AusBonsai

I left them on but I changed them to open pot layers as they were drying out quickly in the bags, paradoxically. In open pots I could control the moisture level better and water along with my others. It's still dormant, just waiting for it to leaf out and it be slightly warmer then I'll separate them.

So this happened today:
Top

Top:

Middle:

Bottom:

Stump - hope it lives, I did a very hard root prune

Looks like you've got yourself multiple crabapples!! Nice job.

I reckon that amount of roots on your stump will be plenty, it'll shoot again for you - I wouldn't worry.

Well done.

Great job three crabapples


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Stump - hope it lives, I did a very hard root prune

That is not a very hard root prune Beano. You have left plenty of roots. I would have cut all those roots back to around 3cm long. Apples are very resilient. I've had plenty of rootstocks with just a few tiny roots when grafting and they all power away.
You have made all your crabapples very straight and vertical. I think some initial movement in a trunk looks good so consider planting one or more of these at a bit of an angle. I can see that the roots on the stump would favour it leaning a bit more to the left at the bottom.

It wouldn't fit in the pot so I cut them shorter after that picture was taken. Good to hear from you guys that the stump will be ok. It was in a big bag pot so thought I might be pushing it cutting back that much!

Will look into planting angle this morning.

The layers were left on so long they're actually a solid ball of tiny roots, couldn't get much sphagnum off without damage so I left it. Perhaps I should have put them in basket pots too to promote radial spread.

Congratulations on the layer!....but you have not cut off enough. Better at the bud right under your thumb in the 5th picture.

Should I be allowing these to flower? The top layer has begun flowering and has many buds. Should I remove the remaining flower buds so it can concentrate on growing more leaves? The flower buds have an outer layer of green leaves which must provide it some energy.

There should be enough roots to allow the tree to flower but I'd probably cut them off as they start to fade to prevent fruit this year. Better to put the energy into growth than fruit at this stage of development.
If you really want to remove the flowers it will probably start to grow a fraction earlier and be just a little bit fatter at the end of the year.
Most apple flowers grow from small shoots called fruiting spurs. They don't grow much and should flower in following years as well so we try to encourage these on crab apples while pruning off the long, strong vegetative shoots.

The top layers of the tree are flourishing well but the middle, bottom and trunk/base are very slow. Unfortunately the possum ate both shoots off my bottom layer and it’s currently alive but doing nothing at all. The trunk/base has one single shoot and it comes off above the graft, but still very low on the trunk. There are nodes above this but no sign of buds. It is still green all the way to the top. Can I stimulate more buds in some way? I see Treeman suggested to cut the base lower but I don’t want to since it has shot so low.


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shibui wrote:

Stump - hope it lives, I did a very hard root prune

That is not a very hard root prune Beano. You have left plenty of roots. I would have cut all those roots back to around 3cm long. Apples are very resilient. I've had plenty of rootstocks with just a few tiny roots when grafting and they all power away.
You have made all your crabapples very straight and vertical. I think some initial movement in a trunk looks good so consider planting one or more of these at a bit of an angle. I can see that the roots on the stump would favour it leaning a bit more to the left at the bottom.

The stump has died back not sure what went wrong. The bottom layer is also struggling but still green. The middle and top are doing ok. The stump had a single branch quite low but still above the graft and was doing ok but eventually the branch started to die back then then trunk from the top down. I sealed the cut with cut paste. Perhaps I watered too much.


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sorry to read this bad news beano. I'm happy to see this thread though, because it shows me how the higher air layers take longer than the lower ones... I'll attempt to be more patient.