New Korean Hornbeam loot!

[Scrogdor]

My favorite time of year to go look at new material, came across this one and picked it up.

Some pictures. Curious if others think the yellow chop is the correct one for the future? Or leave that section and work on the next section.

Plan to make the red chop on the other large branch to get some back budding there.

 

[JudyB]

If you have the trunk size you want then chop at a point where the taper stops Is how I do it. You’ll always be unhappy with sections without taper down the road. So yes to yellow mark. I would say that the second image is a better front than the first one, as then smaller branch shows as a back branch not a side one with a ”U” shaped junction.

 

[Scrogdor]

Fear I may have killed this one . I chopped it down pretty significantly, and it was throwing new shoots out; however, the other day they all started to wilt. I instantly knew what I had done wrong. I kept it on the same watering routine as my other Korean hornbeam in the same pot size/medium. I pulled it out of the pot, and sure enough root rot! I didn't even think to reduce watering after I drastically chopped it. Tried to clean up the rot and put it back in a pot with some dryer/more coarse bonsai soil. It still has a couple strong shoots that I left for strength purposes, but might be the death spiral of not having enough foliage left to recover from root reduction/rot/major chop. For now, it will sit in the corner with a couple hours of morning sun and majority shade.

This will be the first tree I've killed if it goes down, lessons learned. Also the potential pitfalls of using far more organic soil.