Here’s a video of their (the 4 baby saplings) current state:
Re-cap, my ideal goal and visualization - small Niwaki garden tree about 6’ tall (not a small bonsai, but also not a huge 15-25’+ Niwaki garden tree). Anywhere from 5-7’ would be ideal.
They seem healthy and vigorous (this year especially), and now about 1.25” thick at base.
I reduced spring whorl candles into 2/bifurcation in May for the secondary branches and wired them horizontally (whorls had 6-12 candles each). The candles were already +6" long in May.
I also left a backup/insurance leader for all 4 of them (and also a few backup/insurance side-branches higher up), because the current long leader’s internode is super long, leaving a large gap/space between its’ new upcoming whorl and the lower existing branches.
So, my current concern is the very large gap/space between the long leader’s new whorl and the existing lower branches.
Should I keep it, or chop it off and replace it with my backup/insurance leaders?
Will that long leader produce lower side branches to fill in that very large space/gap?
Another concern is that my overall trunk curves, curve size, movement are maybe too small, unnoticeable and less-pronounced for a larger 6’ garden tree (say, viewed from a distance). Perhaps I should make the movement and curves with much bigger radius and slants? Maybe even just clip&grow the leaders over time to create larger radius curves and slants built with long, straight-sections of the trunk/leaders/internodes? (dunno if that made sense... maybe, visualize building/making a very large curve with a rigid, straight 12" ruler)