This was in the bargain bin a couple of years ago. No pics from the time, but it was about 2 foot tall and very leggy. I liked the bend in the trunk and decided I could trunk chop it and hope for some decently placed back buds - I think I lucked out.
It lacks any taper to the top and is rather stylised, but my wife says it is cute.
I left it in the original plastic pot while I focused on pruning and wiring to get it to this shape. The spring colour is pretty nice.
I repotted it a few weeks back and was disappointed to find that there were absolutely no roots at all on the one side of the trunk and I had no choice but to plant it with this awful inverse taper. When I first dug around in the pot I thought there were radial roots, but heigh-ho.
Can anyone help me decide whether it is worth layering it to address the inverse taper? All I'd do is ring bark it at the point of the inverse taper, and put a pot around the trunk filled with sphagnum. If that will work, when is the best time to do it? Other ideas?
2017-03-22_07-54-42 by BrendanR2012, on FlickrI am going to thin the top in a week or two as the top part of the trunk is too thick already and I don't want the growth there to thicken it further and anyway I think this one is apically dominant. I did not want to remove any of the leaves while it is settling into the pot.
The lower 2 branches are going to be left to grow unrestricted all this season. They may get a guy wire at most. I need them both to be thicker, and hopefully to add some girth to the trunk. If either branck gives me an option to allow a sacrifice branch to develop then that will be my best option.
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i would go for somewhere around here, build the tree off branch one after the other branches have been let run long for a couple of years.
