Just do a tip pruning on your taller one-it'll naturally start branching out.I'd wait until late march to do this,and fertilize it at that time as well.A time release fertilizer will work well,but don't use too much of it. Oaks make excellent Bonsai subjects,and are relatively easy.Don't over fertilize them or you'll get a lot of weak growth and it'll look rangy.Feel free to contact me any time if you have any other questions.DJ~omniphasic@yahoo.com

Ok thanks ! How about it's roots ? Are they aggressive & will go to water (say a septic tank) ? I read on the net, they love water & will grow along streams. I will have this tree about 100' from the septic tank itself & about 35' or so from the leach beds. Would this work ? The tree would be about 30' or so foot from the house/garage. Are they messy ? So, now with this info, what do you think ? I have picked this tree up already from Lowe's & it was 50% off. It's about 1" to 1.5" in diameter (not too thick for the height) & about 10' high. Just want to get it planted & don't want to move once it's in. ~Thanks~

shortleaf2002, that photo looks like the damage I see on many of the maples and other soft wood trees in our area. One of my oaks that is growing with a main leader trunk all the way up had lateral branches, growing off its trunk, broken about 4 feet way from the trunk. Non of them have stripped bark along the part of the branch which was not broken. Also none of the main leader trunk has bark stripped, off like seen on the modified leader trunk in your photo. I am concerned that once all the broken branches of my oaks are pruned back to the break, the side branches will look pretty strange with the short lengths of branches which remain undamaged between where they attached to the trunk and the four feet further-out pruning. My other 30 year old Shumard has a modified leader trunk starting about 8 feet up. On that tree, once the needed massive corrective pruning job is done, this might present a good time to try and shorten one of the leaders so a better main leader can develop. Of course the tree specialist, might tell me it is too late to try such a correction on the tree. I have noticed that all three of my Shumard oaks are most heavily damaged on their north and northeast sides. My Scarlet oak is not protected by any other trees or building on it's north, west or east sides. There is a two story house just 40 feet to the South of this oak, and an enormous cottonless cottonwood tree in the back yard of that neighbor's house, that cottonwood tree is southeast of my Scarlet oak, It does not make sense that the cottonwood or the two story house would have sheltered my Scarlet oak to prevent it from suffering damage. Especially since my 8-9 foot tall Green Giants growing near, in a East west line, but still just south of the Scarlet oak, collected so much ice that their tops bent over toward the north all the way to the ground from the weight of all that ice. That indicates to me that my Scarlet also must have collected as much ice on its north and east sides as my Shumards. Still it's side branches that come off its main leader trunk did not break at all. All around town, I see other shumard oaks with the same type of side branch damage as I have described mine. So that also leads me to think that the damage my shumards suffered was not specific to just my three shumards. Late yesterday afternoon our electricity was restored, and we checked out of the hotel and returned home this morning. Since returning home, I have been busy cleaning out my refrigerator and doing laundry, my DH spent the day at work, and so we have not had time to do anything to the trees yet. Tomorrow it is predicted to rain and Saturday predicted to snow about 2-4 inches. Hopefully, if I am not being unrealist, we can at least do the corrective pruning on my damaged trees by next week, several days prior to Christmas.

Haven't seen any of the few named cultivars sold through retail yet, so you'll likely find only "generic" trees.... which are usually great, just a bit less predictable in terms of shape, fall color, and a few other characteristics. Similar odds as starting from seed - agree with marti8a that it is a great option if you can wait for it to establish a presence. Otherwise, both Lowes and Home Depot sell them, so could check to see if ones near you still have any in stock. On our side of DFW, North Haven Gardens or Bruce Miller Nursery should still have some in various sizes as they tend to maintain better year-round inventory than the big box stores. Our squirrel planted Shumard is not changing yet. So if you do decide to buy this time of year, consider waiting a bit longer to see if you can find one that shows some good fall color. A lot of factors will affect this once planted, but can't hurt to start with one that at least shows some potential. Edit: Just noticed inner leaves on the Shumard actually have started turning yellow since I last looked on Friday. This post was edited by bostedo on Mon, Oct 28, 13 at 18:50