This is my first forum chat. Im in South Australia. Im new to Mirai and this brilliant tool. I recently bought this 7’ tall Trident Maple from a tree farm and potted it in late Fall 2 weeks into leaf drop. I planned to air layer it to shorten the rather straight 23" trunk and reduce the top. Now Im considering 3 options for reducing the structure after the spring flush hardens off, and have marked them YELLOW, the biggest reduction, BLUE and the least reduction in RED using the hierachial structure approach Ryan Neil explained in “Nursery Stock Japanese Maple Design” Nov 7 2023. Branch labelled “A” may be removed or moved wider. Any Thoughts?
My suggestion would be to just air layer in the spring and then prune back the branches at leaf drop. That way you let all the leaf mass possible to regenerate the roots.
Here is what your structure would look like if you went with your most aggressive planned reduction. When air layering don’t forget that you can make the cut at an angle to introduce movement. I marked roughly where your air layer could take place with your plan. You have one issue with your plan and that is the lengths of 1, 2, and 3 are all roughly the same. Ryan often repeats that with structure the thicker the structure the longer it needs to be in proportion to other structure.
Regardless of how far you choose to reduce, this tree will probably always have those strong straight lines so I would play with a design that makes the most use of those.
Thanks. Yes you may have noticed the green velcro tape around the stem in my pic at almost the same point you marked. That’s where Im contemplating an air layer after the spring flush if I decide to shorten the trunk. Yes re the hierarchy of structure re thickest is longest and thinest is shortest. Its difficult to see in the photo but my planned cuts are aimed at doing that. Im conscious of Ryan’s very good advice that its best not to prune back so hard as to lose good useful structure and have to grow it all again. I have plenty of time to mull it all over, with cups of coffee as we’re just entering winter here. I appreciate your input.