Espalier'd Linden Tree About to Burst - 2018

Look at those buds!  They're just about ready to burst open and welcome Spring to the espalier system that I've erected along the south fence line - right off of our kitchen window.  As a refresher, I used a couple of young Greenspire Lindens for my selections and put up three ten-foot-tall metal posts that I buried in the ground a few feet to carry the guide wire system.  Here's how they looked in September of last year after I had trained three sets of branches on each of the systems. 

Today, if you look at that photo above, you'll see a bamboo post that has joined the party and some soft green wire twisted around the branches to the limbs, too.  I added the bamboo posts this Sprint to provide some support and keep the wires from sagging too much.  I think they clean up the look quite a bit and provide a bit more structure for the increasingly heavy branches. 

The velcro straps are what I used last year and they've been reliable over the first winter, but as more growth emerged, I needed even more straps, so I turned to this Rapiclip soft wire tie - light duty.  This was 16' feet of wire and I ended up using all of it and more.

Here's a photo from a few weeks ago of the in-progress espalier with just one bamboo pole installed on the lowest wire.  You can't see in this photo above that there is enough metal pole - and enough Linden tree - to have a fourth set of wires going across that I'll have to install this Sprint to train the top growth.