Today's severe weather took its toll. My poor atemoya tree was snapped off about 10 inches above the ground=( Here it was last week:
And here it is all broken off=(
Here is a close up of the break
Luckily, the break is about 8 inches above the graft, so hopefully after its severe and unintended pugging, it will send out some new shoots.
So questions:
Would you have pruned the "before" tree? It seemed to me that it was taking on a pretty good shape with well placed branches. But it was not strong enough to hold itself up and I had it tied to a bamboo pole. Strong winds unfortunately broke the ties.
How do you encourage a new tree to grow a strong enough trunk that it doesn't need a support pole? Or do newly grafted trees tend to need them for a while? When I bought this tree it was only pencil thickness. The trunk is now about 3/4 inch in diameter. So increasing, but not fast enough to support its own weight. I'm interested to know if it would have been better to not have allowed this tree to get so tall before its trunk thickened up. Opinions?
I now have an "opportunity" to try a new shaping strategy, so advice is welcome...
Thanks for looking,
Angela