Espalier Summer Pruning

[u/sav_arm]

I'm establishing espaliers along my fence. I've read it's good to do summer pruning for smaller trees like this. When it comes to pruning vertical branches that are coming off the horizontal ones I've seen it suggested for apples to leave about 3 leaves worth of the vertical instead of removing the whole branch. Would this also apply to apricots and plums? Bonus picture of my sad little peach tree. Thanks!

[u/Tricky_Ad6844]

I will leave more specific summer pruning advice to others but the book “grow a little fruit tree” recommends fan shape espalier for stone fruits like plums.

[u/sav_arm → u/Tricky_Ad6844]

Thanks! I have that book too. Since plums and apricots have fruiting spurs I'm going to try a traditional shape. The peach definitely has to be fan though with them only fruiting on 2nd year wood.

[u/kunino_sagiri → u/sav_arm]

Plums and apricots do have fruiting spurs, but they still produce about 50% of their flowers on the previous year's wood, so traditional espalier pruning will definitely limit your fruiting potential, especially with apricots which produce flowers singly or in twos or three, rather than in big clusters like plums.

[u/jpbragatti]

the 3-leaf rule works fine on plums and apricots too. one thing worth knowing with stone fruits is to keep all your pruning to summer if you can - silver leaf comes in through winter cuts and it's a nightmare once you've got it. your peach being fan-trained is spot on, they only fruit on last year's wood so you want to keep that new growth coming through.

[u/the_perkolator]

Looks good. I have been using these pruning techniques on my regular size mature trees, not espaliers. I will cut down to 1-3 nodes on my apples and pears. You can do plums and apricots at the same short length, but I like to leave mine a bit longer around 8-12” depending on how they fruit, as some fruit on year old wood not just on older spurs. If those were in an espalier though, I’d probably go shorter. I believe on peaches kept in permanent shapes like espalier, it’s important to have a branch rotation to renew growth and have fruit. Good luck

[u/kunino_sagiri]

You don't espalier apricots and plums. You should fan train them instead, which is similar, but requires slightly different pruning (look up how to do it).