Good Morning! Nice tree!
You’ve got a couple competing ideas cooking at once along with one size limitation issue.
The size limitation issue…. I’ve got a couple English Hawthorns and they need time and room to grow to trunk out. The pot you have this guy in will be root bound in a couple years, Then growth will begin to stall. So up potting will be needed to trunk out.
Growing trunk size. Hawthorns being essentially shrubs, don’t trunk up as fast as tree. But In essence, foliage mass drives the growth. The more foliar mass the tree puts on, the greater the trunk and branches will caliber out. One of the inherent issues I have is the branches want to caliper out at the same size as the trunk ajoining. So to get more trunk, grow the tree out.
Creating ramification- To create ramification one cuts back each branches foliage extension to a leaf node pointing in the direction you first want the ramification to head, when the next growth appears, go in the opposite direction.
Yet here’s the conundrum we all face. To trunk out a tree needs to have unrestricted growth, thus larger and larger container size (or ground grow) and more and more foliage. To improve ramification one needs to prune the foliage back, which will slow the tree growth.
in short
Fast Tree trunk growth = ( grow in ground or up pot frequently + allow unlimited growth / little or no pruning)
Create Ramification = Lots of pruning
Here’s one of my Hawthorns today. (Btw I-find these relatively easy to grow from cuttings)
cheers
DSD sends
