Finally some nice weather to wake up the trees! Been a long winter here in northern Minnesota...
I've had my eye on a Wild Apple growing on the back 40 of my neighbors property for a few years now. I knew he had planned to start logging back there within the next couple weeks, so I figured now was my chance to get the ol' girl before she got plowed over. I asked him about it, and sure enough there was absolutely no issue with me digging it up.

I got very lucky with this tree... It was growing in about 5" of muck soil, on top of a dense rock bed. The root system is extremely compact (compared to what I am used to around here) and well on it's way towards development.
Put simply, out of dozens of trees collected in the past few years, this one came up with the most complete root ball.

My question, and the only real problem I'm having, is how far back to trim the 30x30 inch root spread. I had thought about constructing a grow box, and just leaving the tree to its own devices for a year or two, but if i could get away with trimming the root ball back a bit, it would save me a major headache (and backache)

Also curious if I should trim the suckers now, or wait until the tree heals up before I do any "branch" removal.

Thanks in advance!
FL