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!
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!