Do you love fresh, organic, local fruit, but lack the yard space, or even live in an urban environment with little room for growing?  You might want to consider growing an espalier fruit tree.  No, this isn’t some new exotic type of fruit, rather it is a method for growing trees in a hedge-like manner that enables people with even the smallest yards to be able to grow fruit trees.

The definition of espalier is “a trellis or framework on which the trunk and branches of fruit trees or shrubs are trained to grow in one plane”.

Essentially what it means is progressively pruning your tree to grow in a flat plane along a fence, side of a building, or existing hedge. This approach will take several years of continuous pruning as the tree grows, as well as yearly maintenance when you perform your winter pruning and late summer thinning, but will leave you with a space efficient tree that should produce an abundance of fresh fruit.

Imagine the possibilities!

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As gardeners, many are already aware of the benefits of successive planting strategies.  Planting a row of beets, carrots, peas, etc. every two weeks during planting season allows for you to harvest continually as long as the weather allows.  But did you know that same concept can be applied when planting fruit trees?

For instance if you like peaches and have decided to plant a peach tree in your yard, why not plant a series of trees that produce at different times, allowing for longer periods of harvesting?  This gives you an extended bounty of organic, local fruit from the closest possible source - your own backyard.

I love organic peaches, and nothing says summer like a fresh peach still warm from the afternoon sun, ripe and juicy, they’re fantastic.  But with a typical peach tree there’s an intensive couple of weeks where hundreds of peaches are suddenly ripe and ready to be processed or eaten.  The massive canning and freezing undertaking can get tiresome and make even the stoutest gardener think about resenting the sudden influx of delicious fruit.

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