The trouble with horizontal or below is that it can cause vigorous upright water sprouts at the high point of the branch. There are only two ways to deal with those water sprouts, prune them off forever because they always grow back, or train them over enough to break the apical dominance. Neither of those is anything you want.

I think training over to 30-45 degrees above horizontal is better. That avoids water sprouts and still tames the branches vigor.

Training is better than pruning. Do it first and reduce pruning to as little as possible.

That is what ive been learning fruitnut... I think its safe to say that some sort of horizontal branch training is a good idea?

I guess if they are horizontal at least, the fruit load will bend them lower as well....

Horizontal or below is standard practice on tall spindle orchards.

Horizontal or below is standard practice on tall spindle orchards.

I use strings and just tie to the trunk on my tall spindle apple trees. In fact I just came in from removing the strings on my apple trees.

Here in So Cal many apples will not fruit at all unless the branches are pulled below horizontal, which switches them from a vegetative mode to a fruiting mode. Vertical suckers will want to sprout from the horizontal branch, which are pinched off at 3 leaves repeatedly through the season. By fall those sucker stubs have reverted to fruit buds and will blossom the next season. I used to tie mine with string or weights, but now use rebar tie wire cut to 18" lengths. You can remove them after a couple months.

I pull my limbs down to about 45 degrees or a little less and then I pull some of the branches off it really low. How low I go depends on the space available. I sometimes use a wire coil to get limbs to a more precise location. What I do would be more time consuming than what could be done on a larger scale. I'm early in the process but I'm already seeing some early fruiting. I read everything on this forum and try to adapt it to what I need. Thanks to other peoples post my mistakes are fewer.

Fruitnut, I would like to hear more about--see photos of--your rebar wire. I have experimented with string, weights, spreaders. I'm not sure how you position it. Recently I have really tried to bend the top branches--especially on pears--below horizontal.

Marc

I was thinking of using coat hangers myself. My trees are young so I can get most of them to at least 90.