mackomon

Thanks for the welcome! This forum seemed to be the best laid out forum I've found while browsing different sites.

I plan to make it into a bonsai in a couple of years. The pot is just a large cheap pot from Home Depot. Since I live in a city, I decided that the tree can be in a decent pot on my balcony to provide some aesthetics rather than in a drab green plastic pot.

I also put some stones on top to keep the soil down initially. Do the stones adversely affect the nebari growth? Should I remove them?

Looks like the advice so far is cut off the dead branches and leave it alone for a year before performing a trunk chop. I was reading and thinking that a trunk chop would allow more energy for growth closer to the base of the tree (1st layer of leaves), but maybe it needs another year to recover. I was also hoping to work on the taper already.

Thanks for the advice. Any other opinions are appreciated.