Monday, September 3, 2012

Green Smoothie Ingredients: Fruit in 7 months?

espalier Learn to Espalier with Valya A picture is worth a thousand words, this from: http://www.rawfamily.com/news/2012/08/espalier.jpg

Victoria Boutenko writes: "Now we realize why she (Valya) was so excited. From the trees and bushes that Valya received in the mail only six months ago, we are already harvesting our own apricots, figs, mulberries, black currants, peaches and grapes. We are now looking forward to our own pears, persimmons, and pawpaws".


Having read this post Learn to Espalier with Valya, I immediately thought of friends Dirk Becker, Nicole Shaw and Compassion Farm and what use I could put this information to and wrote:

"I remember your regrets about not planting fruit trees years ago. I too have similar thoughts, but here is an answer Learn to Espalier with Valya. Fruits in just 7 months?"

Espalier? My pruning books talk about this, but I was under the impression it was a long term project and too labour intensive for me...

So I decided to do my own research and as usual I began with Wikipedia: Espalier

(/ɨˈspælɪər/ or /ɨˈspæli./) is the horticultural and ancient agricultural practice of controlling woody plant growth originally for the production of fruit, by pruning and tying branches to a frame so that they grow into a flat plane, frequently in formal patterns, against a structure such as a wall, fence, or trellis, and also plants which have been shaped in this way.

File:Espalier - Belgian fence.jpg

  • 2010-10-10 05:04 Andyvancleve 640×480× (266695 bytes) Belgian Fence being trained at the flowering shrub farm. Andyvancleve www.floweringshrubfarm.com
More information on fruit tree forms are here.

I am most interested in keeping my neighbours and their animals out of my food garden. To that end I've erected a fence and gate, netting and planted scarlet runners, climbing nasturtiums, Himalayan Blackberries and am utilizing the Hawthorn tree already there.

Thanks to Valya, Victoria Boutenko and Wikipedia for getting me thinking about how I can train more permanent trees to produce earlier than I ever thought possible.

It is now September, 2012, time to think about planning my First WINTER GARDEN...