuts just too drastic for a tree this size, am I better off just planting it normally?

I can probably find space to plant it normally but i have a great SW garage corner perfect for an espalier, and my other trees are all stone fruits.

Zone 5a/4b

Thanks for humoring me, new here and new to fruit trees.

[poncirusguy]

You will need to wait till the tree is dormant before any cutting is done.

[slartibartfast]

Cool that was my plan, plant it now then prune in late winter/early spring

[JinMA]

Welcome to the site! Since your tree is already pretty tall - and assuming it’s still flexible enough - you might consider doing an “arcure” style espalier, which uses bending rather than heading cuts to form the tiers.

There’s a helpful diagram in this article:

Arcure

(I think you can get the page to auto-translate, but the picture pretty much conveys the idea.)

[Shibumi]

Great post and link.

I began a Belgian fence plum Espalier this year. Unfortunately 3 of the 5 whips never broke bud and died. I Wil replace them next spring.

Here is my attempt. Would have looked so much better with all 5 trees.

Belgian fence is perhaps the easiest form. You can even plant the trees at one of the two angles means you only need a single scaffold for the other branch.

Here is the image of completed Belgian fence.

I am also planning an Asian pear espalier for next year. I have several OHxF 87 rootstocks I grew out this year just for that project.

For a single tree espalier I will probably try to do a horizontal form with 3 layers.

Like this.

I am still debating doing a single variety Asian pear espalier or grafting each level with another variety.

[Masbustelo]

I would plant the tree now, set up your supports and prune the tree where you desire in the spring. It will send out new shoots. The uppermost keep to about 4 inches the first year, the next two become your horizontal cordons.

[slartibartfast]

Interesting ideas, thanks all. I hadn’t considered a multi-tree espalier but can see how it lends more flexibility.

Masbustelo- are you suggesting that if headed all the way back to dormant bud sites (blind wood might be another term?} those bud sites can reactivate?

[Masbustelo]

Yes, if you head it back to wherever it will push buds. I’d rather prune it one inch above a visible bud, ideally with 2 below it. Plant it now so the roots establish this fall.

[Shibumi]

Grafting more varieties is certainly more work, but you benefit from cross-pollination if needed, staggered harvest windows, and interesting aesthetics in fruit shape, color, size, etc.

As far as cutting back, etc. Your tree scaffolds start very high on your tree. I’d imagine you want a more reachable espalier form, though I don’t know where you are placing the tree and if it’s against an architectural element of you’re house or yard.

So I was curious about budding points on tree trunks for similar reasons that you ask about it.

Being a lay person when it comes to botany, I kept asking until I found the answer.

The visible buds you see on a tree are called adventitious buds. That is where you should see all new growth on healthy trees.

The other kind are called preventitious buds. These are bud cells hidden under the bark of the trunk, or branches too I guess. When the tree is stressed it is often these unseen locations that will push new buds…sometimes below the graft, unfortunately.

If you head a tree and there are no visible buds below your cut point, your tree should eventually create new buds at various locations.

Sadly (as far as espalier goes) there is no way to know where they will push new buds. It can also take a month or two for that to happen, as happened with some apple trees I relocated. The trees were going into their third leaf spring and it took them almost 2 months to bud out.

Since your tree is so tall scaffold wise, I would consider topping it at a few inches below the height you want your first cordon to be, assuming that is the form you want. The tree should bud out near your cut, then you need to train / prune from there.

If you don’t have any viable adventitious buds below your cut, you will have to grow out a branch where it pushes next year and work from there. Ideally you get at least three new buds, two of which can be your first cordon with the third going vertical to reach your next cordon level.

As as reference, first photo are 5 apple varieties I was attempting an espalier with. You can see I headed them and tried grafting scion back onto themselves since I didn’t see any buds on the trunks. Grafts didn’t take, so I gave up (prematurely) and moved the trees to my neighbor’s yard to grow as normal trees.

It was then I learned about preventitious buds.

The next photo shows what those preventitious buds pushing from beneath the bark look like. They look like pimples then little knobs like the photo.

The third photo is today on one of the trees. This year’s growth after budding out. It will need to be pruned in spring for a better shape.

[slartibartfast]

Ahh grafting! I didn’t even consider that- could graft the upper branches where I want them for the first cordon!

And thanks much for the explanation of adventitious vs preventitious buds- that’s just the kind of thing I was wondering about but getting kind of stumped on Google.

This was a $25 tree so a good one to experiment with. I mentioned the SW garage corner, but I’m thinking now about a candelabra form on the south side of the house which could use some livening up. It’d be centered directly under a window and wrap around it.

Thanks again for all the discussion. Got plenty to think about in the next few days before deciding on a planting location. Great forum

[Shibumi]

I also ran into a roadblock using internet searches.

Such is the way of looking for science in this day and age, unfortunately.

I want to give credit to Laura Sweany at Raintree. She is a horticulturist and she is the one that patiently answered my questions.

I spoke with numerous nurseries, but the person you normally speak to usually isn’t a horticulturalist.

PS grafting the tree back onto itself didn’t work for me. The issue might have been that I topped the trees and harvested the scion before the tree had woken up. This is normal for the scion, but you typically don’t graft until the host tree is flowing sap and pushing buds. Obviously these were still dormant and since it took almost 2 months for new growth to initiate, my grafts likely just slowly died with no resources moving in the tree.

If I had a limb below the topping cut it could have served as a nurse limb as it certainly would have budded and grown a lot sooner than the preventitious buds did, thus perhaps healing the grafts.

[slartibartfast]

Well, after a day mulling it over (need something to think about while driving a loader for hours), I think I’ll plant it under the window in attempt for a candelabra style espalier, with the intention to make a heading cut at what will be the third cordon/scaffold in the spring, and then graft the lower two scaffolds with scions from other Asian pear varieties.