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Growing Wisteria as a Tree
sssuzannebrady
Posts: 5
in Plants
Hi everyone, I'm new to this forum so I hope I'm posting in the right place.
I bought a little wisteria plant a few weeks ago with the hopes of growing it as a tree, I believe this is also referred to growing as a standard.
The thing is my wisteria quickly outgrew the bamboo shoot I had supporting it. Before I had a chance to replace the bamboo with something taller, the wisteria had unwrapped itself and spent a couple of days bashing about in moderate winds. It seemed to hit the wall a fair bit and the tip(the vertical shoot) died at the top. The death seemed to be spreading downwards so I panicked and clipped it off, figuring I could just grab the next shoot down and train it upwards to continue on as the trunk.
Unfortunately some googling later I have read some worrying things about how once I cut the vertical shoot the tree will no longer grow upwards and will only produce horizontal branches.
I'm wondering if this is true and/or if there is some way around this problem?
I hope someone can help, I haven't found my exact problem discussed anywhere online. Thanks!
I bought a little wisteria plant a few weeks ago with the hopes of growing it as a tree, I believe this is also referred to growing as a standard.
The thing is my wisteria quickly outgrew the bamboo shoot I had supporting it. Before I had a chance to replace the bamboo with something taller, the wisteria had unwrapped itself and spent a couple of days bashing about in moderate winds. It seemed to hit the wall a fair bit and the tip(the vertical shoot) died at the top. The death seemed to be spreading downwards so I panicked and clipped it off, figuring I could just grab the next shoot down and train it upwards to continue on as the trunk.
Unfortunately some googling later I have read some worrying things about how once I cut the vertical shoot the tree will no longer grow upwards and will only produce horizontal branches.
I'm wondering if this is true and/or if there is some way around this problem?
I hope someone can help, I haven't found my exact problem discussed anywhere online. Thanks!
0
Posts
Scroll down to info on standards.
It says you cut the main stem to encourage side shoots to form to get your standard. It may well be that yours is a short standard or it may, with a bit of luck, put up a new shoot from the base that you can use to take over or you can let just one new shoot grow and take it up and train that as the main stem.
Don't give up just yet and do give it a sturdier support than a bamboo cane.
Thanks so much for the response. I had forgotten they put out new shoots at the base! That makes a lot of sense, hopefully I can get one and train it up to be the new trunk.
I had always intended to replace the cane but just didn't realise how quickly it would grow! (which is a good thing really in my eyes) I'm in the middle of making a new more long term set up for it now.
Thanks again!
Does anyone know if this would work out ok? That way I can get the height I want quicker, with one plant anyway, and the other can catch up whenever it produces a new runner for me. My understanding is the runners grow quickly when they do grow.
I was also wondering if this would work with a different variety of wisteria, so I could have two different types of wisteria growing together as one tree? It's just an idea but might be interesting to have flowering at different times and maybe different colours of flowers. It's just an idea, I'm not sure how plausible it is, or how challenging it might become.
Either way - serious support needed for the start and until the trunk thicken enough to support itself.