Amur Maple reduced

grog

Shohin
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After seeing how well two acer ginnala took to being chopped back and having their roots drastically pruned last summer I decided to take the heavy pruning to a new level with my last remaining maple which I had not reduced the roots on.

I screwed up carving the branch stubs back and tore a piece of bark between two areas I was carving. The tools were plenty sharp, I just plain messed up.

I've since moved it into the greenhouse to keep it protected from the crazy weather and it seems pretty happy with this as it's throwing new buds like mad. I had originally planned to cut the remaining top section back also to about an inch above the highest cut but chickened out at the last moment thinking I had already done too much removal. I hope leaving the top will aid the smoothing out of taper and aid the healing process by sending plenty of food down below.

Looking at it in retrospect I wish I had cut it back as I'd planned and carved more off on the left side of pic 5 to continue the line of the tree in that direction. I may still do that, we'll see.

My plans for the rest of the year are to repot possibly in June when all the growing seems to take a break from the heat and get rid of that nasty surface root visible in pic 1. If it looks as if the trunk is going to take a nice shape it will take some serious root work to bring the nebari in line.

At the end of the day I wasn't too terribly displeased with that I'd done, especially considering what I started out with. Thoughts on what I should have done differently or where I should go with it now are more than welcome and appreciated.

Thanks!
 

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Tachigi

Omono
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Grog, you may find that the ring of bark, shown in picture 4, dies off. At least on the right upper side, since there is nothing below to support it. Normally life lines are linear and with that piece stuck out on its own it may have a rough go of it. Pack the cut edges with cut paste, expect the worse and hope for the best. If worse comes to worse you'll have another styling opportunity. Hope it works out for ya.
 
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grog

Shohin
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Plumber's putty at the ready Tom, and thank you. Exactly the kind of advice I was hoping for. New growth has already appeared above that point so hopefully the tree is ignoring my abuse but better safe than sorry.
 

grog

Shohin
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Pics taken yesterday, about a month after the chops from the previous photos were made. I assume unrestricted growth would be best for the tree now to recover from the butchering. If that's the case the tree is certainly providing well for itself.

I covered the large cuts with plumber's putty after I snapped the pics, now I think it's time to leave it alone for a while.
 

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grog

Shohin
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This tree graduated to the cull pile this spring. I repotted it into a collander in spring '09 and it was very healthy the last three years, I just wasn't smart to cut it back as far as I did. With constant cutting back and wiring the internodes were still staying too long to ever be believable on that size of a trunk. A fugly bulge also developed at the transition from trunk to new leader that I didn't see a way to make anything to work with.

I've another with what I think will be more believable proportions I'll try to get posted soon.
 
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