Thundercloud

Bonsaidoorguy · Jan 17, 2021

Hello fellow nuts. So I picked up this Thundercloud flowering plum at a big box store fall clearance a couple years ago. Chopped it last spring and got pretty good results. I plan on doing a repot and root reduction this spring. So I'm asking for some suggestions and input as to a direction to start taking it? When I did the chop I used cut paste on it but I made the mistake of covering the whole wound in stead of just around the edges, and it held in so much moisture that it started to cause decay to start. I removed the paste and the top branch seems ok. I've got a bit on the way so that I can try my hand at carving with my dremmel. I'm open to all suggestions.

Wires_Guy_wires · Jan 17, 2021

In all honesty, since the branches leave the trunk at a 90° angle, I'd consider keeping the base and air layering the bar branches.
Maybe use the one branch up top as a new leader and later remove the bottom two after layering, making a larger sized tree.

Bonsaidoorguy · Jan 19, 2021

Wires_Guy_wires said:
In all honesty, since the branches leave the trunk at a 90° angle, I'd consider keeping the base and air layering the bar branches.
Maybe use the one branch up top as a new leader and later remove the bottom two after layering, making a larger sized tree.

What do you think about something like this? I paid ten bucks for this tree so I don't mind chopping before I layer. I would probably only be able to layer the top off any way if I chopped it like this.

Bonsaidoorguy · Apr 22, 2021

Got my flowering plum into a smaller pot. A lot of root removal but not too bad. A couple of thicker roots at the soil level that I'll have to deal with later, they had some feeder roots I wanted to keep at the moment. I left all the shoots in case the root work caused any die back, one branch looked like it might not make it but is now pushing growth so it's looking good.