Frank, I've had good results standing up leaners and holding them in place with steel fence posts and cables. Misterbaby.

I even get good results pushing a crutch against leaners to make them straight. Straightened about a dozen trees after the tropical storm last week- only the two, hundred year old giant apple trees required much effort. Used duckbill anchors, cables and eye screws to hold those two up. That's the current professional way to stake a tree but not worth the time for me if it's only a 3 or 4" caliber tree.

I make the crutches out of saplings and put a screw or 2 in the tree if necessary to have a good point to push up against. I bury the ground side of the crutch for a little better stability, sort of wedging it into the ground. Sometimes takes 2 crutches.

Be sure the ground is quite wet all the way down and don't snap roots while doing it.

Harvest...

I was thinking about running the hose on it, we've had some rain lately (over an inch in the last few days), so the ground should be somewhat soft (it was rock hard prior to the recent rains).

I'll see how straight I can get it. Its leaning pretty good (not quite 45 degrees, but pretty darn close)...

I straightened a 6' mango that grew flat against the ground. It grew under a large avocado that had gotten out of hand on the bottom like a huge bush.

I wrapped it with parachute cord with a hose snippet to protect the bark and tied it to the avocado. Every few weeks I cinched up the line tighter. It's now straight, over 10' tall (but only 12" from the avocado) and it even gave me a bunch of mango this summer!

If your tree is producing fruit, or you expect it to, I'd straighten it and also take some cuttings to graft just in case it does die.

Gary

I pushed it straight (it took some effort) and shoved a 2x4 in the crotch of a big branch. I also tied it off with a metal tpost with some thick rope.

Now I see a peach tree is split right down the middle!

Don't give up all hope on the peach tree. We had a mature pear tree split. You know how long it takes to grow one of those. We cut off the split side, and the other side was still going strong when we moved away many years later. Peaches are more finicky, but you might be able to salvage something. Northwoodswis

Yes, I've saved split peach trees also- it's even possible sometimes to bolt them back together. In spite of my efforts I still manage some peach trees with oversized, poorly held, scaffold branches. How did that happen?

We had an apricot split in half after a late and heavy snow. Nothing to do but cut up the down half, but the other half recovered nicely for quite some time.

A bearing-aged prune plum of ours was lifted and moved with an excavator and later returned but got split in the process. I tried to "graft" the split by binding it all up. Eventually one half of it died but the other bore well for a few years before we drowned it, I think.

Always worth trying, would be my thought.

Good luck,

M

Hello all,

I grew a couple apples from seed back in June and now they are roughly 4 feet tall and growing in 3 gallon plastic nursery planters. Recently, the saplings started to bend/flop over from it's own weight. I have them currently propped up with wire flower stakes such as those used for delphinium and foxglove stems. I felt that they would provide enough support whilst allowing the stems to sway a bit for stronger trunk development. It is normal for this 'flopping over' to occur once they reach a certain height? Other than this problem, the plants seem to be doing fine; the leaves are healthy and there are plenty of branches forming.

Thank you!