Espalier osage orange 3 rail living fence?

Hello,

I just stumbled across the espalier pruning technique for fruit trees and havnt been able to stop my brain from storming up ideas. Anyway the idea of living fences has been in my thought process for a while since we got the "chance" to remove some old barbwire fences off our grown up property. The living fence idea seems like the way we want to make a fence for future removals if ever needed. But anyway I'm wondering if anyone out there has done an espalier osage orange 3 rail fence? We're in the process of starting ours now with 84 osage orange trees growing right now. We plan to make the bottom branches/"rail" to be at about 16inches from ground, then second "rail" to be 24inches above bottom rail, then the third rail being another 24inches up. So our three rail fence top rail would be 5' 4" tall. (We might even go for a four rail fence but that's still to be determined.) We plan to plant the trees on 10 foot centers so our branches can grow 5feet long either way closing the gaps creating the ultimate fence in my opinion. And since they grow thorns they will deter the deer pressure we have. The top "rail" will be at 5'4", the branches that grow off that main structural branch should grow to about 10' high easily before we have to prune it back every 3 years or so. So 10' high of thorny osage branches should keep the deer out. We plan to do this around a 1-2 acre berry orchard. Of course once its growing and set up nicely we will have to make the desicion on where to cut open a space for gates and such to enter the orchard.  So it being a living fence the fence will just get bigger and stronger over the years and the only maintenance will be weedeating under the bottom rail  once a month for 4 months/year and then pruning every 3 years. And when the time comes when a tree dies or we have to remove it for whatever reason the tree can just be cut at the base and we would have an awesome fence/porch railing panel section. I bet people would eat those panels up and you could sell them for a hefty price as well. Just think about front porch panels made from trees. You could stain it and make it last a really long time. But I'm gonna stop there before I want to just cut them all down before I even get them growing haha.

If anyone has any crazy ideas to add, please do. And definatly reply if you know of someone doing this same design. I would love to see one in action.

Thanks for reading my brainstorm,

Mike

I like the idea and I have a few questions. Will the Osage orange fruit? I think there are male and female plants of Osage orange. Osage orange is also a hard wood and burns as I understand it very hot. Like melting the metal fireplace insert. Also have you though about planting a groundcover or looked into what plants like to grow next to Osage orange? I am not a big fan of weed eaters and weed eating around a Osage orange on a hot day does not sound like a fun thing to do. I have heard people call Osage orange iron wood and I talked to a guy years ago that said." At night if you cut an Osage orange with a chainsaw you can see sparks". Maybe he was having fun with me or the chainsaw was not running well.

T Blankinship wrote:I like the idea and I have a few questions. Will the Osage orange fruit? I think there are male and female plants of Osage orange. Osage orange is also a hard wood and burns as I understand it very hot. Like melting the metal fireplace insert. Also have you though about planting a groundcover or looked into what plants like to grow next to Osage orange? I am not a big fan of weed eaters and weed eating around a Osage orange on a hot day does not sound like a fun thing to do. I have heard people call Osage orange iron wood and I talked to a guy years ago that said." At night if you cut an Osage orange with a chainsaw you can see sparks". Maybe he was having fun with me or the chainsaw was not running well.

yes I would assume the female trees would fruit once they get mature enough to bare fruit. But the fruit is unusable to me other then getting more trees growing from the seeds. However I did run across something saying that the rotten fruit on the ground actually acts as a natural insect/spider repellent. Which that could be of benefit. And yes I burn wood in a greenhouse so I did know that osage orange has i think the highest btu output of wood species, even hotter then white oak. Not sure if it burns as long as oak does but maybe one day I'll find out. But as for the wood making your saw throw sparks, not sure about that. Sounds to me like that guy running the saw had his chainsaw bar angled while cutting causing the chain to grind into the edges of his bar causing sparks. But you never know. I have cut smaller osage orange with a pole saw and never noticed sparks and the wood cut easily, so I wouldnt say it was like cutting threw iron. And I have experience with using a cutting torch as well so I have cut threw iron. But as for the weedeating, isnt that how most people maintain fences? Either mechanical weedeating, or liquid weedeater "herbicide"!!! I do alot of weedeating for people so it doesnt sway me from maintaining my own fancy fence. Maybe someday I can hire a young stud like myself to weedeat it for me once the berry orchard starts taking off. I do my best to not use herbicides, however sometimes I have to use it on a newly graveled area that wasnt stripped of top soil. But for the living fence that's a no go for sure. Now if I can find a good ground cover to plant below fence so I dont have to weedeat that would be great. However if that ground cover needed maintenance, I may just pass and just weedeat under the bottom rail cuz that is very simple other then the manual labor of walking around with a weedeater. But as the old saying for these fences go, "it'll be horse high, pig tight, and bull strong"!!!  And only get stronger with time!

I will briefly comment about using Osage as firewood.  Simply put, Osage is among the best and perhaps the very best firewood.  It burns long, slow and very, very hot.  Actually, burning is perhaps not the right word as Osage tends to more smolder than produce flames.

Growing up we had a fireplace and access to Osage firewood.  We could burn ONE log of Osage in a 3 log fire.  Any more and the grate would warp or perhaps even melt.  My personal thought is that if you can find Osage to use as firewood, you have found the best firewood available.

Good Luck,

Eric

Eric Hanson wrote:I will briefly comment about using Osage as firewood.  Simply put, Osage is among the best and perhaps the very best firewood.  It burns long, slow and very, very hot.  Actually, burning is perhaps not the right word as Osage tends to more smolder than produce flames.

Growing up we had a fireplace and access to Osage firewood.  We could burn ONE log of Osage in a 3 log fire.  Any more and the grate would warp or perhaps even melt.  My personal thought is that if you can find Osage to use as firewood, you have found the best firewood available.

Good Luck,

Eric

thanks for your personal experience with the firewood part of osage. However since you burnt the wood I assume you cut it with a chainsaw, was it like using a grinder on iron, or more like cutting a hardwood tree and just slinging sawdust? Just want to be sure that it is indeed chainsawable at a larger size. I've only cut it at about 3inches around, so I cant really confirm weather it's that hard to cut or not. But I did cut it with a manual pole saw so I wouldnt compare it to cutting iron. And since I have so many osage trees growing I might just plant a firewood grove somewhere for the future cuz I read that it grows pretty fast compared to oak and other hardwood trees that are usually used for firewood.

Michael,

I have never actually cut it with a chainsaw as I was too young to use one when we got our HUGE supply of Osage that lasted us years (it just won’t rot).  But there was an Osage tree/bush that I regularly trimmed with a hand saw—a job I hated, not so much because of cutting difficulties (though it is tough), but because cutting by hand always involved getting scratched by gigantic, mildly toxic thorns.  The toxicity won’t seriously injure or make you sick but just makes for annoying welts when the thorns scratch.  

After trimming, the bush shot up growth 3’ the next year!  In no time the bush/tree replaced whatever I took from it.  If I had an Osage row for firewood I would seriously consider getting firewood by pollarding the growth as it grows back so very quickly.  Maybe this would work for you.

Eric

HI there
Up front - I've not had any personal experience with espalier
but after asking our local (30 year) apple expert here at the AG extension office- if that was an application he would recommend?
With some trepidation he mentioned that after two formal attempts he was discouraged - as both ended in a fried up wall of dead limbs after lightening strikes several years into both projects.
Not sure if that was a planting site mistake, or just a regional occurrence, or something that is preventable by measures taken.  Just something to consider. ( and something that definitely had not crossed my mind or I had come across is my research about this technique!)
Happy growing!

I sure hope mine grow better this year.  I put in 300 of them two years ago, so this will be their third year growing and mine aren't much taller than the day I put them in.  Their growth rate is really hampering my living fence idea...  I'm hoping sleep, then creep, then leap applies to osage orange.