Young espalier pear/plum pruning advice requested

Hi, I am looking for opinons on current pruning of three youg fruit trees. Two Asian peers wer planted early last June - Shinseiki and Hosui. Both are being trained to 3-wire lateral espaliers (I hope).

First up is Shinseiki (3 pics below). It was cut where the y forms last June and grew up around 18" and the laterals made some progress. My plan here is to cut off almost all of the main stem 2022 growth to encourage 2 laterals along the wire. I would also cut off the extra , lowest lateral which faces forward as it is not needed. should I just leave the laterals alone and aloow the terminal bud to continue on or cut them back some to encourage growth?

Next up is Hosui (2 pics below). It is basically in the same state as Shinseikie, but the laterals are far smaller. I would probably prune it the same as Shinseiki.

Finally, I planted a bareroot Mt Royal plum about 1 month ago. This will be trained in a fan. I cut off the top and wrong-facing laterals at planting, but think I need to cut back more. The two lowest, largest laterals should make good bottom laterals. Should I cut the trunk right above them to encourage them to grow this year?

I;m not in a hurry to get these to final shape.

Thanks for any help that you can offer.

Jerry

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I do not have much experience with Asian pears, but I think espalier technique should be the same as in apples. For the first one , I would make cuts(red) and tie down (blue)
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The low small branch serves not purpose. The trunk should be cut either bellow the second wire or above one bud . So top bud will be developing in a new trunk and two buds bellow will start developing in new shoulders. The shoulders do not have to be on the line with second wire, they can go up at an angle and meet the wire. So basically you find a section of the trunk with 3 good buds below second line and cut above it . The right shoulder on the first wire is too short to tie down yet, but as soon as it long enough, tie it down

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Don’t go to your second tier until the first is complete. You will regret it later. Cut the upright back to the first bud. Keep cutting it short through out the growing season.

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I think you’re on the right track with the pears and I agree with @Masbustelo that it would be a mistake to keep the upright until the first tier is formed. A couple of additional thoughts:

  • Depending on how pliable the upright is, you might be able to bend it down to form one side of the first tier.

  • If you want to get a little quicker growth out of the laterals, you might train them to ~45 degrees first (using bamboo or something similar) and then lower them later.

  • If you are able to bend the upright down, you might be able to get more balanced growth in the first tier by training the upright to horizontal and the lateral on the other side to 45 degrees (which would tend to encourage faster growth in the more upright branch).

I’ve never trained a plum as a fan so I hope some other people will chime in about that - it sounds like a cool project!

I concur with JinMA. The problem with bending down the upright is that the bend will be higher than the wire. Causing the sap to have to run down hill. Sometimes that can cause apical problems. ie The cordon may always struggle and first tier is always the weakest.

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Thanks to all. Masbustelo, I assume that you mean cut off the trunks just above the first wire? That’s what I was thinking to focus growth in the first tier laterals. This is why I mentioned that I am not in a hurry - I can take the time to get each level right.

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What do you mean under complete? Grown to full length? When I espaliered my apple I did a layer a year, and other layers continued to grow. By 5 years old it was full 4 layers, 9’ wide , producing. But my tree was growing on former garden bed, so may be it grew faster than regular.

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Taking the time is definitely the right way to go. (I am not always so patient, unfortunately, which is one reason why I mostly stick with simpler forms.)

@Masbustelo Good point about the potential issues with a downhill bend. In my experience, one of the downsides with bending down an upright is that that it can continue to grow more strongly than the lateral that’s forming the other side of the tier. So, a slight downhill might actually help to balance the growth between the two sides. But I can see how it could create complications down the road (after the upper tiers are in place).

@anon89542713 Sounds like it’s doing great! Like you’re suggesting, a lot depends on how strongly the tree is growing overall, which could be affected by a lot of things. Also, this is going by somewhat limited experience, but my observation has been that different varieties tend to produce more or less balanced growth when trained for espalier.

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@Jerrym303 Yes, cut your vertical about an inch above the first wire, leave a nice bud, then try to keep it not longer than 4 inches throughout the summer.

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Thanks everyone. I will hack away!!! I’ll try to remeber to post pics in the fall.

Jerry

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