What to do with your espalier trellis while your trees are small

Grow morning glories, viney squash, or beans. The apples visible in bags are Gold Rush - the only ones I still have out there. We ate about 8 Roxbury Russet and a few Ashmead’s Kernel last week, all very nice.

The squash is Tromboncino. First year I’ve grown it and it is fantastic. Resistant to borers, has not gone down as fast as other varieties from powdery mildew, grows like crazy, and makes plenty of squash. Supposedly you can eat it when immature as summer squash but I didn’t think it tasted that good in summer. So I let the rest go to winter squash. It is a moschata, like Butternut.

Between the trees in my trellis layout, I lean 2m tall bamboo poles against the top wire and cable tie the end to the wire. Then I plant a something vining by the pole and train it up the pole and onto the top and second to top wires

Beans are a purple pole bean from Baker Creek. The trees near the squash and beans are getting pretty far along so I’ll probably stop planting other stuff nearby next year.

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Lovely.

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You risked planting trobmoncino near apple tree??? I wouldn’t do so… It is a such big bully in my garden, it kills what it could in 10’ radius…do you prune it?

Ah, you are right. I’d never grown it before so I didn’t realize how crazy it is. I was constantly pinching growing tips to keep it contained so it wouldn’t take over the apple trees on either side. Below is a pic from earlier in the summer; you can see that squash plant going up the pole in the back left corner of my yard. It didn’t get too out of hand; I was out there every day or two pinching espalier growth and strapping the squash vine to its pole anyway. But the squash are also putting a lot of uneven weight on the trellis cables.

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Beautiful garden

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Neat garden! And young gardener looks like a big helper!

What a beautiful and organized garden. You really maximize your space nicelt.