Tips/tricks for managing too-fast (falling-over) growth on cuttings&yamadori?

SU2

Omono
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I do a lot of cuttings (semi- and hard-wood, treated with IBA then planted) and most of the trees I get are yamadori (more often than not they're hard-chopped to the point of no foliage)

In both cases I tend to get quick & strong shoot growth, but am finding that, at least with these species (bougies and crepe myrtles), they have a tendency to growing shoots they cannot support (shoots that are too soft + long to remain upright on their own, and when such shoots take 'the fall' and bend they're usually lost, at that point I either remove them or use a zip-tie to re-upright them which seems to work a good amount of the time)

Any tips for this? I've been having some success with partial defoliations of such shoots, removing their lower leaves (removing the weight that's making them tip), I used to pinch in this case but found it was just a temporary fix (as the resulting extra shoots that grow end up making it weigh far more!)

I guess I'm just wondering if it makes more sense to defoliate their bottoms or remove them entirely (of course I'd only do removals if there were plenty of shoots, like right now I have a crepe yamadori that's got >20 shoots and its longest is ~6" and starting to get floppy, and is in a spot I can't use a zip-tie to brace it - am tempted to just remove it once it tips which I'm sure it will in the next 24hrs, just for a change as defoliating the bottom 80% is my go-to.

Any thoughts on helping soft, supple growths like these would be greatly appreciated!
 

Tieball

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A photo sure would help.....I guess I am visually oriented.
 

_#1_

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I just took care of the same exact problem you just described.

Bought a CM last fall sale. took off half the rootball this spring and juiced it up real good once it started to grow out. The new growths was too damn long and flowers are way too heavy. So all new growths was just drooping. Flowers didn't look good either. We must not have pruned it correctly during the growing months.

I chopped all the gangly new shoots to the lignified branch last week. That's more than half the leaves on the tree. Now no more wilted leaves and droopy shoots. And there's new flower buds too.
 

StoneCloud

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Yea pictures of the trees would definitely help in getting clear cut advice.

Based on the post though, Sounds like it has too many shoots. Less shoots will mean more energy per shoot.

Also, you can wire them and allow the wire to support the shoot until it can hold it's own weight.
 

SU2

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A photo sure would help.....I guess I am visually oriented.

No problem, here's a picture of it from within a day of when I posted this thread - sorry for delay, incredibly busy times right now - these little shoots would bend to near 90deg at times (soil fully hydrated, not in direct sun), this is maybe 1.5-2wks old in this picture, a recently-collected crape myrtle yamdri (had an excellent, dense, fine root-ball, was the best I've ever gotten in a collected yamadori)
19700528_061941.jpg


As it develops, I've noticed that it's just the most-supple parts (thankfully), like the shoots are now longer and luckily they're pretty stiff in their bottom 2/3rd, here's a pic with ~1wk extra growth:

19700530_210013.jpg


I didn't post this thread solely about this crape though, it's a topic I'm constantly fighting as I do lots of yammas and lots of cuttings that have foliage on them, so this issue of supple growth that doesn't have sufficient root/vascular support is always a fight for me (and as mentioned, defoliation of the lower parts of shoots is my go-to, I tend to find that if I do that I can start at the bottoms of shoots and I removed leaves until the heavy wilting/curling stops, often leaving just 1/3 or less leaves at the tops of the shoots - I never want to pinch, as then I'll have 2-4x as many shoots to deal with in a couple weeks once it's responded to losing a growing tip!) For another type of situation that's exemplary of what I mean, only cuttings not yammas, is that of a chunk of bougie - see the orange bucket in the pic above? You can see there's a ~1.75" thick branch that was cut off that yamma and it had ~10 fresh, supple shoots on it - but it was a gnarly shape so I couldn't just chuck it. I wasn't sure if it was smarter to remove the shoots and try to root it and wait for it to bud so I defoliated 75% of the lower foliage on the shoots right away and planted it, had to remove ~95% of the foliage in the following 10d until it 'stabilized' and the growing tips became & stayed plump, will be stoked if I get this guy to survive:

19700514_213959.jpg


It ^ looks like two stumps but it's one, anyways that's a thick, hardwood cutting with ~2-3wk old shoots, within a day they were all so wilted they were falling over. I removed a lot of their leaves and propped-up the shoots so none broke horizontal (gravitropism and sun::top-of-leaves being my concerns there) That guy is 4 days shy of 1mo now, and all of the shoots are alive and are now upright & rigid on their own, with only the top ~10 little leaves at the shoots' apexes. Am pretty sure it's stabilized and thrown roots, will see whether it continues on a path of growth or stagnates and dies!



I love propagating stuff, and always knew as a rule-of-thumb that, when taking cuttings, you remove the lower pieces of foliage - I was very surprised when, in a thread I had on a new yamadori that had fresh/supple growth, that I was told to just leave it all on... the roots *were not* able to support all the foliage and instead of letting it wilt to the apical meristems I stopped that by defoliating a bit every couple days, until it was 'in homeostasis' and the wilting was pretty much gone - that specimen is the yamma that that ^ cutting was taken from, so it's also about to hit 1mo now, and it's stabilized and finally started growing (in the past ~1.5wks its shoots have grown inches, it's finally back in growth-mode :D )
 

sorce

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.. @SU2

Myriad....

A myriad of problems...

This is why you are having such a hard time.

Leaf miners.
Caterpillars.
Fungus.
New collected trees.
Newbness.

If we are going to fix these problems....
We should make one thread.
And start solving them one at a time.

Too many threads...
Too many problems...
Too many solutions...
Leading to more problems...

This is why @rockm is confused.
It's confusing!

How many trees do you have?

I would probly post some good pics of all of em and do some instant stack ranking....

Get rid of any straight Bullshit.

Get down to a managable collection...

Which right now..

Would be less than ten trees IMO.

Or whatever the number is that you can allow time to fully inspect them everyday...
And hand kill pests if you see em.
Cut bad leaves.
Etc...

If you keep bringing weak stuff home...
The bugs are going to keep sniffing them out...
And you'll never get ahead of it.

Sometimes I tell people to Slow down.

Stop!
Assess.
Start over.

Sorce
 

rockm

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Like source said, there is a lot going on here. You've got fungal issues, wet soil, and your containers are on the ground. All of those things are harming your plants.

First things first, get the plants up off the dirt--rain splashes alot of stuff into the pots--which quickly invades newly-collected and compromised root systems. It takes well more than a month to re-establish a root system that has been reduced by more than 80 percent or more at collection. I don't mess with anything on a collected tree for at least two years. I allow them to simply grow. no messing with new growth, or anything else.

Floppy new growth is not an indication that the roots haven't caught up with it. Defoliating weakens a tree, period. Stop it.

Floppy new growth isn't unusual. It takes time to lignify new stems on just about every tree out there--, that is have the new stems produce wood. Doesn't happen immediately.

Weak, stressed trees attract bugs. Bugs are typicallly a symptom of an existing underlying problem, not a primary cause.

You're moving too quickly and pushing too hard with these.
 

RobertB

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When were these collected?

Also I thought it was good to grow out long whips, especially since I would assume your trying to add taper. I would just stake and tie them up to let them grow out 10-15ft or to whatever point the trunk thickens to where you want it.
 
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