girlnamedgalez8a glad I'm not the only one! I do know that Ruby falls gets much wider but all the pics I saw of that one also had a nice straight stem. I've read that they will grow very low and wide more like a ground cover if you let them and don't stake them.

Am I overreacting and it will be fine having a weird main trunk?

==>> yes... extremely ...

basically.. you ordered an oddball of a plant.. and are now complaining yours is wierder than the others.. so what.. isnt that why you ordered it ??

could they have done better.. sure.;. cant we all ...

if you dont like it.. contact them and return it .. and dont do business with them ever again ..

i was on 2 national garden tours.. with my hosta garden .. when they finally got to my house.. they had already seen 30 hosta gardens.. they really didnt care about hosta anymore.. but boy did they like all my weirdo shrubs and trees ...

and the highlight for many.. was the ones ma nature had crushed into soem bizarre shape ... and you could pay money for them .. and you could barely see them.. for the throngs of peeps around them ...

again.. return it if you arent happy.. otherwise revel in your plant weirdness ...

ken

ps: with weeping larix ... larch... this is exactly how you make them taller .. but again.. they could have done it a half season earlier so it wasnt so wonky ...

pps: when it heap a couple hundred other branches on top of all this in the next decade.. you wont see any of this ...

Ken, I don't care if it's an "oddball". I care if I'm stuck with a shorter tree than the 8-10' it's supposed to get because of the way they shaped it. Or if I paid a pretty penny for a 3 gallon tree that I will have to chop in half to fix. I have read in gardening articles that if you don't train these weeping trees correctly while they're young then they won't grow the way they're supposed to and wanted to make sure that this could be corrected by me over time. I already contacted the nursery for advice but it is a holiday so figured I'd ask experts on here.

If you want it taller carefully insert a longer and more stout stake at planting and train it up that.

Embothtrium. The stake isn't the issue, it's that they've now used two runners and both are too hard to keep it going. Is it likely another one will sprout somewhere close to the top that I can use? Is it going to make the tree shorter by having so many bends and curves? Is it going to make the main trunk sturdier or more weak? These are my concerns.

" Should I cut it back down? " No.

" Am I overreacting and it will be fine having a weird main trunk? " Yes. In fact it will have a lot more character than one with a perfectly straight trunk and 'typical' growth habit!

Do as Embothrium suggested. Plant with a taller stake and gently train the growth more upright if that is your desire. If it was mine, I'd just leave it be.

Actually, there is no need to use a stake. All you need to do is wait until spring. A new branch will grow from the top of the 'bent over' leader. I can see a bud just to the left of where the current main leader is attached to the stake. When that bud breaks, presto - a new leader. Just keep it trained upward for a bit, then let it weep. You'll be able to repeat this over and over until the tree is as tall as you'd like it to be. If you study the apex on this bonsai wannabe (bittersweet vine), you can see that I use that technique at the apex. The main leader was laid over (by me) and I simply wired a smaller branch to an upright position to serve as the new leader. If you look at the heavy branch moving left, you can see I did the same thing earlier to form a new apex/ leader.

All the following images take advantage of repositioning a higher order branch growing from a lower order branch as the new leader. It will also add taper to your tree, which will make it look older, not that that's such a big deal in your case, but it's an important consideration (taper) for bonsai trees.

Al

Tapla, thanks so much for your response! I know nothing of these trees and wanted to make sure that I could keep it going and it wasn't going to be stuck at 3ft. Your little trees look amazing, you must have a lot of patience!

Thanks, Christina. Among bonsai practitioners, patience is never in short supply. It's a requirement.

I have a strict weeping mulberry in the front yard. Typically, if left to their own devices, they are unlikely to grow more than a couple of inches per year in height, but by using the technique I just showed you, the tree is over 20 ft tall.

If you wanted to, you could also train the tree to get as tall as you want it to be just by judiciously pruning to a bud that points upward. As soon as the new branch that comes from that bud starts to lay over, prune the branch back to another bud on top of the branch. You'll get a trunk with a lot of movement and much greater ht. Eventually, you're going to want to remove the lower branches because the tips will tend to want to lay on the ground. Pruning them back frequently to keep them off the ground will make the tips gnarly and swollen with a mass of branches unless you're willing to keep rubbing buds off to prevent new branches from forming. In just a few years, the existing pendulous branch and trunk that's laying over will (or should) both be removed so you can get some ht to the trunk. If you keep limbing up the trunk while guiding new leaders upward, there is no limit to how tall your tree can eventually be.

Is the plan to plant it out in the landscape or is it going to remain a potted plant?

Al

Tapla, I planted it in my yard, 9a.

Did you plant where it will be in shade/ partial shade? where it will get good drainage? Did you correct any root issues before planting? It's best if deciduous trees are bare-rooted (when dormant) and the problem roots removed. 'Problem' roots would be those which are crossing, circling in the pot, potentially girdling roots, roots growing almost straight up or down, roots growing back toward the center of the root mass, and those that are j-hooked.

Al

Tapla, I didn't do any pruning to the roots, the soil wasn't packed very tight so the roots were fairly loose when I planted it. I've got it in an area that gets maybe 3hrs of sunlight, possibly 4 during the summer. I wanted it in a prominent spot on my yard but it would have been full sun and too much for it in my zone. I live in a very rainy region so I filled the bed with a sand/soil mixture and raised it a good 4 inches so it would drain properly. Hopefully it will survive. The climate here is very unpredictable but everything I've planted seems to have made it out of the hard freeze we had over Christmas.

OK - I hope you'll remember us and stop back to give us a progress report so we can see how tall your tree gets!

Happy New Year.

Al

Tapla, will do! Hopefully I get some good growth this Spring.

Don't expect too much in the first year. There is a little rhyme about perennial plants (trees are perennials too).

First year they sleep. Second year they creep. Third year they leap.

Good luck. And remember, if you want it to grow tall so it has room to weep, it will be up to you to manipulate it's growth habit to achieve that end.

Al

Tapla, thanks! I got extremely low maintenance plants, this is the only one that should require much work.