How To Prune Chinese Elm - Bonsai Tips & Techniques

Welcome back to another Ukiyo Bonsai video. I'm Sean Giles and today we're going to be talking about spring pruning Chinese elms. So firstly I want to just touch on the fact that we really want our trees to grow at the start of spring. Once both deciduous and conifers flush out at the start of spring, so when they start elongating and new buds appear and they start to open or Our foliage starts to open from buds in deciduous species. We really want to just let them grow pretty much out of shape like this one is here. So getting a lot of extensions on all the buds that have opened and have started to push is really really good for the health of the tree both in the foliage and in the roots. When we think about how the tree is growing in terms of foliage we have to remember that the roots are doing the same thing at the same time. So if we're getting Good long strong growth in our foliage. The same thing is happening in our roots. When we come to this time of spring we are now about halfway through October so it's been about a month, month and a half of growth or at least of spring weather technically. Sometimes trees will open out earlier or they'll open out much later. I was just recently at the Bonsai Society of Victoria exhibition here in Melbourne and a member of their club Quinton who is well known in the The Australian Bonsai scene actually had a European beech on show that had not opened a single bud yet and that is quite late, beechs are notorious for opening late as well so it's nothing to be worried about as long as you know the habits of certain species. For this particular tree, this one actually started opening and elongating. Probably mid-August. It was really, really early. It went through a repot in early August, which may have kicked it into gear a little bit earlier than perhaps normal. I know this regularly pushes out that a little bit earlier than most species and most of the trees that I have in my collection, particularly deciduous. I mean, conifers are going to be much, much slower, but for the deciduous species, this still opens. Quite a lot earlier than most of my other deciduous trees but in this instance for this season it opened really really early. What that meant was that I had to be conscious of frosts particularly after a repot and opening out if we got hit with some bad frosts with really low temperatures that would have been quite detrimental to the tree in terms of health. So I had to keep taking it in and out of the garage every night time when I knew that it was going to drop below. Probably five degrees just to be safe. Anywhere below zero is yeah really dicey to leave it outside after the work that's been done on it. In terms of roots and obviously opening its foliage just trying to try and dodge all the frosts and the cold weather and try and keep it healthy and happy. So I'm going to give you a little spin of the tree as it is now anyway. You can see pretty much Good balanced growth throughout most of the tree in terms of elongations. Some of the extensions up top I actually went through and pinched. uh not too long ago that would have been maybe two weeks two and a half weeks maybe three weeks ago they'd sort of done the job that i needed to particularly up top and i wanted to just manage the growth down in the lower part of the tree yeah a little bit of history of the tree i bought this about two and a half years ago from Tian at Bonsai Sensation it had basically just gone into its first bonsai pot It was bare rooted, it had like primary branches and some secondaries on it, I think I kept most primaries, took a little bit out of the top but kept most of the primaries and just tried to work them back in a little bit closer to the trunk to then build out better branching after that. Basically the last two years I've really been focusing on Building secondary and tertiary structure in the tree. I'm going to run you through how we prune Chinese elms and I guess what we look for as to the timing of when to prune Chinese elms. So let's get into it. So as I work my way through the tree I'm going to start from the bottom and I'm basically going to be looking for areas where I can keep some of that elongation to build better structure from. We don't always necessarily want to prune back to you know really close to our old cut site. We want to try and manage the growth that has occurred over early spring but also use some of that growth as well to build better structure. Better branching and better twigging from those areas. So for instance we have down here our probably lowest I guess branch on the tree or you know close to the lowest branch on the tree here we have one long elongation out of the end. The rest is a little bit slower being you know on the smaller twin trunk gets shaded out a little bit more from the top of the tree and so as we move our way up the tree we're going to find that we're probably going to come in a little bit closer And maybe just keep some of the extensions out lower on the tree or at least the bottom half of the tree. Now, my reasoning for that is I would like to get a little bit more width in the tree. And Basically that means that I want to come out a little bit more to the left and right and I guess front and back of the tree particularly in that lower half which ultimately will mean that I'll have to extend the width you know higher up in the tree but I really want to focus on at least this season is building a little bit more width so I'm going to be leaving some longer extensions to maximize the ability to be able to do that and then start to build some branching off of of those extensions. Sometimes what we find particularly with Chinese elms and you know a lot of other species is that we end up in a kind of topiary style look where it's just sort of balls of foliage or mounds of foliage at the end of each branch. There's not really any good branch structure within that topiary ball so I want to try and stay away from that as much as possible. I still want some volume In the pads, but I don't necessarily want it to be too rounded by Using these extensions and building from those extensions and that doesn't mean you have to do that every single time. Like I said in this case I want more width in some areas of the tree so we're going to be using some of these extensions. For instance something like this we might come back into you know leaving three pairs of leaves and that allows us to then build some More branches out a little bit further from that rather than cutting in nice and tight and then all of a sudden you're getting really fine twigging but in a very small area. Whereas we want a larger area with more volume of branches and then more volume of foliage and then that is going to equate over time better ramification and more ramification. So when we're pruning for ramification on Chinese elms we follow the two leaf system which can technically be more than two leaves but basically what that means is we prune back to at least a pair of leaves. In this instance we have one, two, one, two, one, two, one, two. We can prune back to any sort of pair. We can prune back anywhere from here here or here because they're our pairs so think of that as a pair this is a pair and this is a pair so this single long extension currently has all of the energy flowing to the tip and to build ramification we need to divert that energy that's stored at the tip back into other areas of the branch by cutting back to our pairs and again when i say cutting back to a pair if we cut back to here That's the pair we're cutting back to but we do actually have another pair down further back. Don't necessarily always cut to the first pair that emerges from the trunk or the branch or wherever it may be. We can move up further into the extension and still cut back to a pair but just be aware that the pair that we cut back to That's going to then produce the strongest bud and section of growth. So when we cut back to a pair somewhere on this extension, that energy then becomes diluted and is forced to create two new shoots from these buds that emerge from these leaves. And because that energy is diluted, we have a smaller, weaker finer branch that emerges from that area and then each time we do that on a section of the tree it creates more and more branches and creates more and more dilution and then in the end we create more and more finer twigging. So the next thing to think about when making these cuts is the length of nodes that we have and that we need for the size of the tree. So a larger tree we may want slightly larger nodes to make it more convincing and for a smaller tree we want to try Now the other thing that I have spoken about a lot is the term directional pruning. So, With an alternating leaf pattern like this, so some species will grow a pair exactly from the same spot, so we have a leaf there and a leaf there, this is alternating so it goes one, two, one, two. So directional pruning basically means on a species like this, if we were to prune this piece here, that bud then activates and that shoot comes out in this direction. Now if we were to then Go back and prune into here. Well that activates that bud that's at the base of this piece of foliage of this leaf here and then that it then extends out this way. So if we want to fill a space out on the right hand side or maybe on the left hand side we have to think about which piece of foliage that we cut back to. If we want to fill a space out here Well then the cut that we've already made is perfect because that's going to extend out to this side and then fill in this area. Now if we wanted to fill in a gap in here, well then what we have to do is we have to We have to come in. and prune that section out so then that extension comes out and we're filling in that space. So that's I guess the basics of directional pruning. Now it becomes a little bit more detailed when you have a lot of branches and making the right decisions to fill the gaps that we need to but it also means that you know if you make a slight mistake in cutting the wrong piece Don't be too worried, we can easily fix that. The other thing that we have spoken about is the term hardening off. So what that essentially means is this brown color of this extension here will turn brown due to sun but you'll also notice that if I hold this in place this section is actually really quite flimsy. You can see how easy that is to move just with very lightly brushing. of my fingers now if i start to do that there this actually becomes much harder and much more rigid if we turn it upside down you can see a much better example of the change of color you can see that it's slightly redder slightly darker then it goes green green green and then like an almost lime pale green that means that this section at the end is really really fleshy still and this section has become more rigid and started to lignify or hardened off Alrighty so I have gone through and pruned the lower half of the tree and you can still see all the extensions up higher. Hopefully you can sort of start to see the vision of what I'm going for. Again having it a little bit looser and a little bit more extended for now. We could certainly come in tighter and prune these into smaller tighter internodes and smaller foliage but again that's not necessarily what we're aiming for and I still think it looks Really ramified and you know really well pruned and well presented but we're still achieving the results that we want and it just gives us a little bit more to work with in the next flush of growth which will be pretty quickly on a species like this we'll get multiple flushes a year and there'll be more detailed pruning. In the winter time where we can see it in its full bare silhouette. So I'm going to keep working my way through the tree. The other thing I wanted to touch on really quickly is a term that we call hardening off. So what that means is when we have a fresh flush of growth, say that 10 times quickly. Thank We actually want to allow that to extend, as I've explained, but when it hardens off is the correct time to then prune that elongation you or extension of growth. When that section of growth, that elongation, very first emerges, it's going to be a really fleshy green colour. much. When those extensions are fleshy and green, that's not the time to prune the tree. The time to prune the tree is when it starts to harden off and that means that when that fleshy green color starts to turn like a reddy browny color means that it's starting to lignify and harden off. So the hardening off just means just means that keeping an eye on the color of that growth that has extended and the reason that we wait until that growth is hardened off. is because if we go through and prune that too early that whole section of growth will either die off and die back into where it first emerged from or what's going to happen is that you're not going to get any buds emerge from that cut site when it's nice and fleshy and green and soft because it hasn't had time to actually produce a bud in between that leaf. So making sure that we allow our trees to actually extend In the springtime, and this really goes for... Every single species if you want proper pruning techniques and timing is to allow it to extend, allow it to harden off and when it starts to change that color it's the same when a juniper comes out really soft and green and fleshy and flimsy and you can do quite a bit of damage if you were to wire it at that stage as well. Exactly the same with the juniper once that green fleshiness starts to turn like a reddy browny color that's the time that we can then And then go through and prune that section of growth. Alrighty so I have gone through and pruned the majority of the tree. I can see some minor sections that just need a little bit of wiring such as you know these two branches here and maybe a few others up in the apex sort of area a little bit here just to bring things down and fill a little bit of negative space that we don't necessarily want. The other thing that I'm actually looking at as well when we look into the front of the tree Is that these two branches are very similarly aligned and look almost like just one big pad foliage sitting across the front of the trunk. So I'm going to go through and do some very fine pruning just to try and open that up a little bit. I don't necessarily want to take out too much because they're quite good branches and you know maybe I can start to bring one down a little bit more and just make it a little bit less obvious. The other option we have is to actually bring The little twin trunk, the smaller of the trunks out a little bit more so it's not sitting quite so tucked in under the tree which I think could look quite good. Now to do that I'm probably going to have to place a guy wire somewhere and I'm actually going to be showing this tree in the upcoming Yarra Valley Bonsai Society exhibition in a couple weeks time. So that's also why I'm Part of why I'm doing the pruning now, just to get it ready for the exhibition. The timing worked out really well so I don't necessarily want to place a guy wire and make it look quite obvious. I'd rather just leave it as it is, do some very minor pruning to open this middle section up a little bit more and then after the show is done we will go through and probably just put a little bit of a guy wire on here just to bring that out. I know it doesn't make much of a difference and it may not. You know translate too well on the camera here but just to bring it out that little bit more and maybe a little bit of a twist out just get a little bit of separation in through the middle of the trunk there as well whereas now it's sitting quite tucked up and under the branches above it. So I'm going to go through and do some of those tweaks now and and we'll come back with the finished product. For the show obviously I will be going through and mossing all of this so Maybe it might be worth doing a bit of a video on show preparation, you know, moss collection, moss placement and the type of mosses we use, cleaning pots and selecting stands and accents and things like that. So if you guys would be interested in like a show prep video we can certainly do something like that. Okay so here we have the finished twin trunk corkbark Chinese elm. A little bit of wire on there, not too much. I think I ended up putting maybe... One, two, three, four, maybe five or six small bits of wire. One sort of larger gauge wire just to get this branch in particular into a slightly better position. But otherwise there's really not that much wire on there at all. So I'm actually going to pretty heavily fertilize this now. Now, um, We tend to not fertilize our deciduous species or at least you know things in pots. If it's in development, you can go ahead and fertilize start of spring, but if it's in a refined state or close to a refined state and you're trying to shorten internodes and things like that, get fine twigging, then fertilizing at the start of spring when they're pushing isn't a great idea, but we're now well and truly. Into spring the first flush has hardened off, we've pruned it back so now we can go through and and basically start to fertilize fairly well because we have the structure that we need. That is it for this tree. I hope you guys really enjoyed this episode today. We're going to be putting out a few more sort of short form videos that are I guess instructional based. We're going to have a video coming up on guy wiring. Fertilizing, watering, just some of the basics that I think are handy just to refresh or to learn if you're perhaps a newer person in bonsai. Like I said this one's done for today. Thank you very much for watching and we'll catch you in the next episode. Cheers!