Clump Amur air layer progression

[cbroad]

Here's an Amur maple clump air layer I potted up 8/3/17. It's been repotted once since then, but it definitely needs it again this season. It hasn't ever really been that vigorous for me, which is surprising since it's an amur, but the soil was probably crap from the beginning... Hopefully by repotting it into better soil, it will gain more vigor; my other amurs seem to never stop growing.

Feel free to critique or offer any suggestions for direction or pruning.

I'm planning on repotting pretty soon, and am going to start selecting the direction for the main "trunks" but am unsure if I want more ascending trunks or continue with their outward splaying habit. I have some thoughts but would like some feedback, or anything else you all see that I don't.

Potted in a squat 5 gal. pot, probably around 4.5-5 feet tall.

As separated from tree and sphagnum cleaned out:




Today:





And what I'm calling the back right now:



As amurs are pretty coarse trees, they seem to be better in larger sizes in my opinion. The way mine is set up, it seems it will be too small for the coarseness of these trees. Could I pull off a believable smaller clump, say under 15 inches, I'm not so sure?

Or let everything thicken up to better proportions, but possibly lose the clump?

Maybe I should continue to grow the trunks outward and not up yet, to allow for more space between trunks once they are thicker.

 

[Hack Yeah!]

Man, tough one. You can feel there has to be something great in there. I find myself trying to find a way to add more or reduce. Maybe try some cuttings this year to play with some grafts next year? Or cut back hard? Or reduce to a twin or single..? Lol, good luck

 

[cbroad]

Maybe try some cuttings this year to play with some grafts next year? Or cut back hard? Or reduce to a twin or single.

I'm honestly disappointed with the vigor of his tree and don't think grafts will really help right now, but that is a good point. I've never tried grafting so this could be a good learning tree. Hopefully it will grow well this year and I'll see where I stand with it then.

You can feel there has to be something great in there

I still think so, even though I may pigeon hole myself expecting a realistic looking clump. I have two other amurs that I'll be posting soon. They were allowed to escape their pots and got rather large and this air layer came off of one of those, so it was more about practicing it then, but I still feel like there's potential here.

I hope it takes off this year and I'll have more options later.

 

[cbroad]

Repotted this amur yesterday.

As been the trend this repotting season so far, temps went down to 30 that night; at least it's an amur and it can handle that... Seems like this is the week for repotting, night time lows are in the 50s; a lot of my plants are starting to swell and pop.


Here it is before chopping the roots by 50%, it had been 2 or 3 years before its last repot:





After some spraying and flaying, trying to get down to the nebari:





I removed most of the high roots even though I kind of liked them; the tree looked cool and feral with them but I wanted to show the (slight) bit of main trunk I have with this tree. I'm really starting to love the way amurs trunk's develop and get some gnarly characteristics (similar to how field maples grow but different from jm and tridents), I have some larger amurs that I let escape their pots a few years ago and they are developing pretty well. This clump is an air layer off of one of those.

Got it down to the bare bones. Probably could have chopped those thicker roots back harder, I'm going to try to be more diligent on my repots and not put them off so long:





Screwed to a board, nails to direct some of the roots:






Overhead view:





Potted up in a cut down squat 10gal. pot with chunky peat moss (w/ fines) and tons of grade 3 perlite. The nebari is planted at least an inch deep, maybe further, enough to keep it moist longer for better development. I might back it off some in summer. Hopefully this thing goes nuts this year: