We have had a very long growing season. Spring came about 3 weeks early and winter came about 3 weeks late. The last 2 days have been in the mid 70′s and today it is upper 50′s. Maybe it’s that inconvenient truth called global warming. But I digress.
This Trident Maple fusion project is a perfect example of the good, the bad and the ugly. Let’s start with the good.
The apex fused last year and has begun to get very strong. Next spring I will remove the larger whip on the left to keep the apex from loosing it’s taper. I have seen several trunk fusions that let the apex grow too fat and they lost their taper and had to be trunk chopped. We are trying to avoid trunk chops. All other whips and branches will be left alone to continue to grow.
As you can see there is a good bit of fusion under way. The bumps on the seedlings are where the wire attached them to the frame. My big mistake here was focusing on tying the seedlings to the frame and not each other. We want to fuse the seedlings not the frame.
The bad. If you remember about half of the original seedlings died and I did not have enough replacement seedlings to completely cover the frame, so there are gaps that will take time to fill in.
The ugly. Clearly I am going to have to get some more seedlings to finish this project in my lifetime.
Obviously the results of this project to date are mixed, but I have learned so much that future projects will almost certainly turn out better. I hope that you can learn from my mistakes.
More updates will follow as time allows.
Have fun!
