Making an Olive Bonsai Tree - Wiring and Pruning

Hey, how's it going? Jason here, and in this episode, I'm going to be working on this olive I have right here. All right, so this olive tree was repaired about two years ago. If you guys remember my video on how to work with nursery shrubs, this tree actually went through a full restart. I actually trimmed off everything on this trunk, on this tree, so I basically added zero branches. It was just the trunk. And you can see it's a pretty nice base. It's a nice base. It's a very nice tree, but for it to actually turn into a better bonsai, I had to do a full restart and trim everything off. So this is about two, two and a half years later after I did that. In the meantime, while I did that, I did train some of the branches down. So some of these branches have already been brought down, but this time it looks like it's got enough growth on here that I can actually do a pretty decent styling on this and end up with a pretty nice tree afterwards. All right, so you can see that this tree has come a long way. As the branches were growing and they were very young like this, this one's very young and very flexible, I used some wire and brought those down. And then I removed the wire after it started to eat in, and I just repeated that process for the last year and a half. So now I've got some primary branches in some pretty decent spots. And then at that point, what I did was I cut them back. You know, if we refer to the apical dominance video, I cut them back so that the lateral buds would start to grow. So now you can see in those previous videos, I was trying to set the foundation so that you guys can work on material, or at least reset material, and then develop it over time, say two, two and a half years so that you can get growth to the point where you can actually style it into a nice tree. So that's what we're gonna do today. We're gonna see what we can do with this. I'm gonna do some wire. I'm gonna do some trimming, and we're gonna try to get this into some type of shape and some type of design so that I can finally put this in the pot. All right, so now I'm gonna work on this tree. You can already see there's all these, look at it from the base here. This base is huge, by the way. But on the base here, you've got tons of branches coming out, and that's the awesome thing about olives is that you can cut them back all the way down to just the base, and you'll get these branches coming out from everywhere. So I'm gonna start working on this. The first thing I have to do is cut all these off so I can actually start to shape the rest of this tree here. All right, so I just finished trimming this olive right here, and for the olives and the shrubs, you're gonna spend most of the time just trimming. So you're gonna spend a lot of time cutting the ones going up, cutting the ones going down, and then also getting rid of some of those thicker branches that are grown up or just aren't in proportion with the rest of the tree. All right, so this tree was interesting because I have some branches down here, and I'd like to reduce this just to maybe one or two, but it's not full enough. If I were to cut it right now, this would just be completely empty. So I used what I had, and I joined them together. Later on, as this tree progresses, I'll probably reduce this to less branches. On this side, I'm really hoping for this one right here to develop. As you can see, it'd be a really nice branch over on this side. It's too empty right here, and basically I got this one little loner right here, but I'm not gonna cut them. I'm just gonna let them grow, and I'll just try to thicken that branch as quickly as I can, and then eventually cut it back and ramify it right there. I think that'd be a really good spot for it because it's just so empty right there. It's so heavy on this side, and I got this little straggler right here. But this is a nice branch, so we're gonna save it. So this is a good example of what you can do with common shrubs like boxwoods, hollies, or olives. You can cut them back and develop those branches, which you'll eventually keep, and then develop those or ramify those into pad layers. So this one didn't turn out too bad. After it was about two and a half years, basically I did a reset on this one. So it's coming together pretty nice. There was a couple flaws in this tree that I really didn't like. I've got a big cut right here, and that's why I kept this branch. It kind of comes across the front right here, this one right here, and that's to cover that ugly part right there. Maybe if that looks a little bit better later on, I'll cut this back. But for right now, it hides it really nice. Another part of this tree that I really didn't like is this part of the trunk right here. It's really straight. It really doesn't give too much movement. So what I did was I also covered that as well. I kind of like that the trunk, the good parts of the trunk kind of peek out in between the foliage as you go up the tree, so you can kind of get a glimpse of it as you go up to the apex. The nice thing about these olives is that going forward for maintenance, really all I have to do is clip this back. I try to keep pairs off of each branch. So I have one pair, say one branch, I'll split off into two, and from those two, I'll split off into four. And I kind of keep doing that. And then I'll let some of the ones on the top grow in just to be a little short so that the pad looks a little thicker. But I tend to follow that rule just to make it nice and even. Really though, if you've got, I've also got the same thing here. Really though, if you've got branches that you need to thicken up or you need them to grow out a little bit, save them, don't cut them. So I've got this one here. I've also got this one here. You guys probably noticed that this one wasn't cut. I'd like for this to thicken up and then I'll cut it back and develop this pad layer here. So as these branches continue to grow, you'll be able to shape it a lot easier. And then eventually you'll have just way too many branches. But it kind of starts right at the beginning with the single branch. That's where it all starts. You let that grow, cut it back, lateral buds come out, and you keep on pushing it back where you keep on ramifying it. So this came out, I'm pretty happy with this. This here is kind of a big mess. I'd like to see what I can do in terms of carving over there. I'm gonna try to get my power tools and see what I can do in this area right here. It's just really knotted and really messy and kind of, yeah, it looks really natural, but it looks a little too clumpish for me. All right, so hopefully you guys enjoyed that video of me shaping this olive. You know, in the previous videos, I was just trying to get you guys accustomed to the principles I used to create something like this. I know you guys didn't get to see this in the past, but it basically followed the same thing as the apical dominance video where I cut it back and then I developed the branches. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. Otherwise, thanks for watching.