Tom

Hi Steve,

A tip I might pass on to you about Amur. They are a bugger to heal when it comes to pruning. Unless you want a hollow, then you have to prune your sacrificial branches early on in any hopes of those pruning wounds to heal over.
The large secondary trunk doesn't appear in your virt. So I assume your using that as a sacrifice to thicken the trunk. I believe its past the point of no return and you can expect a hollow there now when you remove it. You may be able to reduce the size of that hollow by letting buds pop around the wound and then removing them after a season or two. Also amur wood rots very quickly. Use a sealant on the wood to protect it from water and bugs as callous won't expand over punky wood.

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noissee

I do like the new virt. Good direction to head. Usually the lowest branch is the oldest and fattest, but on deciduous trees there is always the possibility of a "late bloomer" branch. Don't cut anything off before you're absolutely sure.

treebeard55

Tom , thanks for the tip; I didn't know that about Amur maples. (Might be one reason why Matt Ouwinga specifically does not recommend them.)

I was planning to wire that "auxiliary trunk" and bend it down for my first branch. But Matt told me in the Maple SG meeting recently that it's too big for that: it won't bend properly anymore. His advice is to let it grow a year or two, then cut it off and use one of the shoots that sprout around the stub.

But given what you say about wounds not healing well on Amurs, and the wood rotting easily, my thoughts are now trending elsewhere. This tree already has several major pruning wounds that -- now that I notice it -- haven't callused over in 3 years or more. What I may well do is try to make use of that fact, and turn it into a hollow-trunk moyogi.

Stay tuned, folks ...

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Treebeard 55
Steve Moore
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