You might remember that our Christmas Willow was a single branch that we had brought indoors and kept in a bucket of damp sand.
About two weeks after Christmas we brought the bucket and branch outside and removed all of the foliage. We were hoping this would encourage the tree to put its energy into creating roots and new buds, rather than trying to heal the older foliage.
We left the branch outside right near our tap, so we would remember to water it regularly. And two weeks later…
Success! We think. There appear to be healthy new buds forming on the branches. We haven't probed into the sand, but my guess is that if we did, we would find new root buds as well. We'll leave this little guy in the bucket until it has some more significant foliage and then will transplant it out to form the first part of our living-firewood-shelterbelt-fence.
The mother willow is doing even better than the cutting. In just four weeks the place where we did our major cutting has gone from this…
To this...
That's a lot of growth! Now we need to decide if we want to keep all of these new branches and have about one dozen small branches, or trim them, to encourage the tree to put its energy into just one or two. My gut tells me to trim the new branches back, and leave two, but I don't want to stress the tree too much. Any suggestions?
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