Training step-over apples.

Hi, fellow gardeners.
Just wonder if anyone is able to help with this one.
I'm growing step-over apples and after winter pruning, I now find that I have blossom break at every station.
Good news you may say, but even the end bud on all trees, is a blossom bud, I can't fathom where the next 'leader' is going to come from.

Help please!

 

I have got Espallier, rather than Step Over, but I assume similar issue.

Some of mine have romped along the wire to the end ... others are Dead Slow. But they get there in the end (a number of seasons), so it might be that patience is the key, unfortunately.

I definitely would not bend new growth down onto the training wires in a hurry. They will grow much more vigorously upwards (or at 45 degrees), and still be pliable at the end of Summer when growth slows down. Once they are horizontal the flow of growth chemicals changes, which is why Espallier / Step-Over produces such high yields - but it is deliberately at the expense of new growth.

 

Many thanks, Kristen, I hear what you say.

I never let mine reach the full length of the support wire, I reduce the leader by at least a third or half each winter. I'm going to try removing the blossom buds on these end trusses, hoping they will revert to a growing a new leader.

Btw, step-overs are exactly the same as espaliers, except they have just on tier rather than several.

After seven decades of gardening, I thought I may know the answer....just proves there is always something new to learn.

 

Ah, OK. I never did that with the Espallier - I chopped the top off, at the next wire, each year and then took 3 shoots for Left, Up and Right. But the sideways ones I let just grow thereafter, never reduced them (until they got to the end of the wire). I wonder if not having an apical shoot (and being horizontal) causes it to not seek to grow hard?

Indeed, I was just thinking that the "rest of the plant" is providing some energy / feedback to the whole plant on an Espallier, whereas for Stepover there isn't any of that available ... the one row is "it"