That's cool, the espalier thing. I've thought about doing that with peaches. Don't know if they lend themselves to it or not but my local nursery guy said there are peach hybrids now that can be grown this far north. Next sentence he mentioned they had to be covered in winter. Seems to be quite the conditional statement. I mean, how many people are going to cover an entire tree every winter?

The other idea I had was to build a nice sturdy frame house-like structure, maybe 20' by 20' and 15' tall, with little peaks and gables and all. Then plant a dozen or so apple trees around the base and espalier them up thru the framework. Cool, heh? And really easy access to all the apples.

I ended up doing it on a slightly smaller scale and planted ivy instead. So far it has grown up the walls nicely and has got a good start on the roof.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley