"Elephant Foot" Maple

[Stickroot]

Was taking some pictures tonight of trees and thought I would take one of this tree, seeing it is beginning to fill in.
Been one month since I did all the heavy work on it.

View attachment 90448

Going to be a nice one! Let it run some wild leaders for a year or more and keep it strong.
Nice work!

 

[MACH5]

Looking good Stacy. You may want to place a piece of rubber or similar between the wire and the root(s) to prevent it from damaging your nebari. I think at this point in its development, I would consider a deeper and larger pot to allow the tree to grow well and thin branches to thicken faster.

 

[A Random User]

Looking good Stacy. You may want to place a piece of rubber or similar between the wire and the root(s) to prevent it from damaging your nebari. I think at this point in its development, I would consider a deeper and larger pot to allow the tree to grow well and thin branches to thicken faster.

Thanks for the reply!
The wire you see crossing over the front on the base actually has a piece of rubber tubing around it.
I normally do not like to wire a tree into a pot like this, because not only does it look crappy, but as you have mentioned, one has to worry about damage.
Which brings me to the last part of your reply, this was a field grown tree. So, number one issue I needed to deal with beyond any of the styling or the trunk, was the roots. It had extremely large roots as one would expect for a tree being grown in the ground, all of which were pretty much of no use as bonsai. So, in the process I removed about 90 percent of the tree's roots, sawing most completely flat. Thus the reasoning for the tree being in the small container and the wire being placed over the base to secure it.

 

[A Random User]

Sorry, I wanted to add on to my previous post, and say, that since I have gone through all the trouble of removing the roots, sawing them flat, the last thing I wanted was the new roots that grew to not lay flat.. thus the reasoning for the shallow pot. It will slow down the trees growth, I know... but, now the tree will fit in this size pot, no matter how much it grows.

One cool trick I have learned a long the way, is one can actually place the tree on the ground. Once feeder roots go through the pot and hit the soil, they will take off! The tree will put on fast growth instantly. Then one can cut at a future time what is protruding from the bottom of the pot. One needs to be careful though not to let it go to long or they will be back in the same situation.

However, if one cuts, then repots, and removes any of the large roots that have established inside the pot. They can then start again. The rest of the pot is still filled with fine feeder roots.

 

[A Random User]

Using this procedure is how I helped establish the trunk size on this premna. It had a trunk width of less than an inch. A year later, after the roots hit the ground, it was 5 inches wide.

 

[A Random User]

Thought I would post an update to how this tree is doing...

Was a little slow to recover after the serious amount of work that was done to it and out of season. But, seeing that it was stressed already from it being lifted off the ground and it didn't have a pot... I figured at the time it was best to go ahead seeing that it was, and glad I did. Worked out serious root issues, branch and trunk issues, did a first style, and got it all into a workable pot for the tree;s future, all in one go.

This years goal is mainly to just let it recover, mainly hedge cut it to shape now and again to help promote a little back budding within the branches, but not work it to heavy. So, tonight I removed all wire I had placed on the tree a couple of months back seeing every piece was cutting in... and did the trees first cut since doing all of the serious work. First pic is before, and second is after trimming.

 

[ConorDash]

There are quite a lot of topics that I read over and it just constantly reminds me of how much I've yet to learn...
At first pic of this on the first page, it looked great to me and just needing trained. The whole chopping and all this other stuff discussed, I was just like "erm... sure... yeh I see it....(I dont see it)".
The tree looks great, I think it will look really awesome when there is more ramification at later stages of your plan for it

 

[A Random User]

There are quite a lot of topics that I read over and it just constantly reminds me of how much I've yet to learn...
At first pic of this on the first page, it looked great to me and just needing trained. The whole chopping and all this other stuff discussed, I was just like "erm... sure... yeh I see it....(I dont see it)".
The tree looks great, I think it will look really awesome when there is more ramification at later stages of your plan for it

Thanks, I appreciate it!
Everyone goes through the same issues and it can be quite a chore to learn and understand!
Often I have found that I will be working on trees, and out of the clear blue sky it all hits me and makes sense.
And I am like... Ok, now I get it...
Then the next day comes... it all disappears again!
Trick is to just keep doing!