you went pretty hard. past the blue lines on the virt, the blue lines were at the closest nodes/knuckles i saw near the trunk. it will back bud for sure, but it might not produce buds from all the short stubs you left without nodes. hawthorn and elm will produce new buds from the cambium of cut branch stubs with no nodes. hornbeam or beech wont do this. so the blue lines were sort of a tester to see how it reacted. but i think its for the best anyway, so lets wait n see. you might end up with buds in new places, from which to build a better structure from. so dont do anymore, just leave in full sun and feed with organic and liquid ferts.
Indeed.... went hard...
Started out wide and kept going in and in and in....
But the truth is, those branches are all too thick for the thickness of that trunk, in terms of proportions.
I am hoping that this reduction will either give me better transitions from those stubs, or just give me new buds from the trunk......which is really what I wanted here.
Sorry, know many or most will disagree but I find this so sad. It was quite a lovely tree. Best of luck getting it to do what you want.
It was crap on its way back from the gutter, imho......not to mention the anti-nebari this the had when I got it.....crikey....did remove 85% of its roots 2 years ago.....I'm glad its alive and I enjoy the long slender trunk.....but this tree has a bucket of problems.
I wasn't getting the trunk to bud out anywhere......and I'm not scared to do an experiment with it.
I keep hearing and reading that the way to get Carpinus to back bud is to cut back hard.....we'll see.
And as previously mentioned, the branching was chaotic and too long and thick for this delicate, slender trunk.....so this cut back was in order....my only thing is, I've had issue after issue with Hornbeams....there have been some good years.....but I'm skeptical at best.
I'm banking on the fact that this tree was not repotted this year, it has grown very well this year and I've been feeding it heavily this year.....hoping for an explosion of new shoots from all over.
Thanks for looking!