A fruiting archway for The Fruit Garden

Hello and welcome back to my blog! It has been another busy few days here. Today’s post shows you the start of the changes for The Fruit Garden this year.

A Fruiting Archway

I spent some time last Sunday building and installing a new archway in The Fruit Garden. This archway will be used for training apples trees up each side to form a fruiting archway.

I used the same hole maker the Mr and I used for building the fruit cage, to create deep holes (about 40cm) for the arch to sit into. The arch has been attached to the fruit cage at the top brace.

I then planted an apple tree on each side of the arch. These are bare root trees I planted out in pots at the beginning of 2024.

After installing the archway and the trees, here is how it was looking:

I will be training these trees as espaliers and they will eventually form a permanent fruiting archway.

The varieties used for these trees are:

• Apple ‘Golden Delicious’

Pollination Group 4 – Cooking and Eating Apple – an easy to grow variety that produces good yields of attractive golden-green apples, that store well over a long period after harvesting. Rootstock: M9

• Apple ‘Gala’

Pollination Group 4 – Eating Apple – A reliable cultivar producing attractive, red flushed fruits with a surprisingly sweet flavour when eaten straight from the tree, and make a delicious juicing apple. Rootstock M27

Rootstock M9 and M27 are less than ideal for typical espalier growing. M9 is deemed an ‘extreme dwarfing’ type of rootstock, typically used for dwarf pyramids, spindlebush or stepovers, for small gardens where the soil is fertile. The M27 rootstock is a ‘dwarfing’ rootstock, typically used for bush, pyramid, spindlebush, cordons; an excellent stock for small gardens.

The ideal rootstock for espaliers is M26 and that is the one I have used previously with good success. However, you’ll notice that the archway I am growing them on is small. The depth of the frame is only 40cm across the sides. Usually, 80cm is the minimum size to go for. The arch is about 145cm in width, which will leave ample space for walking through as the trees mature and leaf out. I don’t have space to increase the depth of the frame, but by using these smaller rootstocks, the trees should stay well within bounds and have no issue with being kept confined to the smaller arch. My plan is to just trim the side espalier branches to fit to the depth of arch, and then train the vertical growth up the arch, to eventually meet in the middle.

I am really looking forward to seeing how these trees grow! I don’t think there will be much of a crop off either of them this year, but hopefully, in the next few years, they will establish well and start producing fruit. I will be pruning the trees into shape in the next few days and tying them into the arches with soft twine.

I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post and thank you stopping by. I have other changes to come in The Fruit Garden and I’m hoping to produce some fruit this year!

Until next time, happy gardening 🙂