Working on some forests...

Adair M

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Hi,
I have another question which I am hoping your answer will help with my trees and their pruning regarding apical dominance.

The three right hand trees in the photo look rather “stumpy” at the top. Are you planning on shortening these below the stumpiness some time? Or do you think you need to reduce the number of shoots up there so you don’t get a big knobbly apex?
Charles
You’re right, they are. They were considerably taller originally, and Bill rather crudely chopped them to appropriate heights when he made the forest. I am going to decide upon a leader for each tree and allow it to grow, which should help heal the chop. And, you’re right, the apexes need thinning! Otherwise, as you noted, I’ll get inverse taper.
 

Adair M

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Looks like Tongrae. Korean. they made good quality, inexpensive pots in the 80-90s.
Good possibility, except it still has that little “made in Japan” sticker on the bottom! Lol!!!
 

Adair M

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Ahhh...then Houtoko. Remember way back when the monastery had both kinds of pots? Tokoname and Houtoko😜
I probably bought this from David Cook at The Garden Source. He may have gotten it from the Monastery. Or maybe Brussel’s. I think, back in the day, I had a little Japanese Beech forest planting in it. But that was a lifetime ago...
 

Adair M

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An update this morning:

B4F77919-85F5-4BF0-82C0-50CA4CC4CB32.jpeg

I have been pinching the center shoot out of each and every bud. Except, paradoxically, the uppermost apex buds of a couple of the taller trees. Those trees I want to build more girth, so letting a sacrifice run from the top will help that. I don’t want them to get taller, just thicker.

in about two weeks, I’ll start to get new shoots from the base of each leaf! Again, I’ll have to pinch the centers out of those!

Geez! What have I done???


7C7BCE0E-D6F3-452B-A7B8-1DDCA571E010.jpeg

the dawn redwood is leading out nicely. I’m not familiar with this material, so it’s going to be more of a learning process for me. What I’ve noticed is the new shoots create an internode about 1 1/2 inches out, and send two side shoots out at that point. I don’t know if I should pinch out the middle now, or wait and let them extend, and cut back later.

suggestions would be helpful!

Again, I’m planning on letting a sacrifice grow on the taller trunks to build caliper, and even out some of the lumpiness of the trunk sections.

ABC4A2EF-1ADD-4E2F-974F-6D2702B4927B.jpeg

Pretty much the same as the othermaple forest. This one is one year behind, so not as many twigs. Yet. I’m going to start letting some sacrifice branches grow to thicken selected trunks. I didn’t do that last year on the other forest, and I wish I had.

Both these maple forests respond well to pinching, and create wonderfully short internodes, and small leaves.

Not all Japanese Maples do. This one:

image.jpg

Does not respond well to pinching! Not only did it create long internodes, it made huge leaves! I am trying a sacrifice branch up top to build a better apex, but it’s a Shohin size tree. Leaves like that just won’t do! This needs to be a much bigger tree.

I’m thinking this tree would be one I’d sell, as it doesn’t fit my goals, since I purchased it with plans of developing it for Shohin.
 

Adair M

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A late summer update:

Dwarf
Maple:

BEF9D730-6EA7-489E-B022-B398DCB37013.jpeg

As you can see, I let a couple of leaders grow unchecked off the top of the primary tree. It is thickening more than the others. I haven’t decided if I will cut them thus fall, or let them stay for another season.

I grow in full sun. This has kept the internodes short. I pinched it during the early spring, but then just let it do it’s thing. This fall I will go in and thin.

The full sun does “burn up” some leaves. If I were prepping this for a show, I would most likely start to provide shade in early summer. I am not anticipating showing this anytime in the next few years, so a few damaged leaves doesn’t bother me.

Dawn Redwood:

2987B903-D671-4348-A0F5-7ABAAE83BDA8.jpeg

I have also let an apex branch grow on the largest, tallest tree to thicken it. After the picture shown in Post #46 above, we had a late frost that caught me by surprise. Pretty much all the foliage on this turned brown, and it took quite a while before it greened back up. Eventually, it sent out new shoots, and over the summer the original foliage that went brown, then returned to green,has browned again and fallen off. I had no idea Dawn Redwood was so cold sensitive, but the frost we had was one of the latest, hardest frosts I can remember. And I had done a pretty aggressive repot!

It’s recovered well, and backbudded. I’m pleased with it’s progress. The bulges at the nodes aren’t as apparent when it’s in leaf. I have been diligent on preventing new buds from growing at the nodes. The budding that occurs at the nodes makes the bulging there worse.

Young Dwarf Japanese Maple:

7D89102C-2D80-4BB6-9FF6-ABD78BD16D73.jpeg

Thus view is actually the back of the forest, but it’s sodense, it doesn’t really matter. The point I wanted to show is again, I’ve let a shoot extend out of the apex to build up the Primary tree. Both of the maple forests were created from young seedlings, and had only small variations in caliper. To get the Primary tree thicker, I’m letting it grow. I had also let another tree grow unchecked, but I removed it’s sacrifice a couple of weeks ago.

The real work will be in a couple months when they’ll get thinned after the leaves have dropped. (And we’ll be able to see how much the trunks have thickened!)
 

thatguy

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Hi Adair! Love seeing these deciduous forests. Gives me a lot to chew on and some inspiration. There's a local with a dawn redwood forest for sale that I was considering purchasing. They put it together a few years back and are trying to make room. And also am considering building a few maple forests this spring. Looking forward to future updates with your forests and learning from the work you do! Cheers

Also - Probably popping by the fall open house that Valvanis is hosting later this month. Will be lots to see/learn there I think!
 

Adair M

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Hi Adair! Love seeing these deciduous forests. Gives me a lot to chew on and some inspiration. There's a local with a dawn redwood forest for sale that I was considering purchasing. They put it together a few years back and are trying to make room. And also am considering building a few maple forests this spring. Looking forward to future updates with your forests and learning from the work you do! Cheers

Also - Probably popping by the fall open house that Valvanis is hosting later this month. Will be lots to see/learn there I think!
Bill ought to have some forests similar to the ones I have for sale.
 

Adair M

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I thought you got them from Bill Valavantis.
Raffy, I did buy it from Bill. It was a forest grouping he made on 04/25/2007 and sold to a customer. That customer returned it to Bill for him to sell. There’s a metal tag in the tree documenting the creation date, and the dates of three repotting.
 

Adair M

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Oh! I nearly forgot! The JWP clump!

Here it is:

327AC938-A1A8-425E-8993-BF0BB7E87556.jpeg

As you can see, there are a few branches that died. If had experienced some damage during shipment from Japan to Brussel’s.

All the damage was confined to the largest, center, tree. (I think one minor twig on a secondary trunk was broken.).

all in all, it will be fine. It will just have some interesting Jin’s! I’m now starting to give it a bit of fertilizer. It won’t really get any “work” until a year from now.
 

leatherback

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Nice clump.
Wil you over time uncover the base? Or is it uncovered and am I just not looking right?
 

Adair M

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Nice clump.
Wil you over time uncover the base? Or is it uncovered and am I just not looking right?
You can see what the base looks like in Post #10, when it was bare root.

Right now, I just want it to live! There is one big crossing root going over the top of the base that I don’t like, but I’m not going to mess with it. Until it’s time for a repot, which I don’t expect to do for a couple of years.
 

leatherback

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You can see what the base looks like in Post #10, when it was bare root.

Right now, I just want it to live! There is one big crossing root going over the top of the base that I don’t like, but I’m not going to mess with it. Until it’s time for a repot, which I don’t expect to do for a couple of years.
Ah yes! I remember this tree now. If you ever need a shelve to put it on..
 

coh

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Hi Adair! Love seeing these deciduous forests. Gives me a lot to chew on and some inspiration. There's a local with a dawn redwood forest for sale that I was considering purchasing. They put it together a few years back and are trying to make room. And also am considering building a few maple forests this spring. Looking forward to future updates with your forests and learning from the work you do! Cheers

Also - Probably popping by the fall open house that Valvanis is hosting later this month. Will be lots to see/learn there I think!
That's quite a "popping by" - from New Hampshire! Let me know if you wind up going, I might be there one of the days. His open house events are always very good. I haven't been down there all year (covid and all), looking forward to seeing his trees and what he might have available for sale.
 

Adair M

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Here’s an update to one of the Japanese Maple forests. The leaves are still hanging on, and are still showing a bit of faded color. The color was never very good this fall. The spring color was better. Anyway, here’s how it looked yesterday:

966AB408-8EC4-44D0-AB5D-477D21F2F002.jpeg

And here it is today after some light trimming:

2E9A1B44-D569-452B-8E59-D793584ABC6E.jpeg
 

Adair M

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Update on the Dawn Redwood:

Before trimming:

93AEFCB4-2909-43E7-A3E5-CB35D653D9FF.jpeg

This thing really makes a lot of backbuds at the crotches (and all over, actually):

3FFBD0A8-F8FB-4E46-81E2-9F91B777D4AB.jpeg

Left alone, they will create knobs at the internodes. This tree already has lots of knobs, but by removing them, it wont get worse.

After a light trimming:

C7AAFC27-9981-42F2-81C0-AE6CE545FE66.jpeg

And after removing excess buds:

BC198C89-B72D-4894-9A9E-6A115ED8DA04.jpeg

I used scissors to cut some of the buds, others I scraped off with a thumbnail. It will probably produce more buds, so in the early spring, I’ll check it again.
 

MrWunderful

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@Adair M I have found that pruning back in late spring/early summer once this years shoots start to change from green to brown or red gets you a ton of buds at almost each leaf location. Usually they will leaf out from each bud, but my smaller dawn redwood sets some buds that wont break until the following year.

The balance is pruning late enough to have this years shoots be “hard” enough to back bud, while pruning early enough to let the second flush lignify before fall leaf shed.

Here is a branch (this years green shoot) that was pruned in late june? i dont remember, but it set a bud at every leaf.
image.jpg
 
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