Paper birch pruning

Albert

We purchased a dozen paper birch late in the the fall two years ago. When we planted them we were told not to water them heavily before the ground froze because if we got a warm spell they could come out of domancy and start growing again right before freeze. We waited until the spring before we gave them too much water and we think most of them were drought stressed. A couple of them died and never did leaf out the following year and about half of the ones that did develop leaves only had leaves on the about the lower half of their branches. We thought the leaves were continuing to slowly develop further up these trees throughout the summer, until we had a severe hail storm that took off 60-70% of the leaves that had developed.

This year it looks like the same ones will only leave out on their lower branches again. Although its hard to confirm, it looks like the leaves may be going higher up the branches this year, and many of the higher branches are still soft and you can bend them without breaking them. However, we can't see any evidence of buds on them. The trees have been well watered and fertilized and appear healthy, except for the branches that have never leaved out.

We are wondering if the branches that are soft are likely to ever develop leaves and regenerate or are they we better off pruning them back. If we do prune them back, when is the best time to prune them?

Thanks!

Garry Brockley

Could you please post some pictures of the trees as it is extremely hard to make any type of diagnosis from our imagination.

__________________