Malix
Mame
Brought this home a few weeks ago. a large European hornbeam that caught my eye. It had lots of branches and looked good for afar but was lacking taper and included some reverse taper in the upper part of the trunk. as well the thickness of branches from lowest to higher was somewhat poor. As much as I loved the ramification and branching on the tree i decided to cut the tree back hard. The cut was losing sap as soon as I cut it. So i decided to hit the cut with a torch to see If I could cauterize the wound . It worked and the cut stoped bleeding.
Today I decided to do thorough repot. . the tree had not been repotted in a looong time. It was a solid mass of roots. Many fine roots but many thick roots. a few were over an inch thick. I cleaned out as much old soil as possible and reduced the roots as much as I could taking into consideration the amount I was pruning or had pruned on the top. I tried to balance out the draw on the root system by the remaining canopy.
Potted it up into a wood box with 50/50 DE/pumice and a few handfuls of pine bark. The root system is not bad but still has a lot of work before it begins to develop any kind of spreading nebari below the swelling base of the trunk.
After completing the repot I then reduced the coarse branching down to approx 2 buds per shoot. I removed quite a lot of branches but wanted to get a good foundation going from this point on. The smller branches did not bleed at all, unlike the large cut at the top of the trunk did . I did some shaping with guy wires and wiring. And this one should be good to go for the growing season. i'll not touch it again save for watering and fertilizing till fall. Will likely do some light pruning of shoots at leaf fall. ( if it needs it.)
The plan moving forward will be to either get the tree to break a bud in a good place to allow a new leader or to graft something up there to begin developing the new top. Additionally I'll be trying to get the tree to bud back on some of he overly long or bare sections on the branches.
as purchased
after rootwork
work completed
Today I decided to do thorough repot. . the tree had not been repotted in a looong time. It was a solid mass of roots. Many fine roots but many thick roots. a few were over an inch thick. I cleaned out as much old soil as possible and reduced the roots as much as I could taking into consideration the amount I was pruning or had pruned on the top. I tried to balance out the draw on the root system by the remaining canopy.
Potted it up into a wood box with 50/50 DE/pumice and a few handfuls of pine bark. The root system is not bad but still has a lot of work before it begins to develop any kind of spreading nebari below the swelling base of the trunk.
After completing the repot I then reduced the coarse branching down to approx 2 buds per shoot. I removed quite a lot of branches but wanted to get a good foundation going from this point on. The smller branches did not bleed at all, unlike the large cut at the top of the trunk did . I did some shaping with guy wires and wiring. And this one should be good to go for the growing season. i'll not touch it again save for watering and fertilizing till fall. Will likely do some light pruning of shoots at leaf fall. ( if it needs it.)
The plan moving forward will be to either get the tree to break a bud in a good place to allow a new leader or to graft something up there to begin developing the new top. Additionally I'll be trying to get the tree to bud back on some of he overly long or bare sections on the branches.
as purchased
after rootwork
work completed
