thailand-steve
Yamadori
hi, i have this nice Chinese Banyan.
the trunk is about 2" wide at the soil line but i've already checked under ground and i know i can go down another 2-3" to get to a nice fat 2 1/2" trunk, so i'm thinking my final trunk will be about 10-12" tall. so that means i need to cut the top off at about 8" from the current soil level.
the problem is, below that 8" (20cm) line i only have one puny looking branch on one side and nothing on the other side to balance it out.
how would you go about cutting the top off this tree and what would you do now to prepare? i don't plan on cutting for at least 6 months, i want to grow it out a bit more but i'm worried when i do cut i'll end up with a very unnatural looking flat top
thx steve
UPDATE
i found this http://www.evergreengardenworks.com/trunks.htm
How to Make the Cuts
I've been doing trunk cuts for some years now and can report what I have learned. At first I did 45 degree cuts as recommended by most books. In fact I spent a lot of time carving the crater shapes at the same time. I have come to the conclusion that this is mostly a waste of time. I now just give them a perpendicular whack, and save the angle cuts and carving for later, after the dieback is complete.
You must understand what is happening when you cut off a trunk. You are creating a wound that the plant will wall off and heal by itself. If you cut back to (or near) a side branch, the plant will usually wall off an area that reaches around the collar of the top of the side branch and then extends downward at an angle behind and below the side branch. The area that lives is the area that has connective pathways to the branch. The area above this dies (unless it can break some buds in this area). This may be a 45 degree angle, it may be more, it may be less. It makes little sense to try to guess what this angle will be. It makes much more sense to wait a year and see how far it dies back, then cut off the dead wood and carve out the wound if necessary for clean closure. It is going to die back to this point anyhow, so why carve it out, or create such a large wound so close to the tissue that is going to survive?
If there is no side branch and you are cutting back to just a stump, the same argument still holds. Cut a little bit higher than the position you want bud break and hope you get it where you want it, or inspect the trunk closely for the small bumps that may be dormant buds. By making an angled cut just above where you want bud break, you are creating a larger wound and increasing the chances that it will dieback more than you want. Once you do get bud break and you choose a new leader, you can proceed as above. One interesting and powerful trick is that dieback will usually proceed until it hits a preformed bud, or the collar of an existing branch, or the connective tissue of an existing branch. If you cut back to a side branch and there is another branch lower and on the opposite side, dieback will almost never go lower than the collar of this lower branch. This can help you limit the dieback by choosing the position and branches properly, OR you can pretrain your tree by pruning it back the year before to create more lower branches before doing the final chop. This also strengthens the lower 'tree' because there will be many more preformed buds on the 'stump' after the final chop.
so i guess i should make a level cut about 1/2" or so above that little branch on the right (pretty much exactly at the 8" mark on the tape measure), and hope that some new buds pop up on the other side to fill in. does that seam reasonable?
the trunk is about 2" wide at the soil line but i've already checked under ground and i know i can go down another 2-3" to get to a nice fat 2 1/2" trunk, so i'm thinking my final trunk will be about 10-12" tall. so that means i need to cut the top off at about 8" from the current soil level.
the problem is, below that 8" (20cm) line i only have one puny looking branch on one side and nothing on the other side to balance it out.
how would you go about cutting the top off this tree and what would you do now to prepare? i don't plan on cutting for at least 6 months, i want to grow it out a bit more but i'm worried when i do cut i'll end up with a very unnatural looking flat top
thx steve
UPDATE
i found this http://www.evergreengardenworks.com/trunks.htm
How to Make the Cuts
I've been doing trunk cuts for some years now and can report what I have learned. At first I did 45 degree cuts as recommended by most books. In fact I spent a lot of time carving the crater shapes at the same time. I have come to the conclusion that this is mostly a waste of time. I now just give them a perpendicular whack, and save the angle cuts and carving for later, after the dieback is complete.
You must understand what is happening when you cut off a trunk. You are creating a wound that the plant will wall off and heal by itself. If you cut back to (or near) a side branch, the plant will usually wall off an area that reaches around the collar of the top of the side branch and then extends downward at an angle behind and below the side branch. The area that lives is the area that has connective pathways to the branch. The area above this dies (unless it can break some buds in this area). This may be a 45 degree angle, it may be more, it may be less. It makes little sense to try to guess what this angle will be. It makes much more sense to wait a year and see how far it dies back, then cut off the dead wood and carve out the wound if necessary for clean closure. It is going to die back to this point anyhow, so why carve it out, or create such a large wound so close to the tissue that is going to survive?
If there is no side branch and you are cutting back to just a stump, the same argument still holds. Cut a little bit higher than the position you want bud break and hope you get it where you want it, or inspect the trunk closely for the small bumps that may be dormant buds. By making an angled cut just above where you want bud break, you are creating a larger wound and increasing the chances that it will dieback more than you want. Once you do get bud break and you choose a new leader, you can proceed as above. One interesting and powerful trick is that dieback will usually proceed until it hits a preformed bud, or the collar of an existing branch, or the connective tissue of an existing branch. If you cut back to a side branch and there is another branch lower and on the opposite side, dieback will almost never go lower than the collar of this lower branch. This can help you limit the dieback by choosing the position and branches properly, OR you can pretrain your tree by pruning it back the year before to create more lower branches before doing the final chop. This also strengthens the lower 'tree' because there will be many more preformed buds on the 'stump' after the final chop.
so i guess i should make a level cut about 1/2" or so above that little branch on the right (pretty much exactly at the 8" mark on the tape measure), and hope that some new buds pop up on the other side to fill in. does that seam reasonable?
Last edited:
