Stymie, thanks I did see Jamie's post but not until after I left. In my last main update I used coils on the fine new growth but my 'normal' wiring is usually quite loose and at the time I did not expect the 'old' growth to fatten so quickly. Now I know better. I'm gradually learning how this species behaves.
Here is a picture of the tree before I started work this past weekend.
bottleBrush_20100327 before.jpg
As usual there is a lot of shoots from the base. In addition the growth of the canopy has added a lot of weight and the top bend has drooped to one side. I had decided not to re-wire the trunk before I left and did not get Jamie's suggestion to cage wire until I was gone. The shape is still there it's simply fallen to one side. The branch I broke last time (the one bending back on itself) had strong growth on it (despite aphids) which I think is a good sign.
So first I removed the shoots around the bottom, including the branch I had left until now. It's not growing in the direction I had hoped, it's awkward to wire and I don't like it anymore. I've thought about wrapping the lower trunk in grafting tape to try and inhibit all these shoots. has anyone tried something like this? How effective was it? Were there side effects?
I put some more wire around the trunk in the section that dropped and put it back up again. I tried reusing wire this time and its turned out a bit messy. I removed most of the wire in the canopy and re-applied new wire, even looser than I usually would on this growth given how quickly things changed over the last few weeks. This made shaping difficult but the main shape was already established, I just needed to tweak and hold for now.
I pruned out a few more branches in the canopy and clipped off the long leaders. I removed some of the foliage at the base of the branches because I will want most of the foliage at the tips to get my 'reaching for the light' look. I may have increased my sprouting problems by doing so but I want the foliage at the tip.
At the end I decided that the lower trunk didn't have quite enough curve in it so it got some more wire as well.
Here is the result.
bottleBrush_20100327 after.jpg
I still want to remove a couple more branches but want to think about it a bit and see how they all set with the wire. Also I don't want to make the sprouting at the base even worse by cutting too much off the top at once. I'll continue to remove the lower leaves as well. I need to go for another walk along the cliffs I think.