Kitchen Garden Forum

Was wondering if anyone could tell me if you can espalier established fruit trees? They look like young trees but are around 6ft high. I'd like to make a hedge out of them around the allotment plot I have, freeing up the area they are in to grow other stuff. There is a limit on height to 7ft if I remember correctly so making fruit hedges out of them seemed the easiest and most sensible use of space. I'm assuming that due to the height restriction the previous owners have planted fruit trees on a dwarf root stock.
I say easy but from everything I've read on the interweb it seems that you are best to use very young trees. Does anyone have any experience/advice on this?

Evening Myrkk, this is a very difficult question to give any accurate advice on. It makes a huge difference what rootstock they are on and also some varieties are a little too vigourous to prune into good espaliers. But so saying that, if you do have to restrict the height, i suppose you don't really have a lot to lose. The best way of proceeding with the job is, try and get some pictures from a book or off the internet, showing the first three years of pruning, you might then be able to use some of the pruning tips to your advantage. The tip bearing types of apples are not really suitable for training in this way, so i hope you don't have any of these....

RHS The Fruit Garden Displayed is an invaluable aid.

thanks guys will look for that