How aggressively can you work an Ilex yamadori before potting it up?

[SU2]

I had a job today that included removal of a very old Ilex bush, it was initially planted in a 5gal plastic container that was still there albeit *packed* with feeders (in FL there need-not be soil inside a space like that for feeders to still proliferate!)

I was hoping to get the big showy nebari that was beneath the container, sadly it was insanely heavy (couldn't move it myself, could hardly roll it out of the hole once I'd cut it fully loose with the sawzall) so, seeing the dense-mat of feeders in the old pot's zone, I grabbed a chainsaw and just tore-through the upper-portion of the pot, so now I've got that sitting in a bag out back, with a canopy that was pruned-back but still large enough to fill a 30gal bag by itself!

Am ready to fall-over after that job but have it in a bag / moistened, should be fine til the AM, but I've got no idea how aggressive I can be on my trunk-line IE can/should I be going-below any foliage or are they riskier for back-budding? I've only collected 2 of these before and, while they did handle hard-prunes / back-budded, that was after I'd let them establish in a container (and during growing-season, though to be fair it's still growing-season here in FL I've hardly deviated course we're still in the 80's...)

Am also uncertain how to treat a flat-top root-base, I basically sawed (and ax'd, after running my chain off the bar too often!) my way through a ~1' wide connection of trunking from the original top, to the big fatty roots beneath the original container....I'm accustomed to using my knob-cutters to make a slight-indent when a root-line of a new specimen has large flat spots, but this is going to be huge, and so far as I know there's zero chance of any roots coming-from the center, so my thought was that if I ground-out a little cavity along the entire root-line and then packed it with sphagnum, maybe the feeders would reach-under the specimen and eventually give me a full root-mat under the center of the trunking?

Thanks a ton for any suggestions, have wanted an over-sized Ilex for a while so really hope to get this guy to make it but this is starting-off (and likely to continue) as one of the most brutal collections I've done and that's saying something lol, even thoughts/guesses on "high/medium/low resiliency" Re hard-prunes and root-interventions on just-collected yamma Ilex's, thanks

(will have pics in AM, remainder of energy needed to empty truck-bed LOL, wanted to get this up so I'd have, hopefully, something/anything to go off of in the AM!

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

You can prune these hard, back to a trunk line, and they will absolutely explode with new growth.
They don’t, however, heal those cuts well at all.
Mine didn’t like freezing weather, but you’re unlikely to have much of that.

 

[SU2]

You can prune these hard, back to a trunk line, and they will absolutely explode with new growth.
They don’t, however, heal those cuts well at all.
Mine didn’t like freezing weather, but you’re unlikely to have much of that.

Thank you very very much!! And yeah I'd noticed that they're poor callous'ers, better than bougies but not as good as 'normal' like crapes (or in-excess, like BC's )

With that in-mind I think I'm going to leave longer/taller limbs on this guy than the type of trunk line I'd normally make - do you think it's worth leaving-on some foliage and/or vascular-tissue just to help survive the collection? Any tips on its transplant to container-life would be greatly appreciated, for right now I'm going to make a good box for it and use a scoria//sphagnum based substrate, so nervous on this one as I realllllly want it to survive I really like this piece, it's still a tangled-mess but I'm quite sure it's "up my alley" Re general form! Once boxed I intend to put it an indirect-sun location until it's recovered (and yeah re winter/freezing, the past few years I never brought anything in, I'm lucky in that growth here is so easy that my bougies grow through the winter instead of going dormant/semi-dormant )

Will use some caulking to seal cut-wounds (well, the "new" cut-wounds as I had to top the thing just to get it home, I hate making cuts and then waiting overnight but it was the only way, I was basically chucking it in my truck-bed instead of the dumpster beside it because the situation didn't allow me to fuss-around with a tree sadly, if it were a bougie I'd have 0 doubt about its survival-prognosis but with this thing I'm scared (am just so 'into' this piece....time to go re-visit it and get it ready for its new home, will have pics up later )

//still haven't ruled-out tenting the thing, if we hit a windy period I certainly will wrap it (with fabric--- don't want anyone reading to use plastics to wrap canopies, it concentrates the wind on the pieces of canopy that touch the bag and damages them, you don't wanna use plastics for this!)

 

[SU2]

Gah so I just went to start smoothing-out my bottom as my near-sunset chainsawing (and then axe'ing!) was needed to separate it from its true nebari so I could take it, BUT upon going for it right now I realized I slipped-up and dunno how bad this is--my saw is set to maximum oil-output, the chain spews petrol-based oil all over and I probably used it for 10min on this thing.....am unsure if I should go and soak it in a tub of soapy water real quick to remove the oil, I know oil is a major problem for roots!!!

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

Honestly, I would not worry about the oil.

 

[SU2]

Honestly, I would not worry about the oil.

Surprised to hear that from you TBH! Have already blasted the living-heck outta it though, used a gentle-but-firm water-pressure from a "rain-pattern" hose-end/wand to work like 1/4th a small bottle of Dawn through the root-mass!! I'm weird though, I knew that if I didn't do that and the thing doesn't survive potting, I'd be blaming/what-if'ing like crazy over the oil presence (my chainsaw seriously chucks oil I have it setup to over-lube so it's not even teh area I cut it's anything within a foot IE the entire root-mass was getting misted with petrol oil, hopefully the hose-down didn't hurt it I mean water-pressure (w/o over-doing it) has always been the best method I"ve found for being gentle when ttrying to work-through a root-mass!

Got most of the bottom of it off or rather "almost done with my root-line" (lol have never heard that term but it applies so well, look at this (mind you I made my initial cut last night as it was turning fully-dark around me, didn't realize I was a whole inch+ off though so am just hitting it with the sawzall & angle-grinder w/ 4" chainsaw-disc (that thing's amazing, was $40 for the tool+disc at harbor freight it's one of the best-value instruments I own!), if I didn't have those there's zero chance I could've made the base of this appropriate for bonsai-potting:
[note- I left that clean-line where I was cutting just for this picture, I mean I was working segment by segment, chainsawing downward then coming horizontal with the sawzall, anyway almost done hydrating/cooling about to head back out there and finish the roots so I can pot it and start worrying about the canopy! Oh will include its new box too, one of my favorite boxes yet!]



There's simply no way this could've been prepped w/o powertools, even if you had unlimited time you would destroy your hands long before you completed the job using knob cutters! On that note, Ilex is a surprisingly tough wood, I've been learning about wood-densities lately and gotta check figures as I'm always surprised at how resilient they are / how cut-resistant they are, I could've taken a 1' wide bougie in like 1/5th the time it took to remove this sucker!




^wood insulates, metal-mesh bottom ensures full drainage as-well-as being an air-introduction port, the end-supports/legs make transport easy and allow the metal-mesh bottom to do its job fully, and last but not least, the increasing amount of side-holes each box I make will have! This is not just for thtte obvious reason of air-introduction but really it's an attempt to help lessen the magnitude of the perched-water-table effect, I figure that having a bunch of air-ports at that zone for 'mechanical' drying/evap will go a good way towards alleviating that unfortunate attribute of planting containers!

 

[SU2]

And I'd thought I was taking home more of a tree, this looks like it should be a group/forest setup....no prob with that but it is a bit beyond my familiarity (currently....thank the gods for teh Webz!! )

 

[SU2]

Ok he's potted-up now so wanted to add some things for context before pleading for help/suggestions/advice on how to handle the canopy/trunk-line!

This is how I found him, well shortly-after as you can see the pile of his canopy/bushing to the left, I'd just hacked it back enough for physical-access and have not touched the canopy since then (seemed smartest to wait until I was ready to make final trunk-line cuts & caulk them up, I figure if anything it can't hurt to have extra, plump vascular tissue remaining a touch longer when you've just severed its roots!)

(see the pile to the left, that's most of the thing's canopy/bushing, I just swung my 10"-bar'd chainsaw through it back&forth as the sun was setting and getting the hedgers woudln't have fit time-wise! But you can see it was a stout specimen, the ground-level roots on this were well over 4" thicknesses, it was one of those specimen where you've done a perimeter trenching & inward-angled cutting and expect heavy rocking but, upon pushing it, there's *zero* give!)

~~~~~

I finished '1st-pass' root-line cutting, the sawzall only helped on the edges I'd have been lost without the 4" chainsaw-disc on the grinder, after I finished getting a nice 'flat-top' of a root-line, I noticed that the many branches making up this specimen were not 100% fused at the point of the cut, there were 'gaps' where there would've been pure heartwood - I applied IBA to these grooves as I suspect they've got cambial tissue and for all I know they did have roots extending from them that got knocked-off during the collection and also to the bottom-most perimeter (because this had 2 root-zones, the bushel of fine feeders in the above-ground pot & the thick, ground-level & below roots that it'd anchored with in the past decade, they're separated 'layers' due to the way it was positioned, if you look at the photo you can see that right-beneath the bottom of the fine root mat, that there's a trunk-looking/lignified section just as thick as what's above it, that little 1/2" of 'extra' that I retained was also given an IBA paintjob) Unsure whether the bottom-most section will root, or die but still help feed/cushion the tissue directly above it, or die while doing nothing - but even if that last option then worst-case is I'll have to scrape-out more wood from the bottom the next time it's bare-rooted!

Root-line finished: (it's potted-up now but the canopy is still like this and I'm feeling so uncertain about how to approach it!!!


root-line inspection (note the 'marbled' cavities, I strongly suspect they're capable of rooting, hopefully my IBA solution helps - or at least doesn't harm!!)




AAAAAaaaand here he sits in his new box, in a spot that gets heavily-dappled sun during a couple hours in the afternoon & indirect sun the remainder of daylight....I did this because I'm uncertain how Ilex likes sun right-after heavy insults like these, my understanding is that once established they grow faster with good sun but are just-fine (though slower of course) w/ minor sun, but when in-doubt after hurting it I always go to super restricted light and 4+ daily mistings (excepting bougies, even hardwood cuttings go straight into full sun!)

"front" view AKA the front if you're looking at the bench, this thing doesn't have a front yet (in fact it's likely to be a group-planting, or something where I remove most trunks to save 1 or 2 of the best, as they're all intetwined/unseparable in any normal/gentle ways!), one side has a good deal of foliage, visible in other pictures and kinda visible in the 2nd, side-view shot below, so I put that facing the way I did so the foliage-dense side would be facing the sun's arc/path, albeit through the trees!
Any & all advice on how to proceed on this canopy would be greatly appreciated, I'm going to make a graph-overlaid version, w/ demarcations on each row/column, so that any suggestions are easier for people to make (IE "don't allow anything higher than the 3rd line up" or "around the 2nd line down from the top / 3 columns in from the left-side, I'd remove that entire section of limbing" etc ;D )

slightly-downward view:


[that's fast-dry caulking, my go-to for wound-sealing as it almost entirely eliminates those situations where you're trying to seal something but it's too-moist!), have my knob-cutters & sawzall ready-to-rock once I decide just how to approach this thing!!!!!! Normally I'd err towards more-aggressive trunk-lines with this type of stock, however with Ilexs' slow callousing I want to be as mindful of chop-wound-closure(/roll-over completion) when choosing what I'm doing! ]

Thanks a TON for any advice on how to approach this canopy, I expect it'll look best as a group planting but it may end up being better to sacrifice most of the trunks to surgically separate the best 1 or 2 trunks from the rest but, regardless of which of those paths the final product(s) take, for right now I think those considerations should be shelved and that I should simply do thte hard-prunes to establish the trunk-line with as minimal disturbances as possible beyond the trunk-line, so that it may begin healing & recuperating properly!

(Would like to tag @choppychoppy for the general structural-advice on the trunk-line, wish I knew ilex-focused artists that I could browse from am googling images now and not finding any super consistent themes, though that hardly bothers me as this species' fine lil leaves do SO much for the illusion/forced-perspective of the leaves matching the limbs/tree, especially when you've got good-sized stock/trunks, have been reallllly wanting a large ilex yamma for a while and while I'd have preferred a single-trunk I'm still plenty happy with this, here's to hoping it survives this!!! )

 

[SU2]

Oh pics beneath post are just some I snapped of the box/substrate as I was prepping it, the bottom metal-mesh screen is covered with a 1/4" thick layer of medium/small sized pea-gravel, then a small layer of "my super mix" (lol), then I put a pile of sphagnum/super mix/medium-graded scoria in the center, to really try encouraging root-development/matting directly-beneath the trunking, I then filled everything in with a progressively-denser mixture (kinda like old school layering although it's gradual and I work the layers together, honestly it's more just "I use the finer-grade scoria in the top parts, the largest grade in teh lower parts", makes-sense from my understanding & experiences!)

 

[choppychoppy]

Go through and remove all of the twigging. Take all of it back to the thicker ones and then completely leave it alone for the entire next season. It will flush out again but you gotta leave it alone next year. Don't worry about 'directing growth' or any BS like that just let it for for a full season and regain vigor. I have probably done 50+ of these - half yanked out of hedgerows just like this one.

 

[SU2]

Go through and remove all of the twigging. Take all of it back to the thicker ones and then completely leave it alone for the entire next season. It will flush out again but you gotta leave it alone next year. Don't worry about 'directing growth' or any BS like that just let it for for a full season and regain vigor. I have probably done 50+ of these - half yanked out of hedgerows just like this one.

Awesome thank you!!! I'd cut back WAY more generously/conservatively, not sure what it could take & not wanting to risk anything -- days later (now) is there any reason not to go in and really 'trunk chop' all the limbs? (IE right now I've still got some limbs that have foliage, not many but some, I wasn't sure if that would be 'helpful' to its transition, my instinct has been telling me to go cut it more-aggressively & that not doing so won't give it the 'push' for a generous burst of back-budding!!)

 

[leatherback]

Yeah, go through it. But use something a little more subtle. All cuts I see on your plant there are rough, frayed ends etc. For good healing and less risk of infections you should clean cut ends. (Branches AND roots).

 

[choppychoppy]

Awesome thank you!!! I'd cut back WAY more generously/conservatively, not sure what it could take & not wanting to risk anything -- days later (now) is there any reason not to go in and really 'trunk chop' all the limbs? (IE right now I've still got some limbs that have foliage, not many but some, I wasn't sure if that would be 'helpful' to its transition, my instinct has been telling me to go cut it more-aggressively & that not doing so won't give it the 'push' for a generous burst of back-budding!!)

Just let it be. Prune again after the spring.