hi all here are a few pics of our tree,this is the first complete year in the ground and the tree seems to be doing fine, the fall colors were great
Your SK looks wonderful! I'm afraid mine is going to get the ax this year. Not sure it really was a real SK, based on other pictures I've seen. It was probably a seedling. Anyway, the bark is so dieseased and deformed that its an eye-sore now. Kinda sad..
sorry to hear about your tree,we bought ours 1 year ago for 50.00,it was slightly damaged but as you see has done fine.
Hi K4, If it has 25-50cm of healthy trunk from the ground level up, maybe new growth would sprout from there if you're going to cut it. Have seen some that are pruned about a 1m. above ground level regularly and they put out vigorous new growth each year. They seem to look fine kind of trained as a rounded shrub.
Adrian Bloom recommended regular hard pruning of this in a book. But when mine got to the point where too much non-red bark was present and I cut it it did not bounce back quickly at all. After some years it is still a stump with small whippy branches coming out the top. It was still comparatively young and small at time of being whacked, was cut off at about 2' - a sort of pollard. I would not have expected it to come back well from being cut to near the ground, but as it has turned out I have gotten a rather similar result.
