Hello! The container should definitely have drainage holes. Are you sure that the plant is potted in spanish moss all the way through? Lots of times, people will use spanish moss as a top dressing for decorative purposes. You might find that underneath there is a different media so you should check that out. The little green shoots coming from the woody 'stems' are probably new spikes, and will also bear flowers. In theory yeah they do sap energy from the parent plant, but then again so does producing any kind of flower. Most people let the plant flower freely unless a) It's flowered so long that it looks unasthetic because of long spindly spikes, b) it's flowered so long that the grower feels that the plant needs a break (I cut spikes off if they flower for over 7 months..and some do!) or c) The plant is sick and therefore should focus it's energy on growing rather than flowering. In the above three situations, people will generally cut the entire flowering spike off at the base. In your situation, it sounds like the spike is branching which is generally happy news for most growers

I also have 3 Diablo Ninebark, beautiful bushes. Mine never flowered for the first 2 years, since then they have done a great job of flowering. They had lovely dark purple foliage when I bought them but this year I noticed that one of them was sending up green shoots. Does anyone know if these shrubs are grafted? Anyway, I just cut off the green stems. That seems to have solved the problem. This year I also decided to get 2 more Diablo since we like them so much. I bought 2 that were labeled Diablo and looked the same. When we got them home and started to plant them, we noticed that the foliage wasn't quite as dark purple as Diablo. I called the nursery and asked them what other kinds they had. It turns out the ones I bought were mislabeled, still beautiful shrubs, but they were called Summer Wine. We have them all planted a fair distance from the house and when you look out at them you can't tell the difference, up close you can. Marg

Basal sprouts/suckers and water sprouts have a significant impact on the top growth of whatever stem they're attached to. Juvenile tissues near the tree's root to shoot transition zone are naturally more vigorous than distal tissues, so the tree will tend to funnel energy to the juvenile parts while [ontogenetically] older tissues are deprived of what would have been funneled to them were it not for the juvenile growth closer to the transition zone. What you have going on also jars the eye because it looks so different from what would be considered one of the tree's 'features - the plaited trunk; so, there are two reasons to remove the low growth. The green to brown change in the periderm (bark) is a natural part of the plant's morphology. As the outer layers of the periderm die, they become cork-like; then, as the stems and branches thicken, the outermost dead parts of the periderm develop fissures and furrows to produced the aged look we envision when we think of 'bark'. Unless it contains supplemental nutrients, container media doesn't really undergo depletion of the nutrients locked in the hydrocarbon chains of which soil particles are comprised. To some degree, soil organisms break down tissues like cellulose more readily than some other tissue types, lignin, the part that makes trees woody and stems of more herbaceous plants stiff, for example; but this doesn't necessarily mean more available nutrients. If there are microorganisms breaking down soil particles, nutrients, especially N, can become reimmobilized within the very bodies of the soil life breaking down the nutrients. The increase in growth when a medium is changed is due more to an increase in media volume (in the case of potting up), or improvement in the medium's structure, specifically in the ratio of air:water held within the medias pores. Container media which hasn't been nutritionally amended is a poor source of nutrition, no matter how old it is. Even most container media that HAVE been precharged with nutrients contain such a small amount of nutrients that they too should be considered to be a poor source of nutrition. If you keep your focus on the physical structure of the media you use to at least the degree you can water your plants to beyond the point of total soil saturation w/o the need to be concerned the medium will remain soggy for an extended period (and result in poor root function/health), you'll have taken a very large step forward. Keeping your plants' root systems healthy is a prerequisite if you are to maintain your plants in a high state of vitality (health), so what you provide as a home for your plants' roots is no small matter in the overview of their care. If you decide to repot, timing is an important consideration. E.g., if you live in the northern hemisphere, repotting now is probably not a good idea. Where I live, in Michigan, I plan to repot my tropical trees just before to just after the summer solstice. A money tree would be repotted in May or early June. While timing might not be a life/death determining factor, working WITH the plant's natural rhythms is decidedly better than ignoring them. More on repotting if/when you have interest. Al

It's kind of hard to kill a nine bark, one of the toughest I've ever planted. Many years ago I picked up 8 ninebarks from Menards for free they were going to toss, dried up sticks in a pot best describes them. From the dead they came back to life with a little care, just some water, so planted them and they grew like weeds. I still have two I never water because they're under the drip line of a building roof where they get flooded every time it rains and grow 6 plus feet high in one summer even after I cut them down to the ground. I do it because they grow to high and trying to top them is not possible because just trimming the weeping branches make them grow wild and they look like a bad hair day every day. So I'll say with confidence you can't over water them and once established can't kill them unless you pull out the root ball, and what I had to do with the others I planted in stupid locations around the yard.