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When you see a 6' tall beautifully shaped tree at a garden center,
you can be sure that someone spent time in the early years at a
nursery training it! In the case of a young quart size tree,
that responsibility is yours for the next few years! There's
very little we can do to a tree so young it will fit in a quart pot
that will ultimately effect it's shape -- so it comes like a blank
artist's canvas for you to create the perfect shape.
By necessity, many of our trees need to be periodically pruned so
they can fit in our shipping boxes and live in a quart pot.
Some trees do not readily form a new central leader and those must
be shipped in an extra tall box. In such cases, the customer
will have to pay a $4.00 box charge for the often separate and much
taller tube box since we can't cut the tree back.
For those trees that readily form a new central leader, we simply
prune them when necessary. To retrain a new central leader,
simply select the most upright branch and cut side branches away.
DON'T DO THIS TOO QUICKLY! The lower branches actually help to
make a thicker trunk. Some arborists say don't remove the side
branches until they are 1" in diameter (but that applies to trees
much older than our quarts!) You will continue to remove lower
branches until it
reaches the height you want branching to start
and then look for side branches that radiate equally around the
tree. This training takes many years.
Pruning evergreens differs from deciduous trees.
This is a VERY SIMPLIFIED version of how to do create a new central
leader which is generally the customer's main concern and start
thinking about the tree's ultimate shape.
Anyone growing a small tree would do well to
spend some time reading and studying about tree pruning and shaping.
A tree is going to be with you a long time and take up a fair amount
of space in your landscape so laying the proper foundation for it's
shape is worth doing right.
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