Trident Maple Inspection

August 2014

Another tree lifted, pruned and put into a new growing bed.  A trident maple that, like all other maples of mine has never really thrived in the heavy clay soil of the garden.  Didn’t have to prune much and very happy with the root system on this.  Great nebari forming after only four years of training.

The last picture is my preferred front for the nebari and this lends itself to a leaning of the lower trunk which is good too.  However I am unhappy with the rest of the trunk.  You can see where I’ve made a previous trunk chop too far up the tree and haven’t introduced movement either.  I’m half tempted to reduce the whole thing down to the first or second branch and wire up a new leader from new growth this year.  Going to think about it for a while longer before I do anything drastic.  After a lot of winter reading and work done already on trees in the past couple of weeks I’m starting to realise the importance of more frequent root work on my young, field growing material and also wiring new shoots immediately to give young trunks movement.