Why I Oughta...

Back in May, I bought and planted eight small Apple trees - three Golden Delicious and five Honeycrisp - along the fenceline in an attempt to make another espalier .  Later, in June and July, I applied the espalier wire in the pattern of a Belgian Fence and started to wire some of them up .  This is a six week update from the last time we touched base.  And, unfortunately, it seems that we've lost three of the eight trees.  The one on the far left (#8)- which I didn't prune.  And two more (#3 and #4).  That's one Golden Delicious (#8) and two Honeycrisp (#3, #4).  Here, below is a close-up of the two in the middle that seemeed to have died.  They both were hard pruned and showed some new foliage, but they then exhausted themselves and seemingly perished.  I'm *not* calling these LOST yet, but I'm thinking that before Fall comes, I will add them to that LOST column for trees.  If the big box stores carry fruit trees this month...

Number eight on my 2020 to-do list for the yard was to buy some fruit trees and plant them to start a Belgian Fence espalier.  Why a Belgian Fence?  Well, we already have a pair of Cordon'd Linen Trees in our yard, so I wanted to try a different form.  And, on our trips to Disneyland, I noticed that they have a number of Belgian Fences that served as inspiration .  And, on our trip to Luxembourg Gardens in Paris last Summer, we walked by their espalier garden a number of times and was struck by how they've worked their fruit trees a number of ways.  So, earlier this Winter/Spring, I identified the place that we'd plant them and then in April, I pulled the trigger and bought eight Apple trees .  By May, I had planted them 16" apart and lop'd off their heads .  Then I held my breath and hoped that we'd see some growth.  Turns out, the garden gods smiled on us and there was enough energy stored up in the rootballs and all of the trees have...

What's that you say?  Want another post about Luxembourg Gardens in Paris?  Well, good news for you:  here's a post about espalier'd trees.  Yes...one of my favorite topics. I've posted quite a bit about this place on the blog: The Chestnut trees that line the various paths . The metal edging on the paths . The chairs .   These amazing vines/ivy that have been trained between posts and trees .   These orangerie tree boxes .  The fact that they use cocoa bean shell mulch in their beds .   And  how I copied the color pallete of one of their beds in our raised planter box . In one corner of Luxembourg Gardens there is a section dedicated to the art of espalier.  They appear to be mostly fruit trees and this NYT story from 1971 calls them "century‐old pear trees". That's amazing, isn't it? These trees were more than 100 years old in 1971, so that means that *some* of them are 150 years old today? If you've ...