Kintsugi: UPS Smashed My Brand New Pot

[Ry2Tree2]

Carpinus caroliniana that I collected and chopped in 2017. The response to the chop wasn't amazing, but that new leader is in a good spot, so I can't really complain, either. In hindsight, I should have removed those suckers at the base right away, rather than allowing them to divert energy from the main trunk for three years. You'll notice the orange spots where I sealed the cuts.

View attachment 354935

Nice looking yamadori! I'm also discovering the local natives in eastern forests often have amazing nebari. Regarding the suckers on the yamadori, next time around would you remove them right as they appeared or after the first year?

Last spring, I collected a large sugar maple which was also trunk chopped at the time of collection. Overall it's had less than amazing growth this year but I'm curious if it's because I cut those lower suckers off too soon when it needed them to recover from the transplant. It sprouted 2 new leaders at the trunk chop site but had substantial dieback along the trunk (TBD how far down it decided to go). 1 of the 2 leaders is still alive at least. Anyways, when it first started sprouting, it had 2 lower shoots that were blocking the view of the nebari so I almost entirely removed the lowermost one to try to encourage it to put new resources on other sprouts or the leader like you say. Now I'm wondering if I hadn't done that if it wouldn't have had so much dieback. I think it'll make it either way, I just gotta not mess with it for a while while it gets bushy again.