There is no reason why you can’t resume apical growth. It looks to be recovering as is. It is difficult to tell, but the pinkish growth is new, yes? That is what will resume growing as your “main trunk”.
You can see the angled swelling above the node, that is the branch collar you need to every so slightly cut at, or minutely above. This is where the callous wood will form to compartmentalise the wound. As the stub you have cut is so long, the tree will will have to wait for the stub to die and drop off before closing.
First step is prune at the collar “target”. Then you will let tree recover for a while and dictate what new growth will resume the vertical trunk that you want. You will then select and encourage that growth to resume being the main trunk. You won’t be pruning anything for a while after your first cut, you need the tree to recover. Most pruning events are annual and never more than 25% of total canopy loss. Note on pic, zoom in.
I don’t know what the other commentators mean with their comments, this is fairly standard arboricultural pruning practices. If anything they said was true, any tree other than a mature conifer that suffered minor “topping” damage in the wild would be an instant death sentence for the tree. This is not the case in a majority of situations.
For a real world example, here is a tree that was topped by a moth and the pruning that I did to recover it. I pruned some of the new branches at the wound to encourage the upper growth. There are notes on pic, you need to zoom in,
Edit: Just went to neighbours house and they have a roughly pollarded Avocado. You can see the multiple regrowth points, you would select one of these to be the new trunk. Just a good demonstration of the same species getting on with it.
I am but one person with a full time job and a “charity” business I run on the side. We have about 4 months of wet weather to plant in on a good year.
The planting has 3000 plants total, 95% grown by me in nursery. I’m not speedspading as I have to hoe out grass as I go (chemical free site) so I tend to plant approx 50-100 per afternoon I devote to it. 30-60 afternoons say. In one weekend, a flood ripped through and ripped out some oldish ones and a lot of young but I wasn’t finished the site so I just replaced and kept working.
If I exclude that event, I can only visualise a few deaths across the entire planting. Failure to thrives aren’t included. That’s with zero watering but watering in at planting time.
Here is a tree that is 12 months old but the earliest part of site is now 2 years old. The youngest is but a few weeks:
Yeppers. Trees aren’t going to cut it but if we ignore the climate crisis aspect, then trees are still worth it. But the definition of trees and forest is confusing. I’m lost already.
I’m still around, just nothing to say. Hope you’re keeping well. I even had some content for you saved on my phone; if you watch Ukraine/Russia war footage, the trench systems have some interesting profiles in amongst the horror.
Environmental conditions (rainfall) will have a massive impact on survival rates here, so much so it blows my mind that the entire industry doesn’t mobilise around the rain systems like La Nina and Indian dipole.
You can lose species (including the massive nursery effort/footprint) and increase replanting in the dry or just work around the rain with some light maintenance. I think the busywork keeps planting going each year rather than rapid gluts of planting around conditions. It’s a waste of resources but it is what it is. We have just had record dry conditions and high temps and our company did quite a number of plantings because “grants need to be acquitted”. It’s so dumb. Planting into dust is demoralising.
For reference, my planting since the damaging floods is at 98% survival. The floods removing a significant amount but it’s still only about 4% at planting completion. At the time, it was like 85% of 100 plants.
Since the drone shot is very gappy, I think the grass is swallowing a large number of species. He stated himself 25% loss which is beyond acceptable for commercial plantings and most contracts would require an in-fill. If he maintained it, would it have been higher? We can’t tell. He is obviously only shooting the best parts of the site too (which is fair enough).
Like you say, species and site selection may be helping, not to mention the consortium of weeds present may be less damaging than other sites. Not taking away from the effort but as we all know, planting the trees is 10% of the work usually.
Plus, I hate to say it, but just planting tall “trees” is not a forest. There are a number of other species missing from the planting. If the plan was to insert more species once the grass was suppressed then maybe it would hit “forest” status but being in an open paddock like that, natural recruitment is not going to be high. We have to remember that this is YouTube content, not high quality ecological restoration.
The majority of visible trees (bar the Melaleuca he mentions) are Acacia and Eucalypt, the 2 fastest growing trees in Australia. Not to mention the La Nina. I did read a study once where it was theorised that Eucs aren’t pioneers, they are hyperpioneers. Hyper meaning “wow, that’s fast” in scientific terms.
In regards to grass competition, what he has done there wouldn’t fly in the Aus sub/tropics, exotic grass and vine growth would have pulled most of them down. But in relation to what he is illustrating with 24 hours of work and then hands off forever, it’s certainly demonstrating how easy it is to make a tangible difference.
Interestingly, my large planting I did myself just hit 2 years old as well. It didn’t occur to me at the time when first watching but we planted at similar times, me being in November (early humid Summer due to La Nina).
Will be interesting to compare in that regard. We are getting record low rainfall here immediately after record high so my planting is acting a little strange. Hopefully Beau’s doesn’t get burnt with all that long grass and that climate.
If it’s going to be in the same pot for a long time, I would make an inorganic mix to prevent compaction and rotting of the materials (usually pine bark is the culprit).
Something like 50% horticultural sand, 25% aeration (pumice or perlite - perlite if it’s a small pot, pumice if it’s a big pot), 25% water holding (sphagnum, coir). Then you can either mix in a long lasting chem fertiliser, or use water-based frequently, or top dress with organics when required.
I’m proud to have been part of that 3%. We definitely didn’t approve as many as the stats say.
That said, the reason I left the work was because of the unnecessary tree removals going against my ethics and qualifications, approved by people who had no business approving these things (politics). So maybe the 97% got me in the end.