My fat little crabapple

B.adair

Hey guys this is my crabapple Ive kinda just recently gotten away from my two jobs so Im starting to look for ways to restyle my trees and I was hoping for some help... I was planning on keeping the deadwood area as the front and bringing the primary bottom branch a little less forward and more to the side, but definately letting it and most of the others fill out... thats as far as I can get so any help will be greatly appreciated!
Thanks. Brad


Front

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v638/krew022/ca1.jpg

Turned Right

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v638/krew022/ca3.jpg

Back

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v638/krew022/ca4.jpg

Turned Left

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v638/krew022/ca5.jpg

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Cordon

B.adair,

I like it. It looks like a great start. I don't have any styling advice for you. I looks to me that it needs to grow out some more before any decisions can be made. Good stock!

Cord

rockm

Nice stock. Beware deadwood on apples. It draws borer insects easily and is a constant source of problems, as the wood rots quickly. If you have deadwood on an apple you will have to keep up regular "borer patrols" (no pun really intended) in the spring and summer. You have to detect them before they can eat through to living tissue. This usually means poking wire into their tunnels and/or fumigating the tunnels.

zen

NIce trunk, and you've deffinately chosen the best front. I have no experiance with these at all but some wood hardener might help to keep the borers out, maybe some one here has more insight as to how to best deal with this problem. Other than that I'd pretty much forget that this tree exists for at least the next year or two, and let it bush out like mad, don't pinch,prune, trim, or train anything on this one untill you have WAY too many branches(beware of swelling though where many branches grow from one area on the trunk, by removing some of the branches in these areas, right down to the trunk)and then you can give it a bit of an Edward Scisorhands, hard pruneto the first twig on each branchto start developing branch taper, I have seen some great things done with malus using almost all clip and grow training techniques, it takes quite a while before you will begin to see the tree shape that you want but it really looks a lot nicer than just a wired and ramified tree.
Keep us posted, this could be a great long term series on clip and grow.

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