Mikecheck123
Omono
This tree is special to me because it's one that I have been working the longest and have spent the most hours on. I pulled it off a trash heap in Nov. 2016. It was an unremarkable patio tree with about a 1 inch trunk. Unfortunately, I have no pictures of it then because I didn't yet understand the importance of documenting progress.
In April 2017, I hard chopped it flush to the ground. My timing was blind luck, as I was still a total noob. It turns out that that's a great time to hard chop things.
By fall, it was an 8 footer with about a 3-inch trunk. Here it is in February 2018 when buds were starting to pop.
So it was time for another hard chop:
About 3 months later, the whips were already 4 feet long, so it was time to wire the primary branches. I was not prepared for how quickly the wire would cut in, and some of those initial scars are still visible today.
Like all noobs, I wanted a WEEPING willow. I wasted a lot of time trying to make the branches weep with clothes pins. NOTE: it does work! But as you'll see, it becomes unsustainable very quickly.
By June of 2018, I was excited that it was already kinda lookin like a weeping willow.
But the problem is that every single shoot on a curly willow wants to grow STRAIGHT UP. So you have to keep adjusting the clothes pins if you want to get anywhere.
I fought this habit valiantly for about another year.
This is March 2019:
By June 2019, my enthusiasm for fighting it and constantly readjusting clothes pins was gone. As the branches ramify, the problem gets exponentially harder, too.
I noticed another issue--even if my plan for a weeping willow suceceded, you would never see the best attribute of this tree: it's trunk.
So I switched gears and decided to do a broom style. I undid the guy wires and just let the shoots grow freely. Which they did readily. STRAIGHT UP.
Here it was in December 2019. Holy shit! These things hate weeping! Note also the root suckers that I allowed to grow wild. Doing that really helps smooth out the taper.
In March I finally got it into a (HUGE) bonsai pot and gave it a haircut.
Too many branches. I cut a few of them off.
Then I set about with detail wiring. This took far longer than I thought it was going to. I think I spent 12 hours total trying to wire everything up, and I still only got about 70% of the branches done.
The trunk continues to thicken and age. It's now more than four inches thick above the root flare. I've got some strategic suckers on the left to further make this trunk epic.
In April 2017, I hard chopped it flush to the ground. My timing was blind luck, as I was still a total noob. It turns out that that's a great time to hard chop things.
By fall, it was an 8 footer with about a 3-inch trunk. Here it is in February 2018 when buds were starting to pop.
So it was time for another hard chop:
About 3 months later, the whips were already 4 feet long, so it was time to wire the primary branches. I was not prepared for how quickly the wire would cut in, and some of those initial scars are still visible today.
Like all noobs, I wanted a WEEPING willow. I wasted a lot of time trying to make the branches weep with clothes pins. NOTE: it does work! But as you'll see, it becomes unsustainable very quickly.
By June of 2018, I was excited that it was already kinda lookin like a weeping willow.
But the problem is that every single shoot on a curly willow wants to grow STRAIGHT UP. So you have to keep adjusting the clothes pins if you want to get anywhere.
I fought this habit valiantly for about another year.
This is March 2019:
By June 2019, my enthusiasm for fighting it and constantly readjusting clothes pins was gone. As the branches ramify, the problem gets exponentially harder, too.
I noticed another issue--even if my plan for a weeping willow suceceded, you would never see the best attribute of this tree: it's trunk.
So I switched gears and decided to do a broom style. I undid the guy wires and just let the shoots grow freely. Which they did readily. STRAIGHT UP.
Here it was in December 2019. Holy shit! These things hate weeping! Note also the root suckers that I allowed to grow wild. Doing that really helps smooth out the taper.
In March I finally got it into a (HUGE) bonsai pot and gave it a haircut.
Too many branches. I cut a few of them off.
Then I set about with detail wiring. This took far longer than I thought it was going to. I think I spent 12 hours total trying to wire everything up, and I still only got about 70% of the branches done.
The trunk continues to thicken and age. It's now more than four inches thick above the root flare. I've got some strategic suckers on the left to further make this trunk epic.
