How do you train the vines and branches of Schisandra? A full breakdown of the methods

The vines and branches of Schisandra are soft and cannot stand upright, so they need to climb upward by twining around a support. Therefore, its training work includes two tasks: setting up supports and pruning.

I. Setting up supports

Schisandra shows considerable variation in growth amount in the year of planting. Under poor seedling quality and poor management, plant height generally reaches only 50-60 cm, but after stumping pruning, the average growth height can reach more than 150 cm in the second year, and by the third year it can cover the trellis surface. So supports can generally be set up in the spring of the second year (early to mid-May). Supports can use trellis poles and UV-resistant polyethylene rope. Bamboo poles are often chosen as trellis poles; bamboo poles are 2.0-2.2 m long, with a top diameter of 1.5-2.0 cm; for UV-resistant polyethylene rope, a thickness of 3×15 strands is more suitable, with the upper end fixed to the first wire at the top. According to the plant spacing, use 1-2 per plant. When the plant spacing is less than 50 cm, one can be set per plant, placed about 5 cm beside the plant; when greater than 50 cm, two per plant, evenly inserted or fixed on both sides of the plant. The part of the bamboo pole inserted into the soil is best coated with asphalt to extend its service life. The trellis poles are fixed to the three trellis wires with thin iron wire. In a Schisandra orchard with both good seedling quality and good management, the plant's growth height in the current year can reach about 2 m. Therefore, supports should be set up in late May of the planting year to facilitate rapid plant growth.

II. Training

The purpose of training Schisandra is, through human intervention and induction, to make it grow and develop according to the grower's requirements, so as to make full use of the trellis space, effectively use light energy, rationally retain vines and branches, regulate the relationship between vegetative growth and reproductive growth, and cultivate robust and long-lived plants, making them adapt to climatic conditions and facilitating farming, pest and disease control, pruning, and harvesting operations, thereby achieving the goals of high yield, stable yield, and high quality.

The tree form commonly used for Schisandra is a training method with one group or two groups of main vines, that is, each plant retains 1 group or 2 groups of main vines, which are respectively twined around evenly arranged supports. On each support, 1-2 fixed main vines are retained. Lateral vines and fruiting mother branches grow on the main vines. The spacing between each fruiting mother branch is 15-20 cm, evenly distributed. Fruiting branches and vegetative branches grow on the fruiting mother branches, as shown in Figure 5-3. The advantages of this training method are that the tree structure is relatively simple and the training and pruning techniques are easy to master; cultivation can be carried out between plants and rows, making it convenient to control weeds; and the plant volume and load are small, so the requirements for soil, fertilizer, and water conditions are less strict. However, because the plant is relatively upright, it is prone to forming a condition of strong upper growth and weak lower growth, with the fruiting position moving upward, so control needs to be strengthened.