Hello,
In the fall of 2003 I planted two Valley Forge American elms. One of them is turning out great, the other has been a big pain in the neck. It does not seem to want to establish a dominant central leader. Last year, several side branches grew like crazy while the central "leader" grew slowly.
Today I was heading off a couple of the side branches that had surpassed the leader. Since I don't have one of those long pruners, this involved me standing on a ladder, hooking the target branches with a pole and pulling them down to clip off the ends. While pulling down the last one, the crotch split (!@?%&!). The leader there is about 3/4 an inch in diameter, and the split has gone well into the leader.
I cut off the branch I was working on, and closed the split with that gardener's velcro tape, but I don't feel comfortable with just trying to let that grow back together as the trunk increases in diameter...I feel the tree should be cut off there.
If I do that, the largest side branches will be higher than the leader again. If I cut them back to be lower than the leader, there won't be much left of them.
Given all this, would it be a bad idea to cut off all the branches and turn this tree into a whip? I hoping that if I do this, the tree will send out several branches near the top, and I can choose one to train as the leader.
The top cut would be made about 10 or 11 feet off the ground, where the trunk is about 7/8 of an inch in diameter.
The tree is leafing out now, and the leaves are about an inch long. It's still trying to start buds where I pruned branches over the winter. Obviously I'd like to do this soon, so the tree doesn't spend any more of its reserves into branches that are coming off.
Thanks for any input,
Alex
ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
alexander3_gwOriginal Author
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alexander3_gwOriginal Author
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alexander3_gwOriginal Author