Howdy all,
Two questions:
Anyone try this on trees grafted to Flying Dragon?
Is there any effect on fruit quality?
OK four questions
Would this be useful on potted trees? (I'm mostly thinking of lemons here.)
Does the width of the removed bark strip have any consequences?
Thanks Steve H.
I don't think it would help much on Flying Dragon, but it would be good to try. I have a 15 year old Flying Dragon and it's height stayed at 4 ft without any pruning, so I didn't bother to do the inversion.
On semi-standard trees, like citrange trifoliate rootstock, it will improve fruit quality, size and flavor, at least from my trees.
Yes, it is useful on potted trees. I am maintaining apple trees, pear trees, stone fruit trees on pots and I do bark inversion on them. It's a good way to keep them small and their fruits large and tasty.
The larger the width of the band, the larger the effect. If very wide enough, it might kill the tree slowly, and you should do a bridge graft when you see slight symptoms that the tree starting to fail.
Treat this like mild girdling of the tree where the tree is able to heal the girdle around it.