espalier apple trees

[kingkano]

Since I had so much luck with my other thread

I planted 2 espalier trained apple trees in March which are flowering now. They already have 2 established 'levels' so I guess are 3 or 4 years old? Can I let them fruit? or do I need treat them as newly planted trees and remove all the flowers?

thanks

[rustylady]

They may not set fruit, and even if they do it may drop. Although they are 3 - 4 years old, they haven't been in their present positions that long, so I would suggest treating them as new trees. Maybe leave one or two fruits to mature. Make sure you keep them well watered to help them establish.

[kingkano]

Ok I will see what happens. The dessert apple has settled in very vigorously and definitely is setting plenty of fruit, but only a few bunches so if I reduce to 1 per bunch that won't be too many I think.

Thanks for the advice.

[FB.]

Fruit from young trees is often much inferior in taste/texture/storage quality than from an established tree.
Young trees often lose what few fruit they have, due to pests. Only when the trees get older are there enough fruit for the pests to take a share and still leave some for you.

So even if you let them fruit, you may end up disappointed.

[kingkano]

Fruit from young trees is often much inferior in taste/texture/storage quality than from an established tree.
Young trees often lose what few fruit they have, due to pests. Only when the trees get older are there enough fruit for the pests to take a share and still leave some for you.

So even if you let them fruit, you may end up disappointed.

When is a tree considered older?

[FB.]

Basically, in a young, fast-growing tree, the growing shoots, roots and fruits all have to compete for what nutrients are available.
In most cases, the fruits come low down the priority order (unless you're using a very dwarf rootstock such as M27 or M9, in which case, the tree will sometimes kill itself to ensure that the fruit develops properly).
When the leaves/shoots/roots/fruits are all fighting for a limited supply of nutrients, you will often get fruit that has at least one of the following problems related to nutrient deficiency because the growing shoots got priority:

Small
Premature fruit drop
Flavourless
Affected by bitter pit
Poor shelf life
More fungal disease

Once a tree starts to fill its alloted space, its growth tends to slow and the excess energy gets channeled into fruit.

The basic mechanism is this:
When there is plentiful water and nutrients, these nutrients flow up the trunk, and at the same time, the sugars produced by the leaves flow down to the roots, so that the roots can also grow.
As the tree gets older and it gets harder for it to find nutrients (because it has to go deep into the soil or far out from the tree - or in poor growing conditions) the water and nutrient flow up the trunk slows, which means that the sugar flow down from the leaves also slows. When excess sugar accumulates in the above-ground part of the tree, the energy gets channeled into producing fruit buds for the following season, since the tree can't make any better use of the sugars.
Drought, poor soil, or simply a long distance between roots and leaves, tends to increase fruitfulness in following seasons as a result of the sugar accumulation. Heavy feeding and watering tends to reduce fruitfulness but dramatically increases growth.

If you have a young tree with just half a dozen fruits on it, even if the fruit are of edible quality, the birds, earwigs, wasps, maggots, fungal diseases and many other pests will destroy them all since the pest:fruit ratio is so high.
Once the tree is producing a a few dozen fruits per year, you should have a reasonable amount of fruit left undamaged - but it depends very much on the variety.
Some varieties don't attract many pests in my experience (e.g. Crawley Beauty, D'Arcy Spice, Egremont Russet, Spartan) whereas others can have a large portion of their crop damaged in most seasons (e.g. Discovery, Ellison's Orange, Pinova, Scrumptious).