I am just a lurker on this site, but have been growing baby trees for a number of years (about 30 trees right now). I still have one of my first- a group of elms, 8 years old, in a small pot. They are almost unkillable, and tolerate a lot of mismanagement. The leaves scale down gracefully with each passing year, the trunks develop well, and you can train the roots over rocks easily. Easy beginner's tree. I pick them up by the hundreds in the summer, as they sprout everywhere in my yard :( Look around your yard, parks, etc- you will find many candidates for pre-bonsai. Enjoy. John Scribner

Silver or Freeman-hard to tell which, and of course, they are close relatives. The graft failure is an intriguing idea. I've seen such, but in the more well-known case of certain white ash cultivars. In any case, this plant could be cut back to live stems if one is patient. I could do it in just a few minutes. YMMV. The reason this is not so crazy an idea is that this tree will be very fast-growing. Even the little remnant, should you prune as suggested, will quickly shoot up and become a tree again. Why the die-back? Who knows? Sometimes it just happens, and of course, there is a cause, but we don't always know what it is.

Hey, can someone advise on this: In zone (7a) Long Island, NY Right now I have: 2 Peaches in pots, bare root(miracle grow potting mix) (freshly potted about a week) with osmocote added. 2 Pomegranates in pots, not bare root(miracle grow potting mix) (freshly potted about a week) with osmocote added. 2 Cherries in pots, bare root(miracle grow potting mix) (freshly potted about a week) with osmocote added. I have coming tomorrow: 2 apples(bare root) Originally, I was going to keep all these fruit trees in pots until spring 2018, but now I have decided to get them in the ground and I feel like I'm in a race against time. I was reading the Starksbros website where I had purchased them from and they recommend to add either pete moss, garden compost, or manure as 1/3 concentration into the soil where the roots are. My question is, when I take the trees back out of the pots to plant, can I use the miracle grow potting mix that I already have from the pots, and work it into the soil instead of the above?

Tell us more about what you want, a shade tree or figs to eat. If you want to eat figs, that 'bush' is well formed. I had 4 plants in a 12' x 14' space between 2 driveways in Palo Alto, CA. Each year there is at least the chance of a few days in the mid to upper 20's F. I learned about controlling height after the largest had grown so that I needed a ladder to reach the top. I used it to test out new varieties by bark grafting fresh new growth on the donor tree. I'd suggest pruning to restrict the tree to main crop figs; they are the best tasting in my experience. After the last chance of a hard frost I'd cut last year's growth back to 1 bud facing where I wanted the branch to grow. When that reached 6-8 new leaves I'd start pinching out the new growth buds until the season ends. Some varieties only need one pinching, others send up a new shoot that must be removed before it grows to a point that is out of reach. Do an image search on your favorite search engine for the string "fig pruning" to see the possibilities. Remember, main crop figs form at the leaf nodes. Enough for now, baumgrenze Below are 2 photos, one after pruning in late January 2016 and another in mid-May.