Lilly pilly

[slugwarrior]

This morning I was looking at my trees and was wondering If I could leaf cut my Lilly pilly. As I have not leaf cut any of my trees before I am unsure if this soecies could have this done to it. I need to increase ramification as I think the basic branch stucture is O.K I have added a couple of pics and I am open all advice as to where people think I could go with this tree or am I on the right track.

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Slug

[Ash]

Hey Slug,
Looks healthy enough. Did you grow this from a cutting or nursery stock?

I have leaf cut Syzygium but I would not do it on your tree yet. They develop ramification quite quickly and the fine branching that you have is quite OK for the size of the tree and the time it has been training. You will be surprised how quickly it comes just by normal shoot prunning. The best way that I have found to get ramification on this type of tree is to let it grow out a few times to thicken and then prune it back to the first pair of leaves in a shoot. The leaves are maintained on woody stems so you are often prunning it back pretty far. After that they shoot prolifically. After one or two of these repeated you may decide to defoliate and you will get a good crop of shoots increasing ramification and also get smaller leaves. You then have to keep nipping out long shoots back to a pair of leaves or the tiny inner leaves will drop off.

I would wire the first right hand branch out and up and make sure it is getting light. It will then grow stronger. They are pliable up to about 1 cm thick so you can always wire it back into the place you like latter. I would also pin down that raised right root.

I would strongly recommend you get rid of that weed Pilea microphylla from your pot. It has a nasty habit of spreading and is a hungry thing and a strong competitor for nutrient.

hope this might help a bit

cheers
Ash

[lennard]

I have leaf cut Syzygium but I would not do it on your tree yet. They develop ramification quite quickly and the fine branching that you have is quite OK

I would strongly recommend you get rid of that weed Pilea microphylla from your pot. It has a nasty habit of spreading and is a hungry thing and a strong competitor for nutrient.

I would go with the advice Ash gave you on this one.

And do get rid of the weed. Last year I had one - now I have thousands in my greenhouse! But do keep one away from your other plants as a nice accent plant.

Lennard

[Damian Bee]

Hi Slug, As well as Ash's advice, I would put it into a box to fatten up for a couple of years. This variety can take time to build any taper in the trunk. Also if a branch looks no good, you can always lop it off and a dozen shoots will pop out to replace it. Syzigium are a great little specimen Enjoy