Espaliering apple trees

My goal for my garden is simple - the only things I want to regularly water (once established) are edible plants. So my front yard is designed to be irrigation free, as is the boundary plantings around our fenceline.

Although recycled water is available in our area - it's not recommended for use on edibles - so we installed a 10,000L underground water tank.

I haven't planted any veggies yet - the soil still needs some improvement from green manure - however, it is exactly the right time of year to plant fruit trees.

In April I ordered 5 fruit trees from Woodbridge Fruit Trees in Tassie. They specialise in heirloom varities and trees come bare-rooted in the mail in August. My varieties are Royal Gala, Bonza, Pink Lady, Granny Smith and Rome Beauty. They're spread between early, mid and late season varieties to try and maximise our apple season - hopefully we should have apples between January and July every year.

Outside of those times I've got 2 Stella cherries that should fruit Nov-Dec and a China Flat peach (I can't wait to press fresh white peach juice for Bellinis!)

My plan is to espalier these trees to maximise production and make them easy to net so we can protect our fruits from birds.

A traditional espalier is set up like so:



It takes about 5 years to get to 2 rows like the picture above. You also don't start to get fruit until about year 3.

Instead, I'm following a slightly different espaliering plan as shown below (and known as the Knee, Navel, Nipple, Nose method developed by Woodbridge).


This speeds up the process and I should start seeing fruit in the 2nd growing season.

So here's an example of how it starts.



Hubby wondered if the plants were dead, not realising they come dormant during winter. Once spring comes along we should hopefully see some leaves and buds for flowers. Now all I need is some good spring flowering natives to attract the bees to the yard for pollination.