SU2
Omono
I'm hoping for non-Graham Potter videos, articles, sites etc etc that would help me get ideas on how to proceed with the *styling* directions for such monstrous stock as this:
That's ^ my first-ever collection, didn't get the chance to cut that trunk-line myself though I'm unsure I'd have had the foresight at that stage to've realized this probably should've been a couple FEET taller, anyways this is just the worst-offender but I've got quite a good # of such materials, things where it's not a straight-trunk that I can just count on new primaries rolling-over the wounds (ie I don't see any way the wounds could possibly close, the area to be closed is just too-large and will surely rot-through before being calloused-over!)
I LOVE Graham Potter's videos but am hoping to find others like him, ideally I'd find articles that go over theory of developing such things instead of solely case-examples, obviously the latter helps (has literally helped me many times, I've got enough similar stock I've been able to take a cue from what he's done and apply it to mine) but it's not enough to help me come up with any ideas for a stump like the one pictured, that thing is just growing a bush on top of it and I've no clue what direction to take it! I've got angle-&die-grinders, rasp bits&disks, 4" chainsaw-disk for the angle-grinder, lime sulfur....am ready&able to do the work but no matter how many times I start drawing-out a concept for it I just can't find anything that I feel 'works' :/
Thanks a ton for any direction/guidance here! Am comfortable with wounds like this guy:
because I know I'll have it healed-over in a couple years, but for instance this crape is something I have no idea what to do about that chop-wound that'll just never roll-over:
It ^ was something that was large once and then (obviously!) cut-back to a stump, where those 5 top nubs then become large ~7'+ branches, I found it at that stage last year and I simply cut the 5 nubs back to what's shown in the pic & potted it up, giving me yet another bush-on-a-block:
it was ^ this guy that prompted me to post right now, as I just gave it a hard-prune and went in to carve some 'contour' between the deadwood-topped-stump and the new growth, and found that the long-exposed heartwood was, in many areas, so decayed that my rasps would just *fly* through it...I realized then that the decay rate of the heartwood is not something I can hope the new growth will out-pace and callous-over... the entire center of this guy is a 'coppiced' flat area that'll never get rolled-over so I started to think "will this specimen ultimately be nothing but branches&cambium, with a fully-hollowed-out trunk?" - and I couldn't answer it! I've been developing it with the goal of a very squat version of a regular crape myrtle (basically a bushy-broom style), but if I can expect that the central trunking's heart-wood will, within years, be so decayed it needs to be carved-through to the substrate, well, it makes me think I need to address that NOW in terms of the direction I'm growing it, that it'd make sense to do the radical cuts now - even if that means that I'm cutting-off half the trunk and making unique, half-deadwood specimen, I just want to prevent building-up a canopy on a faulty foundation, if that makes sense!!
Thanks a ton for any guidance on this, any advice or links are greatly appreciated, whether your advice or articles or progress-album-url's or youtubes, anything dealing in these types of bad-stock would be great!!
That's ^ my first-ever collection, didn't get the chance to cut that trunk-line myself though I'm unsure I'd have had the foresight at that stage to've realized this probably should've been a couple FEET taller, anyways this is just the worst-offender but I've got quite a good # of such materials, things where it's not a straight-trunk that I can just count on new primaries rolling-over the wounds (ie I don't see any way the wounds could possibly close, the area to be closed is just too-large and will surely rot-through before being calloused-over!)
I LOVE Graham Potter's videos but am hoping to find others like him, ideally I'd find articles that go over theory of developing such things instead of solely case-examples, obviously the latter helps (has literally helped me many times, I've got enough similar stock I've been able to take a cue from what he's done and apply it to mine) but it's not enough to help me come up with any ideas for a stump like the one pictured, that thing is just growing a bush on top of it and I've no clue what direction to take it! I've got angle-&die-grinders, rasp bits&disks, 4" chainsaw-disk for the angle-grinder, lime sulfur....am ready&able to do the work but no matter how many times I start drawing-out a concept for it I just can't find anything that I feel 'works' :/
Thanks a ton for any direction/guidance here! Am comfortable with wounds like this guy:
because I know I'll have it healed-over in a couple years, but for instance this crape is something I have no idea what to do about that chop-wound that'll just never roll-over:
It ^ was something that was large once and then (obviously!) cut-back to a stump, where those 5 top nubs then become large ~7'+ branches, I found it at that stage last year and I simply cut the 5 nubs back to what's shown in the pic & potted it up, giving me yet another bush-on-a-block:
it was ^ this guy that prompted me to post right now, as I just gave it a hard-prune and went in to carve some 'contour' between the deadwood-topped-stump and the new growth, and found that the long-exposed heartwood was, in many areas, so decayed that my rasps would just *fly* through it...I realized then that the decay rate of the heartwood is not something I can hope the new growth will out-pace and callous-over... the entire center of this guy is a 'coppiced' flat area that'll never get rolled-over so I started to think "will this specimen ultimately be nothing but branches&cambium, with a fully-hollowed-out trunk?" - and I couldn't answer it! I've been developing it with the goal of a very squat version of a regular crape myrtle (basically a bushy-broom style), but if I can expect that the central trunking's heart-wood will, within years, be so decayed it needs to be carved-through to the substrate, well, it makes me think I need to address that NOW in terms of the direction I'm growing it, that it'd make sense to do the radical cuts now - even if that means that I'm cutting-off half the trunk and making unique, half-deadwood specimen, I just want to prevent building-up a canopy on a faulty foundation, if that makes sense!!
Thanks a ton for any guidance on this, any advice or links are greatly appreciated, whether your advice or articles or progress-album-url's or youtubes, anything dealing in these types of bad-stock would be great!!
