Building a support for apple cordons and cherry fan

[BearGardener]

Hello,

I'm in the process of creating some support on a south facing garden fence to grow a cherry fan and some apple cordons.

My fence posts are the concrete ones with steel rods inside.

My question is how best am I to attach some kind of framework to these concrete posts? I've been told they are a bugger to drill and I don't have any kind of special gear to do this.

I am thinking about attaching some smooth decking boards to the posts with a 'no more nails' type adhesive. I could then easily screw in some vine eyes or eye screws. Any thoughts on this? Would the adhesive be robust enough as I dont want everything falling off after a month. Any other ideas welcome.

Cheers

[Bigmallly]

Welcome to the vine BG, fasten some timber battens to the posts with either large cable ties or very strong wire. Maybe some fruit tree belts, then run wires across the battens..........I don't think NMN will work once it has the weight of the tree.

[orangepippin]

What is the length of the trellis? I think you will have problems if the length is beyond 2m-3m. Firstly, in the summer, a cherry fan in full leaf will act like a sail and put tremendous pressure on the wires when the wind is from the side. If you survive that then in winter the wires will contract in cold weather and loosen the posts.

I think the trick is that you don't necessarily have to support the trees directly on the trellis. Most commercial orchard trellis systems still use a heavy-duty cane at each tree. In other words the trellis holds the canes in position, and it is the canes which provide most of the support to the trees.

[BearGardener]

I wasn't going to go down the trellis route Orange. What I had planned is to attach wooden battens to the fence posts then screw a few eyes into each one and attach horizontal wires to these. So a bit like a post and wire system. As you say I would then use some garden canes as a bit of a skeleton for the trees.

The query really was how best to attach the battens to the concrete posts, or if to go down a different route entirely.