Fruits and Nuts: Any suggestions for keeping a lapins semi-dwarf short, 1 by pollengarden

pollengarden wrote:
Well, Wonderearth, it is snowing again here and my boss has scheduled a meeting on my day off. So my pictures of old pruning jobs won't come back to haunt me/us until next week.

Meanwhile, here is an example of too much dwarfing. This is a thorn-less Hawthorn, which is very similar to a crab-apple. My garden group had to move it from our old demonstration garden to our new one. I volunteered to prune it for the move - several of the other members couldn't bare to watch (I'm not joking). I removed nearly half the tree in several smaller pruning sessions spread over six months. Since the group said they liked the "gnarled picturesque" aspects of the tree, that is what I left. I pruned out all the upright growth with upright growth coming out of it, and left all the slow-growing lateral growth with more lateral growth coming out of it.

I did too good a job. Between my ruthless pruning and the loss of roots during the move, the tree is truly bonsai/dwarfed. It has been 3? years now and it hasn't tried any upright growth - only lateral. Did I mention that a Hawthorn is a tree? With a trunk? The Crown shape isn't bad, if it had a 3-4' trunk under it.