Styling tips for my Chinese elm

[vcnsiqueira]

Hey guys!

I've been developing some Chinese elms that I bought in a nursery on March this year. Three elms in a single pot.

I repot them and I've be growing through the year. All of them have a vigorous growth and during this growing season I pruned them 2 times.

Last weekend I did the last pruning and decided to wire some of the branches (first and second branches) to position in kind of a horizontal way.

Well, I don't know if I wired very tight or the tree grows ridiculously fast (not complaining) but today (after only 6 days) I realised the wire was biting the branch. I'm very beginner so I imagine the wire was really too tight. I remove the wire and wired again in a very loose way to prevent the biting (if you can give me any advice I would appreciate - maybe not the right moment to wire).

I don't think this tree will be amazing at all, but I kinda like it and the original idea to buy it was to learn the most I could with a initial tree instead of handling too young seedlings or saplings.

Anyway, besides the wiring situation, one thing is bothering me a lot. The apex of the tree. This tree had been chopped and from the apex there are 4 different branches and now that I've been looking at it, ifI leave them all, I will probably have an inverse taper on the tree. It seems a big "ball" is going to grow on the top, making the tree very ugly. At the same time, the way it is, it seems the tree has already a good harmony on the top of the tree. I mean, if I cut some of the branches I will have to grow the top of the tree from zero and it will have a lot of empty spaces to be filled up later.

Could you give me ideas of what to do? And please could you criticise what I've done so I can learn from my mistakes?

 

[eugenev2]

Hey guys!

I've been developing some Chinese elms that I bought in a nursery on March this year. Three elms in a single pot.

I repot them and I've be growing through the year. All of them have a vigorous growth and during this growing season I pruned them 2 times.

Last weekend I did the last pruning and decided to wire some of the branches (first and second branches) to position in kind of a horizontal way.

Well, I don't know if I wired very tight or the tree grows ridiculously fast (not complaining) but today (after only 6 days) I realised the wire was biting the branch. I'm very beginner so I imagine the wire was really too tight. I remove the wire and wired again in a very loose way to prevent the biting (if you can give me any advice I would appreciate - maybe not the right moment to wire).

I don't think this tree will be amazing at all, but I kinda like it and the original idea to buy it was to learn the most I could with a initial tree instead of handling too young seedlings or saplings.

Anyway, besides the wiring situation, one thing is bothering me a lot. The apex of the tree. This tree had been chopped and from the apex there are 4 different branches and now that I've been looking at it, ifI leave them all, I will probably have an inverse taper on the tree. It seems a big "ball" is going to grow on the top, making the tree very ugly. At the same time, the way it is, it seems the tree has already a good harmony on the top of the tree. I mean, if I cut some of the branches I will have to grow the top of the tree from zero and it will have a lot of empty spaces to be filled up later.

Could you give me ideas of what to do? And please could you criticise what I've done so I can learn from my mistakes?

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So first off, yes they do grow very fast...well in my climate at least
Secondly, your in the Northern hemisphere, so you are either moving towards fall or in fall already, which is the time of year which trees put on girth, so you would probably see more than usual
Those wires are currently very loose and will only serve as guide wires and make actual positioning/bending hard as well as place branches at risk of breaking
I don't see any wire scars of concern and as the tree seems young, the likelihood of permanent wire scars will be relatively low...sorry i don't have any pictures of my own elm to show at what point the wire bite becomes too much or not, i will try to find some pictures on the internet

Regarding the empty spaces portion, i think it was Walter Pall that said you can grow a beautiful tree for a short time or you can grow a beautiful tree for a long time ie...you can grow a tree to constantly look nice, but it will weaken and eventually die, or you can grow a tree that mostly never looks amazing except for rare occasions when you put it up for show ext. My point being, if you need to remove branches and have open spaces, but your tree will be better for it, it might be better to do that.

So my first question is, are you happy with the trunk of the tree, ie do you want to keep it a slender tree or would you like to fatten it up?

 

[vcnsiqueira]

Hello @eugenev2! Thank you for the reply!

Well, regarding your questions, I don't mind having an ugly tree for a while in order it is improving on long term. With this particular tree, I would like the trunk to flatten up, but I do have concerns with inverse taper. Since I don't have much experience, for now, it seems that on top of the tree, because of many different branches are growing at that point, I believe that part is going to be fatter than the trunk below and that would make an 'ugly' tree forever. I don't know if I'm right about that, but that's what I've been researching about.

About the rest of the trunk line, I need it to get thicker because it came to me with weird thinner places from the nursery (I also don't know it can be solved by just fatten the trunk or if it woul be better to chop it at some point (maybe just after the second branch?) and star a new apex.

As I said, the idea behind this tree and two others is to learn as much as I can, so I don't bother to commit mistakes! I think Chinese elms allow us to start again if necessary.

Overall, I'm glad with the tree but looking to learn more and making the tree better (more beautiful, getting the trunk thicker, creating good pads, creating good nebari at some point and later, better ramification and smaller leaves). A long way to go, though!