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Decapitated trees - any hope?
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Posted by Alice01 NSW (My Page) on Mon, Apr 5, 04 at 0:47
| I have been nurturing some young trees along - some are still in pots and others have been planted out.
A gate was left open and a sheep got in and has neatly chomped the tops out of a number of things - including pepper tree, my beautiful magnolia, jacaranda's, bunya pine, buddlea (sorry, gone blank on the spelling!), a couple of fruit trees and others.
I'm at a loss what to do now, as although it probably won't matter with things such as the peppercorn tree, the bunya, magnolia etc are surely not going to grow up with the proper shape and always look funny. And a trunk chopped off and branching out sideways probably won't do anything for the overall strength and balance of the tree.
So, what do I do? Ditch the trees and start again?
Looking forward to some advice.
Thank you... |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Decapitated trees - any hope?
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| First, eat the sheep... This is a tricky one, as there are so many different types of trees. After going to all the trouble of growing them and planting them out, I would probably leave them to see what happens. You should be able to force the tree to adopt a new 'leader' by careful pruning of the new shoots. Most trees will grow into a normal shape if they are small. With the fruit trees, you could encourage them to grow into a vase shape - it shouldn't matter if the branching is low. Allow 3-5 branches to grow out. I don't know about the magnolia, but they are not cheap plants, so I would watch it and see what it does. The jacaranda might be a problem, because when you prune jacarandas they send out long branches that grow straight up, look terrible and rarely flower. It might be too young to do that - just see if it send up a couple of shoots of a whole bunch of sturdy shoots. Living on a block that was completely devoid of trees, I am reluctant to suggest you chop any out. We have had quite a few of ours nipped off by hares abd rabbits. Some have recovered very well, and others are still not doing much. These are all cool/temperate climate trees, so they will react differently from yours. Robyn |
RE: Decapitated trees - any hope?
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| Alice 01 They should be okay with TLC - Robyn has provided good advice (eat sheep lol) etc and yes, don't pull them out, the thing to remember is that a tree is a biological character (living thing) therefor TLC (nurture) in most cases will save them from this darstardly sheep attack. Initially full protection guards (and keep gate locked lol) clip off chewed bits back to a branch/let trunk wood collar (shape and disease considerations here), mulch, fert and water and smile they (all) will respond in no time. regards M |
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