Mastering Bonsai Pruning: Directional, Structural & Maintenance Tips

Hello and welcome to Bonsai with Tom. Today we're going to go back to some pruning and I want to start with this little fella. It has a nice basic shape. This is just a Crassula ovata and it's a good example to show just basic structural pruning. You can see it's got a nice trunk, a nice bark, and you know the structure is just a bit overgrown if you look at it. It looks sort of you know more like a bush and I want to take it back to its primary features. And just kind of grow it out. And it's a good example for... Let me get rid of this first one growing straight up. It's a good example for directional pruning because you can see here, if I cut this, you can see that leaf coming out here, this leaf would come out this way. So if I cut this right here, Um, you know, I will get a leaf kind of coming out in the direction I want right there. And you can go pretty close to that segment. The leaf will always come out with the lower segment. And the same thing here. In fact, if I go down one lower, I can have my leaf come out to the side here, and I've learned that I can go pretty close to that segment. I go about a half segment away, and I can shorten this a little bit more even, but you want to leave a little room there to make sure that you do get the new leaf and branch where you want it. And so, you know, simple tree! It's basically got three primary structures now, and so we'll move over here and take care of this one. And same thing, I just cut to either a leaf, or I kind of count back, they rotate 90 degrees to the branch that I want, and cut there, and you can see it's got a nice basic shape. It's a nice little tree, and we'll just let it grow out and go from there, but this one is pretty much pruned up, and you may have noticed, like, this tree, I repotted in a recent video, from this pot to a more appropriate pot. And the reason, um, I am just swamped trying to get all my trees inside where, you know, it's Halloween and so it's getting cold. You pretty much, that's almost the drop dead date here in the Pacific Northwest. So let's move on to another tree. This is a Lilliput Portulacaria afra and you can see it's grown out really good, really well. And it just needs a prune back. This is a totally different kind of pruning. I would call this more maintenance pruning. Um, you know, I have my basic structure of the tree that I want and I'm just trying to constrain it and develop fine detail and ramification on the branches. So I'm just going to come in here and I usually just do profile pruning, just kind of sculpt it out, make it look like how I want it, and then come in and do some finer pruning. And I really like this main tree. Not so crazy about the pot. I will probably repot this one in the winter time. But as I was saying, it is getting cold and I could keep my trees out longer because I have them protected from the rain, but it really doesn't make any sense at this point because it's getting down to 40s, slightly below 40s at night, and so they're really not doing anything. They're just kind of going into dormancy out there. And I do like to give them a little bit of that period, maybe a few weeks, because especially Especially with jades, like Crassula ovata. Easter cactus, those kinds of things. It really sets the buds. And so next week, I will have a video and show you some of that, this moving process and also how, you know, the buds just kind of come out of nowhere in sort of late fall like this. And they bloom and you have just nice blooms on, particularly the Crassula ovata I have, the ones that I just let grow wild. They produce flowers and... You know, for months in the wintertime. So it's really nice. And this one is coming along pretty good. You can see it's got a nice full kind of structure to it. And so I'm just kind of taking it down to how I want it to look. And you know, I'm not going to do any major pruning on it. I just want to get it to kind of look like I care for it. And the same thing for these ones on the side But yes, I've been very, very busy, and so I didn't have a lot of time to shoot any video, so I have collections of video. Believe it or not, I have so much tree work that I do that oftentimes I never get to publishing some of the videos. So this is sort of a collection of some of that stuff, although I did just recently prune this one, but the first one was from, you know, a while back. But I still think it's helpful to look at them. And, yeah, I just had a lot going on and didn't really have time to do the video how I really like to. And so I will spend some time this week for a pretty good episode next week where I am moving my trees in. I'll probably do some pruning because some of my jades, oh my goodness, they are just so big. I am going to have to prune them to be able to get them into my... shelves where I keep them, and I put a new shelf together, so I've got that. So I should have more storage than usual, and I also discovered I use this shelf paper to kind of increase the light around it. I'm trying to use less light now, because I think even one of these Barina ones at the level that I use them is close to like 18,000 to 20,000. Lux, and I feel like that is more than enough light for these plants to be really healthy throughout the winter. But, you know, I sort of want, well, I'll show you next week. It's kind of a neat thing that I sort of accidentally discovered, which made total sense once I looked at it. But this one is looking pretty good. I know I've been kind of talking about various things. This tree's a little shorter and more bush-like. I think I've said before, I've been really happy with the main tree and a little less happy with these side trees, but we'll keep working on them. I'm sure they will be coming around. But yeah, I really like the main tree, and I'm not sure this forest completely works as a group, but we'll be fixing that this winter. But I really like this guy. And this tree is pretty much all pruned up. Let's pick another one. This next tree is back to more structural pruning. I had this tree... I'm not sure I've done much to it. I can't remember now. Yeah, I don't think I've done much to this one. Maybe I did some initial pruning when I first got it, like in the springtime, but it's been growing in the summer, and you know, it just needs to be kind of shortened up a bit, but I think I'm really going to concentrate still more on structural pruning to get the branches that I want in the area where I want. Yeah I'm not sure I've really pruned this at all looking at it. You can see I've got a lot of branches, parallel branches. I'm gonna start just by kind of taking it to the profile I want and you know shortening it a bit so I can kind of see what I want to do. And I usually cut back anything that's just long and boring. Especially this early on in the development of the tree, these things grow so quickly and readily I just kind of cut them back and again using that directional pruning you know and like this one I'm just gonna cut it back because it's too long unless I wanted to use that as the main branch which I don't I'd rather have a branch kind of coming off lower down here and same thing here I'll just shorten that a little bit more and you know you can see I can see I've got a lot of rings and In the same way, these also grow in the Crassula ovata, where each pair of new branches, if you just turn around the branch from the previous pair 90 degrees, that is where you're going to get your new ones on a seam, the next seam up or the next seam down. And so you can pretty easily predict where you're extremely likely to get a new branch. It's not guaranteed, but you know, this might make a nice pad off here to the left. So at this stage I'm really just trying to get the tree, get rid of stuff that I don't want, just kind of cut it out and keep some stuff around that I think has some potential and then let the tree have its turn and grow and the next time we prune it'll be much more obvious I'm going where to cut. And you can see I'm also cutting, I want things to kind of grow up and out so to go anything that's kind of growing towards the inside ahead and or not sort of at least leaning out a bit I just kind of cut it short start the and keep doing that until the new growth goes where I want and that's a lot of the essence of sort of this directional pruning. recording. But you can see it doesn't take too long just to neaten it up and shorten things up and just make things more compact, just following those basic rules of getting rid of stuff that's, I mean, basically going the wrong direction. And before you know it, it really simplifies the tree and allows you to see its structure, which is kind of what we're going for oftentimes with bonsai. But this tree has a long way to go, but it's off to a great start. I mean, I think it has some good bones. You know, I like it's got a nice strong trunk coming right up out of the ground. You know, it's already got a little taper. I think this branch on the right definitely needs some simplification. Thank But I have cut it back and I feel this will lead to a lot of back budding and allow me to more easily... I'm going to take this one off because it's just kind of muddling up that whole branch. And we'll get new branches kind of coming out all over you. and I will then take the next step with this. Pretty much accomplished the goal of wanting to simplify it down and Basically, I don't want the tree to waste time growing these huge branches where I don't want them. So by getting rid of them, it can put its energy, well, it has to put its energy into the branches that I want. And I still feel like this branch off to the left is a bit thick, this one right here. But I'm going to let it go. If it branches, if I get some more stuff further back, or if this kind of comes down lower, I could get rid of that lower branch. Or I could get rid of that fatter branch, but I think either way would work. I kind of like this lower one on the left, looks a bit more natural, but I'm going to let them grow and we will tackle fixing that in the future. But I think we've opened up the tree, light can get in there, we get a lot of branching, and as I said, the tree will help us figure out where to prune based on where it's growing this time, and I think I think... We'll be pretty happy with the results. And so pretty much done with this one for now. Kind of a rough pruning of some rough material, but we're moving it along in a good direction. So the last tree I wanna look at today, this is one that it was a large cutting and I can't even remember what the parent plant was now, but you can see. It's getting some nice bark on it, and I've had a few trees that I pruned and I just shoved in the ground here, and that's basically all you have to do with these, and you'll get a new tree. Just because I like the bark structure of this, but this one, I've never pruned it, and, you know, it's getting a bit wild, but this is kind of how I like to, like, after I initially pot them up, let them go a little crazy like this. And I'm going to start by just cutting off stuff like this is growing to the inside, I don't want that. Anything that's growing to the inside of the trunk or crossing, just get rid of it and simplify it. This is another one that's kind of really close to the one beside it here, so I don't need them both. But I'll just shorten it for now and then see what I want. I may end up drastically shortening this whole thing, but I think I get rid of that middle one. Yeah, because I think even though this one kind of goes in a little bit, it basically goes back and to the left, so I think I can work with that. The top here is very confusing. We have kind of, well, I guess you'd call it a whirl, like a bunch of branches coming out in one spot, and we don't want to let that fester and continue because it'll just get thicker and thicker, so I definitely want to address that. Kind of clean up this area because it seems to be one of the more problematic areas that I see on the tree. And I guess I would say in general, a good takeaway from this episode is, you know, you don't have to be perfect. Just move the tree a few steps in the right direction and keep doing that. And before you know it, you'll have some progress on your hands. And I mean, I've seen this again and again, especially with complicated material. This is just too long and uninteresting. So I'm going to take it back. It's also near the top, which they grow aggressively. You know, if it's really long and boring, I mean I just cut it off because it is going to bother me for the entire life of the tree and I'd rather just fix it now and get some new branching over time that I can work with rather than wait two years and then cut it off and have to start from ground zero potentially on that branch. And I always stop and sort of take a look here and there, you know, spin it around. It's a three-dimensional You know, piece of art, so you want to always keep that in mind. This is kind of really thick. I'm just going to cut it back, and I'm slowly honing in on fixing this stuff at the top here, and I think I'll have that as the primary branch. So I'm just going to kind of give everything else an object lesson and cut it back so that I can thrive. And you know, as I look at this tree, all these lower Lower branches. I mean, I'm just going to prune them up for now. They kind of are developing a nice spread-out structure here, but I feel like for my vision for the tree, and I think a viewer commented on this a while ago when I think I showed this tree in an update, is I feel like these lower branches are too low. If I look at this tree, like imagine if I take off, let's see. Sorry, I just had a synapse fire. If I take off these two lower branches, which are kind of like bar branches. I mean, one goes to the back and they're getting thick. But if I take those off, I think I've got a nice little tree here and I've got kind of some bar branches all the way up. And, you know, I don't have to deal with those right now, but it might not be a bad idea. But I think I'll leave these lower branches on even though my current idea is I don't want them. To thicken up the base of the tree, because I really think it will, it'll help. It'll help do that, because they're already pretty fat, so they will, if I just let them go, they will put on a lot of thickness from that point all the way down to the trunk, which is better. I mean, from the, the branch will thicken, and also where that branch attaches to the trunk down. It'll also thicken up dramatically and that's kind of what I want for this, but I'm sort of focusing on the top now and just kind of chopping these stubs back to something that looks natural. And I'm confident to do that because I know that it's a pretty healthy tree and I've fed it a lot and it will just bounce back and flourish pretty hard. And so I'm getting pretty happy with the top of the tree here. Which is what I'm really focusing on, because as I said, I feel like these lower branches are going to be removed at some point anyhow, and so this tree will just magically look so much better when I do that, and we're left with the top, and I am going to cut this one short too. So I'm basically doing some structural pruning on this guy to kind of get it where I want it, and you do see those bar branches on that one I just cut, and I'm just going to wait. No, I'm not. I'm taking it off. Yeah, that is so much better. Um, you know, because I want a nice flow up and then out, and I think we've kind of fixed the branch structure, and when I remove these lower ones, which, we'll see if I do, but I am like 95% sure they have to come off, because I think this will just be a nice kind of, you know, taller tree, and these branches, although I like them, I could cut them back and get some taper on them, they're just, I feel too low to be used here. So yeah, let me see what I got here. I'll help you imagine to see that. I'll just cover it up. So yeah, this would be the silhouette of the tree, and you can imagine it filling out. And yeah, it'll take it another year or two. I think we get branches coming out and do some decent branch selection. It'll be nice. Here's a nice cutting that kind of came off, and I'm just gonna... Like the others, just stick it in the soil. You can never have too many of these portulacaria afra, and they're easy to care for, and I'll just create a little hole and shove it in there, and then basically kind of ignore it. And before you know it, they most always start this way. I find water propagation is more reliable for me, but you haven't really lost anything if it doesn't work, but it most often does. And, yeah, it even looks good from the back here, doesn't it? I kind of like the kind of wild, kind of natural structure of those branches. Let's see if I got anything else. I got some nice cuttings off of this. So why not? I'll stick this one in there, too. You can never have too many, and, you know, people like to get them, so I sort of give them away if I find I have too many, which I obviously do. And same thing, I'll just kind of wiggle them in here. And it's kind of funny, they seem to be communal plants. I'm joking there, but yeah, they don't seem to mind growing tightly together like this. I'm getting kind of like a woodsy look here. I'm creating a forest accidentally and didn't even realize it, but I think this one is pretty much done. It's a little hard to... I'm starting to... Envision it now because I've got the, you know, this extra stuff I could cut off and I'm half tempted to cut it off and just create more cuttings, but I'm going to resist and we'll see what happens next time. And with that, this was pretty much a wrap for this video. It's a short video, get back to some pruning and, uh... You know, I want you all to enjoy your week. Don't eat too much of your Halloween candy that either you collected or wasn't picked up by trick-or-treaters. Cheers. And yeah, I think when this fills out, it'll be a nice tree. And with that, I want to thank you for watching as always. And I look forward to seeing you all again next week. I'm just cleaning up some of this stuff and seeing... Where some of these new branches might come in. I'm getting more excited. But see you all next week. And have a great week and enjoy your trees.