Is it possible to espalier certain types of citrus? Have you seen or tried this yourself? Curious. Cheers, LPN.
Yes, citrus can be espaliered. I have seen espaliered citrus in California growing against a brick wall. It really looked great. A local nursery sell mandarins espaliered against a white picket frame, so that the buyer already has a good start when it is transplanted against a wall or fence. - Millet
Wouldn't one be sacrificing fruit production as an espalier requires much trimming (i.e. reduction) of vegetative growth?
I don't think fruit "production" is the major concern with espalier. If you want "production" you'd grow a tree in the normal fashion. Espalier serves to conserve space yet yeild moderate quantities, most often for home use.
I've actually heard that espalier "increases" fruit production and maintains consistant production from year to year. You'll see lots of apple farms with all their trees espaliered.
Apples are different in that most production trees are pruned every year. Citrus are not pruned every year as when terminal tips are pruned or pinched back new, replacement, vegetative growth have to have some stem elongation before they will produce flowers. After a pruning of the tops of the trees we can artificially induce flowering in the new growth by using a growth hormone or a plant growth regulator or due to the age of the tree or the form of it we can get flowering from old growth but we may not see much flowering later in the growing season or none at all from the new growth. One form of Citrus that is easier to espalier and still get new growth that will flower are some of the Mexican and Key Lime forms, more so than the Tahiti and Palestine forms. We can break these down into forms due to them being similar enough to lump them together due to their physical characteristics, yet we can also separate them out due to other similarities. Thus to most people a Key Lime and a Mexican Lime are the same plant but to me they most certainly are not by the behavior of the plants, the shapes and sizes of the leaves and the sizes and shapes of the fruit (sometimes the color of the fruit when mature as well) but it takes seeing many of these trees for several seasons to see how they appear different from each other. Calamondin forms can be espaliered as well. We may call certain forms of Lemons that have been trellised as being espaliered but in reality they have been trained to grow on a trellis and then are left alone to achieve flowering and fruiting ability. Some areas do not care about having fruit but are more intent on seeing the whole mass plant or plants in bloom. A Citrus hedge in some areas were not designed to yield fruit but were expected to yield an abundance of flowers which in itself when seen makes a statement all its own. The first Citrus hedges that I know of in the Los Angeles area were Rough Lemons and would flower en masse all at once, yet few people wanted the flowers to yield fruit as they were too bitter, to be edible to most people. There are times we have to separate out what a trellised Citrus is from a Citrus that has been espaliered. Citrus can be set up to grow on a trellis in a home garden or a landscape but some people certainly did not want to espalier them as the home owners did want their trees to set fruit for them. Even gardens in Seville had Oranges stem tied to walls which at first glance may seem to have been espaliered but when the shapes of the tree or trees have been laid out and hand set for coverage then the trees are pretty well left alone to fill in on their own without much hands on snipping, pruning or pinching back to control the shape of the tree as it is growing on a wall. Some people want the openness of the branching and sparseness of the growth to remain, thus on one hand we have an Orange that was trained to grow on a wall and appear like it has been trellised and in others we have a tree that was designed to be hands on espaliered. The difference to me is that both forms entail trellising but one form, espalier, requires more hands on care during and afterwards than the other. Look at the Botany Photo of the Day picture of the UBC Fruit garden to see Apples (going from memory, I should have checked to be more certain) that have been espaliered to grow on a multiple wire. Look at how the tips of the branches appear with the hands on care. If continued on like those trees have been, we call them espalier but when left alone to fill in and only the vigorous or unruly growth are pruned out we call that being trellised. Production Apples have been trellised in some areas to make them easier to hand pick and are also set up in some locations for machine picking but those same trees are not about to be espaliered as then we limit the overall production of the number of fruit. That is not to say that when we limit the amount of fruit that we cannot have better quality and larger sized Apples had we espaliered the trees as then we thin the trees much like what the Japanese do for many of their Fruit trees whereby the numbers of fruit is not what they want, they want fewer, larger sized and better fruit with their almost ruthless thinning practices. It works well for them and when we've eaten one of their Mandarins right off the tree in Japan we will know why with hands on care they thin their trees like they do. Jim
i knew of one lemon large lemons i think it was ponderosa that was espalier it ended up getting root rot and died but the couple said it was ther for about 20 years. for the size of the tree it did produce a good amount it was only 4 feet tall fan shaped . i have only ever done it with an apple and its the first time it has flowered since i did the espalier but does seem to produce more fruit in fact it has two apples about ready to rippen has two that should ripen about a month after the first and just had some flowers that are now producing fruit weird it bloomed three times since november . from what i have read most of the stone fruits will produce more. i have no clue about citrus though i have been having a tough time getting some of them to flower even though they are green and healthy. i may try to espalier a few of them to see what happens.
