22. Deadwood Japanese Maple
What happens when you deadwood a Japanese Maple?
Cass Turnbull from Plant Amnesty has a bunch of fantastic videos about pruning. I recall watching one where she encouraged deadwooding an existing tree to rehabilitate it. An existing Japanese Maple in our yard was looking especially shabby and I had a perfect opportunity to test this approach. I had not idea what I was doing — I think Cass said something about aggressively brushing the branches. So, did I kill the poor tree? Here are the results.
Deadwooding
The top Google search for what is deadwooding comes from a Mr. Tree:
Deadwooding is the practice of removing dead branches from your tree. It’s a crucial part of tree maintenance that cuts away loose or dying branches, which are the most likely to be knocked loose during a storm.
What were the results?
To my surprise, the plant survived (thankfully) but it does not look very different now than it did a year ago. In fact, maybe it looks even fuller and fluffier than before. I thought that deadwooding would make it more airy, but it seems that the opposite has happened. Oops!
How did I do the deadwooding?
I primarily used my hands to aggressively brush or pull of any really dry or dead leaves and branches. Occasionally I used my small pruners. I did this in the beginning of March, just before the start of Spring.
Japanese Maple Timelapse
I love the changes of our maple tree over time. The colors change from red, to purple, to bronzy green, to orange.
The understory
I think the understory of the Japanese Maple is beautiful. It exposes the branch structure and filters the light. I just need to learn how to bring some of this character to the other side of the Japanese Maple.
The next step is to learn more about how to selectively prune an existing Japanese Maple to get the desired results of an airy, beautiful Japanese Maple.