名媛直播

Hi,

New to the forum. Happy to be here!

I keep Chinese Elms, Ficus, Juniper, Gardenia and trying a Maple for the first time. All kept outside, but brought in for bad winters.
However, one of my smaller Chinese Elms had a tough Winter in the NE U.S. with a few very cold nights outside. And a tough Summer before it...

Last Summer, somehow the tree had Black Spot (anthracnose) quite bad. I used a fungicide that was just brutal and I'll never use it again, claiming it was "gentle." The tree lost all of its leaves half way through Summer. Grew them all back and looked great! (I've pruned some nice ramification over the last few years, a good looking tree in Winter.)

As winter approached, it still had many of its leaves. Any leaves still clinging on were either dead or purple from changing colors with the season. The strongest winds couldn't knock them off, lol. Eventually, in the middle of Winter, with a slight touch, I was able to help them crumble and fall.

This year, the tree showed no signs of life until 2 weeks ago. I didn't think it was dead from a tiny scratch test and good roots, but it didn't look promising with no growth through May. Anyone who saw it thought it was dead and they were beginning to convince me, lol. But boy are trees resilient!!

-The attached images show what it looked like a few years ago when I bought it.
-What it looked like in late summer of 2019 and in December 2019 when the leaves wouldn't fall off (red leaves).
- And what it looks like now with the new growth sprouting from the bottom of the tree...
The tree has forced out new branches on the bottom in every direction and has gone nuts! Growing many new branches and leaves that are getting huge as it's desperate to get sun. Nothing from last year has budded, only the new growth. Hopefully the old will kick in.

No fertilizer has been given, yet.

Any thoughts on how to handle this?
Assuming the rest of the tree is dead, would most of you chop it down?
Keep dead wood to grow around?
Seems like a lot of options on how to handle this.

Thanks for reading

Looks almost as the tree is showing you what it needs to be. It Will take a while, but in my mind I see a future nice small tree.

I would cut all the dead Come winter.

I would have removed the dead parts by now. It is clear which part is still alive. Cut everything else off.
When cutting the main trunk: DO you have a concave cutter? Cutting into the first mm of living bark will help with the bark growing over the cut area.