Espalier Fig III

It's time for another update on my espalier fig. I planted a young Celeste fig in the ground at the corner of my garden shed about 18 months ago. Since that time, I've continuously trained it and pruned it. My previous two posts (Feb. 8, 2011 and June 10, 2011) show the process from its early stages, both in active growth and dormancy.

The tree has flourished this year and is now almost at or above the roofline of the shed.

Fig espalier.

I am continuing to train vertical shoots at 9" spacing. This is fairly easy to do when the growth is new, but you don't want to try it with very new green growth. I found out the hard way when I accidentally snapped off the horizontal leader on the right arm of the tree. You can see that the right arm terminates well before the end of the support stakes, visible in both pictures. Now I wait for the new growth to transition between green and woody surface before I train it in any given direction.

Close-up of main trunk and arms of my espalier fig.

I cut off the lowest leaves on each vertical shoot to clearly show the main limbs and vertical shoots. I am using green plastic tape (not sticky) to secure the limbs to the wood and metal guides. The tape is strong but somewhat stretchy and doesn't cut into the tree's bark. Periodically I cut off the tape and re-tie new tape slightly looser to accommodate continued growth. The main limbs have thickened quite a bit since I first started training the tree, and the vertical shoots just keep growing and growing. The tree put on loads of figs this summer, but I cut them off to put most of the plant's energy into new growth. Next year I'll leave the figs in place in expectation of a decent harvest.

I'll post more pictures of the espalier fig this winter after it goes dormant and drops all its leaves to show the structural "bones" of the tree.