Festooning!

[Earthbabe]

When do you normally start tying in? age of tree wise not time of year.

[pigletwillie]

whilst the branches are still bendy enough to be festooned. Once they get much thicker than your thumb the flexibility tends to go out of them and trying to festoon them may cause broken branches.

[pigletwillie]

Here are a couple of piccies of our festooned plum tree showing just how effective the method is.

We have fruit all down every branch, numbering several hundred all told. There is clusters of fruit forming every few inches.

[WiZeR]

I have been trying to take a photo of my attempt at festooning but its hard to get a good pic, will try again tonight. No idea if I have done it right.

[Bigmallly]

Rather than start a new thread, I thought I would just revive this one. Has anyone else tried festooning their fruit trees?. I did it earlier in the year with Plum, Apple & Pear trees with great success. The crop on the festooned branches far outweighed the vertical branches that I left as a comparison. Last week I started festooning a little further but this time, instead of tying the branch to the trunk as PW did, I found I had more control using bottles (both plastic & glass) as you you can just add water till you get the bend required. I still have a few trees to festoon once this years crop has finished. I will be pleased to post some pics for anyone interested.

[Jay22]

I would BM, got my plum, pear and apple trees in pots so it may well be ideal for that!

[lottie dolly]

Sounds something for me to think about when i get some trees to put at the lottie,what size of tree,root stock ext works the best,and does it have to be a young tree,or can one train an older tree.
just been goggling with results.

[Penellype]

Sounds interesting - I have some very upright branches on my little apple tree which might benefit from this.

[Bigmallly]

It's good to re-kindle old ideas. Her are some pics of an apple tree I tried (there's still a lot of work to be done on it as the tree is about 12 years old). As you can see the festooned branches are bearing more fruit than the unfestooned. I will post more pics when the bladdy rain stops...............

The whole tree: You can see straight away how the festooned branches are bearing more fruit.


Festooned branches:


Upper branches unfestooned for comparison: Ignore the brown, that's just some old bramble to be yet removed.

[Penellype]

Looks great. Another advantage is that the fruit will be much easier to reach on a tree that size. My tree is only about 4ft high, but I think this is worth a try. I might wait until the ants have stopped farming aphids on the leaves though as I don't want to get bitten!

[Bigmallly]

Cheers Pene, that was the main reason for me doing it. I can reach 8ft but why struggle?..................here are some pics at various stages of Cherry, Apple & Plum. The plums have all been picked resulting in 9 jars of jam from a tree that has never fruited before so very pleased with that: None of the fruit you can see is above 4ft off the ground.

............................

[lottie dolly]

Thanks for the pics BM,that's what i will do with mine,when i get some,will also pass the info on to my lottie friends,that means if i were to get some mid size trees,and festoon them,i will not only be able to pick better,but should be festooned with more fruit,my wish list is for a plum,pear and a cooking apple,and what ever else to get the pollen flying about.

[mothhawk]

Great idea, I may try it on my apple (when it's old enough to start bearing fruit)

Just a thought, BM - if you use water filled bottles to weight the branches,come the high winds of winter they are going to swing madly about. Won't that jerk the branches around a lot? Or doesn't that matter? Or are the bottles heavy enough not to blow in the wind?

[Bigmallly]

To be honest MH, I don't know. I started the process by tying the branches to the trunk last May but thought that put too much strain on the branch so have turned to using bottles. They only need to be attached for a couple of weeks and the branches memory takes over so the bottle/string can be removed or pour some water out of the bottle. Try it with one branch first to see how it goes. If using a glass bottle, you may not need to add water as the bottle may be heavy enough on its own. My biggest concern is if the branches are already bending over, are they likely to break under the weight of the fruit? Luckily none have so far but it's still a worry.

[mothhawk]

Oh, I see. That sounds fairly easy, then. What about pruning?