Japanese Green Maple Trunk Chop

QuantumSparky

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I just picked up this Japanese Maple from Home Depot for...10 dollars. That seems a bit ridiculous considering the fact that I've seen countless green leaf Acer palmatum being sold for a bare minimum of $175 for similar size.

20210705_170903.jpgInked20210705_170856_LI.jpg

This is my first maple and I was planning on keeping it in the original pot until February, at which point I would repot it since it seems to be a bit root bound. As you could guess from the photo, I want to do a trunk chop. Red line is chop spot, blue dots are buds. I think I picked a decent tree out of the 4 available since this one has plenty of growth down low, below the chop point. However since this is my first attempt at anything like this, I could use some guidance.

1) Timeline: Would it be correct to do the repot in February, wait a year, and do the trunk chop the following February? I'm guessing I shouldn't do the chop immediately after repotting it.
2) Location: Is the line in my photo a good spot to chop? I'm not sure how much extra to leave in case of die-back.
 

Paradox

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You can repot and chop it at the same time with maples. In fact people often do it at the same time because working the roots at the same time can slow down excessive sap bleeding.. You've got some good options for new leaders so that is good.

February might be a bit early. Watch the tree and do this work just as the buds start to swell.
Should be March in your area
 

Colorado

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I’d chop it now if it were me. Your proposed chop location looks fine.

Get the roots sorted out spring 2022 and let it grow wild all year.

Should be ready for more work up top in 2023.

10 bucks…nice!
 

QuantumSparky

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Thanks for the advice! I think I feel more comfy with chopping right before the spring, if I were to do it now I'm sure I'd spend the entire winter worrying about having killed it xD

I'm wondering if I should instead chop a bit lower at an angle and make that vertical shoot the new leader. I just watched some videos on the matter and I'm favoring that shoot a lot more now.

Do you guys use cut paste on major chops like that, or is it optional?
 

Michael P

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Don't chop too close to the vertical shoot because there might be some die-back and you don't want to lose that shoot.. Your line is a good location. After growth starts again and you are certain your new leader is alive, you can cut the stub back to where you want it.
 

QuantumSparky

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Don't chop too close to the vertical shoot because there might be some die-back and you don't want to lose that shoot.. Your line is a good location. After growth starts again and you are certain your new leader is alive, you can cut the stub back to where you want it.
Gotcha, I have no experience with die-back so it'll be a learning curve to predict how much trunk I'll lose. I'll stick with the red line cut spot and train that vertical shoot as a leader! Thanks :)
 

Shibui

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At this early stage of tree development there is no need to plan chops too much because future regrowth will change the entire look of the tree and your careful plans will be all for naught. Planning trunk shapes or branching now when you have not even seen the roots is also fraught. Develop a great tree then find the roots are another 3 or 4 inches deeper or all on one side will spoil all the plans and work. I'd follow @Paradox and wait until repot time then plan and chop on the basis of what you find under the soil. Likely to need a really good root prune as commercial landscape growers are not noted for carefully arranging roots on the seedlings they pot up.

At this stage of tree development just chop and then work with whatever new shoots the tree sees fit to give you.
 

PeaceLoveBonsai

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I’d chop it now if it were me. Your proposed chop location looks fine.

Get the roots sorted out spring 2022 and let it grow wild all year.

Should be ready for more work up top in 2023.

10 bucks…nice!
I’d take @Colorado’s approach if this was my tree. First, you already have growth established below the cut line, which bodes well for survival. Second, you’re not gonna want to lug that awkward tree in and out of a garage during the winter months. And third, and this is just a hunch, but let’s just say my spouse asks a lot less questions (and I can buy more trees) when the trees are small. Nice score for $10. Keep us updated.
 

QuantumSparky

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I’d take @Colorado’s approach if this was my tree. First, you already have growth established below the cut line, which bodes well for survival. Second, you’re not gonna want to lug that awkward tree in and out of a garage during the winter months. And third, and this is just a hunch, but let’s just say my spouse asks a lot less questions (and I can buy more trees) when the trees are small. Nice score for $10. Keep us updated.
If chopping now isn't risky then I'll consider it. My only gripe with that comes from my intentions to take a crap load of cuttings when I go to cut it, and the original plan was to chop before spring so I could plant the cuttings at the same time. Is it still a viable time to plant cuttings in my zone? I don't want them to hit dormancy before they get decent roots - but I could be worrying about nothing.
 

QuantumSparky

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And when I go to repot, do you think it's fine to use a 50/50 mix (or similar) of my organic bonsai soil and good quality potting soil? Or can I go straight bonsai soil (40 pumice, 40 clay, 20 pine bark fines)?
 

QuantumSparky

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I’d chop it now if it were me. Your proposed chop location looks fine.

Get the roots sorted out spring 2022 and let it grow wild all year.

Should be ready for more work up top in 2023.

10 bucks…nice!
So I did the chop yesterday. Brand new saw, sterilized it, made a clean cut, applied cut paste. I also ended up with almost 100 cuttings which are now sitting happily in my propagation box in peat moss/perlite mix.

BUT this morning I checked on what's left of the maple and the leaves on the shoots below the chop are starting to wilt and close up. Not sure if I should be terribly worried but I'm not excited with the way the tree seems to be responding. The soil had already been watered beforehand so I would doubt it to be a water issue. The cut itself looks great though.

Any advice? I'll post a pic later today Snapchat-1704940800.jpg
 

Colorado

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I’d just make sure to keep a close eye on the water since there is not near as much foliage to pull water out of the container. I’d also put it in the shade for a couple days.
 

QuantumSparky

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Looks a bit better today, definitely some bleeding down the side of the trunk but nothing awful. I'm trying to keep it misted and in the shade so hopefully it'll survive until early spring when I can root prune and repot! 20210708_163721.jpg
 

JosefR

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I'm following this and wanted to ask about 2 similar landscape Japanese maples I just got. Very similar to OP, except mine have no growth established below the desired cut line, does that mean I'm SOL on chopping? Or would chopping above the first branch encourage more lower? These things seem too spindly and tall. I don't have any pre-bonsai sources and was lucky to get these for $22 each.
 

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QuantumSparky

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I'm following this and wanted to ask about 2 similar landscape Japanese maples I just got. Very similar to OP, except mine have no growth established below the desired cut line, does that mean I'm SOL on chopping? Or would chopping above the first branch encourage more lower? These things seem too spindly and tall. I don't have any pre-bonsai sources and was lucky to get these for $22 each.
I don't have all the answers here but maybe try chopping back to a single branch (yes it's higher than your desired chop point) and see if it back buds at all. It'll have at least some foliage to fall back on if no new buds come out for whatever reason. This is just my noob theory - I don't know how well maples back bud if you were to leave zero foliage.
Or you could try air layering some branches and then chopping after those root. At the very least, turn all that upper stuff into cuttings.
Good luck and keep the updates coming!
 

Maiden69

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Too late now, but I would have air-layered the top now, separate in the spring and chop then. I don't know what is wrong with me and air-layering, but getting a decently ramified head-start vs starting from a chopped trunk makes more sense to me. Plus the fact that most of the time you get a decent radial root spread from the layer.

The tree should recover quickly, if I recall correctly, JM do better with chops after the first flush hardens up.
 

QuantumSparky

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Too late now, but I would have air-layered the top now, separate in the spring and chop then. I don't know what is wrong with me and air-layering, but getting a decently ramified head-start vs starting from a chopped trunk makes more sense to me. Plus the fact that most of the time you get a decent radial root spread from the layer.

The tree should recover quickly, if I recall correctly, JM do better with chops after the first flush hardens up.
No sarcasm - what's the point of air layering the top if it's still going to be too tall? Is it to get a free proper tree out of it that you can take small air layered branches and cuttings from every season? Because that full air layered trunk won't be useful for bonsai.

If you happened to see my other thread, I managed to fry the hell out of my cuttings after I chopped. I want to go back to the garden center and buy that last green Japanese maple for the 15 bucks it was on sale for, and try air layering the trunk off instead of chopping and taking cuttings. I'm not opposed to actually planting that air layer and trying to get a full tree out of it for the reasons I asked about above.
 
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The 'perfect' layer material is a nice wide tapering 'trunk' (maybe it used to be a branch) with its own ramification branching and plenty of leaves to encourage roots, but it may just be a normal trunk or a normal branch, as long as it has leaves is the main thing, you can start with material with great roots and grow from that if needed

Instead of one normal sized tree air layer you could find several as close to a decent start for bonsai as you can find (as long as they have an uninterrupted flow to enough leaves) so it becomes removing several free trees from the original tree in sections rather than one chop and gone forever
 

Maiden69

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No sarcasm - what's the point of air layering the top if it's still going to be too tall? Is it to get a free proper tree out of it that you can take small air layered branches and cuttings from every season? Because that full air layered trunk won't be useful for bonsai.
If you had done an air-layer you would have 2 trees instead of 1. The air-layer will become a tree on it's own, with a lot of ramification to chose from. The bottom trunk will be just what you have now.


Maple1.jpg
 

SeanS

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No sarcasm - what's the point of air layering the top if it's still going to be too tall? Is it to get a free proper tree out of it that you can take small air layered branches and cuttings from every season? Because that full air layered trunk won't be useful for bonsai.

If you happened to see my other thread, I managed to fry the hell out of my cuttings after I chopped. I want to go back to the garden center and buy that last green Japanese maple for the 15 bucks it was on sale for, and try air layering the trunk off instead of chopping and taking cuttings. I'm not opposed to actually planting that air layer and trying to get a full tree out of it for the reasons I asked about above.
You don’t have to air layer right above the intended chop (if you had waited), you do the layer where the tree is interesting. So it could have been right up around that highest green tie, under where the branches are like @Maiden69 suggested. Then you could have chopped off the remaining straight bare trunk section once the layer was separated.
You would have 2 trees, and the long straight trunk bit between them would be in the trash.
 
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