Just starting out with some attempts at growing Cherry with the UFO training method. I cut off a few of my Cherry trees with good opposable limbs located 12-20 inches above ground. These trees have 2 limbs at approximately the same height parallel to the ground, (one one each side). I cut them to this shape early this spring and so far no upright shoots have developed. I notched at seemingly good locations, and even tried BAP+Lanolin to get some uprights to sprout. So, far no luck. Am I just being impatient, or am I doing something wrong?
This is my first time attempting the UFO training method. The cherry trees are all located along the fence with about an 8-10 foot spread between each fence post for room. I was gifted these Cherry trees by my sister (who loves cherries), and I have no idea of the rootstocks on them other than they list them as semi dwarf/dwarf on the tags.
The original pic of the first tree I posted still hasn’t sprung any uprights yet. The pic below is of a smaller tree that had sprung a bunch of laterals, but they were all facing away from the fence in the wrong direction. I bent those branches upwards and tied them in position to redirect their growth. It seems to have worked fairly well, and it now has four uprights.
You are getting there. Thanks for sharing the progress. I grafted a sweet cherry this year and intended to do two arms UFO like you are doing. How long you let the scaffold grow before you bend the scaffold down?
I planted these trees in the fall, cut off most of the growth other than 2 opposing arms early in the year during a dry spell. I sealed the heading cut with pruning seal just to be cautious that I didn’t pick up anything nasty. I bent the arms down in the spring after petal drop and it had set some cherries.
I have decided to shape most of my cherry trees in a bi-cordon UFO style fruiting wall against my fence. One of the issues I’d encountered last summer was that it’s sometimes not so easy to get the upright fruiting offshoots to grow exactly where you want them positioned.
The main problem I’d found with the UFO style was getting the upright branches to grow in the proper direction and position along the two main horizontal cordons. Many of the natural buds along the main lateral scaffolds were pointing downwards or outwards, which is not exactly ideal. Growth from a rear bud facing towards the fence can be easily trained upwards if it is in a desirable location for a fruiting upright. However, growth that is facing downwards or outwards is not exactly ideal to try and train into an upright fruiting offshoot. Also, many of the potential growth buds along the lateral cordons did not have the correct spacings between them that I desired.
I came up with an idea last summer that I hoped could get the upright fruiting offshoots located exactly where I wanted them. I figured why not use bud grafts to attempt to get the new growth in locations I wanted? By this method, I’d hoped I could induce offshoots to grow upwards at the exact spacings I was looking for.
I had a nicely shaped bi-axis cherry tree that I hadn’t planted out yet, (that wasn’t my favorite variety), that didn’t have a lot of potential growth buds located in good positions. So as an experiment, last summer I grafted six buds of Sweetheart cherry along the two lateral cordons to see if this could help with positioning uprights at desirable locations.
I took a look at this tree yesterday and it looked like at least 5 of the 6 bud grafts were springing to life. So tentatively, this seems like a good method to get the upright offshoots to grow exactly where you’d like them. It should also have the added benefit of improving the chances of cross pollination with multiple varieties growing on the same tree.
Maybe it’s too soon to say this was a full success, but so far it looks very encouraging .
