sorce
Nonsense Rascal
Faster
Further
Future
Vision.
Sorce
Further
Future
Vision.
Sorce
American Elm
- Thread starter VAFisher
- Start date
I think this should be about as far as you go with the branch extending for this particular tree..
By the time the bark on the trunk starts cracking, you'll be able to sit back in your slippers, pipe in hand and feel satisfied!
By the time the bark on the trunk starts cracking, you'll be able to sit back in your slippers, pipe in hand and feel satisfied!
iant
Chumono
Another thought....
sorce
Nonsense Rascal
iant
Chumono
It's a fotusho ping pot with patina and rare blue bordered moss.
Ian
Ian
aml1014
Masterpiece
Which one are you talking about?
My brain has been running half speed the last couple weeks
Aaron
GroveKeeper
Shohin
Very interesting idea.
VAFisher
Masterpiece
Thanks for the post. I was having some of those same thoughts looking at it without leaves this winter and I did do what I thought was a fairly hard cutback. Not as drastic as what you propose though. It's hard to cut off ramification....
sorce
Nonsense Rascal
Which one are you talking about?
My brain has been running half speed the last couple weeks
Aaron
The one I put the yellow crayon boy picture on!
I think it's a Cottonwood?
Sorce
aml1014
Masterpiece
Just went through my cottonwood thread and you hadn't drawn any virts there. Maybe it was point of my elms?
doesn't matter anyway lol I get what you meanAaron
music~maker
Shohin
I don't see this as a fundamental problem, but simply as a tree that will do well with another 5-10 years of development. There are two ways to get where you're trying to go.
- The first is to chop back and re-grow, and carefully re-build from there. I see a lot of people take this approach, and it's really not necessary in many cases.
- The second is to just hedge prune this back to the canopy after the first flush of growth for the next 4-5 years, and then either in early fall or early spring, balance prune anything that's gotten too dominant. Lather, rinse repeat. You might occasionally take it back further than the current canopy, but I'd give it at least another season or two from here before doing that myself. As long as it's growing out in a balanced way, everything will generally stay in proportion.
I might even consider a slightly larger training pot to move things along a bit faster, but I'd need to see how it grows in this before making that call.
Many people don't. That's a problem in itself.
It's always necessary if you want quality
That is an incredibly bad way of doing things. This non selective sheering is a false economy. To get the final tree, you have to do just as much work in the end and remove a lot of growth which should not have been there in the first place. But on top of that, you still have not resolved the straight lines issue. Having made many hundreds of materials like this I thought I would give some pointers towards a better outcome. Up to you whether you go for it or not.
sorce
Nonsense Rascal
Are the buds swelling on that Elm yet?
Looks like after the 14th will be safe.
Stay in touch.
Sorce
VAFisher
Masterpiece
Thanks everyone for your thoughts on this tree. I'm not going to update this thread anymore because I started a new thread for all of my elms. Going forward, I'll update this tree there.
music~maker
Shohin
And many people I see over-prune their trees in my opinion. So there's that. I'm not saying to never prune it back - I'd just let it fill in more first.
I've learned over 20+ years of doing this that there's rarely an "always" or a "never" in bonsai. There's almost always more than one way to skin a cat.
[/QUOTE]
Really? Incredibly bad? I'm essentially advocating for what Walter Pall does with his trees. Not sure I'd call anything he has "incredibly bad". This is not a black and white thing here. The advantage of gradual reduction is better trunk and major branch development, and you also minimize the chance of unexpected die back. Hard pruning too early will sometimes yield dead branches where you don't want them.
I maybe should have been clearer on what I meant by "hedge pruning" - I'm not completely indiscriminate in pruning here. I do carefully choose the paths I want when I prune, and I'll thin out dense growth on the interior. But I do prune back to the canopy and let it re-grow again. For me, it's all about creating balanced growth, and then creating a finely tuned system that I can manipulate through surgical strike pruning. Timing said pruning correctly on a well-balanced system can generate much faster results than just chopping everything off and re-growing.
Over time, you do reduce the canopy size inward, and along the way you've added a bit of wood to the tree while letting it stay strong along the way. I just don't see what's so incredibly bad about that.
Walter has his ways, some of which I agree with and some I don't. This particular technique is one of them. Doing it this way, you are letting the tree decide it's own branch structure. In bonsai, I believe it is preferable to have total control over every single branch and the way it is formed. Whether we decide to let it be or cut it off and force another one or replace it with another one is part of the job. If you look at your elm, you will notice that many of the branches especially the secondary ones are the result of natural growth of the tree. That is, a young tree such as this always has a tendency to shoot branches up which are straight and fast. and with long internodes. Long internodes automatically reduces you future options. These branches always lack character and detract from the impression of age we are looking for. Fiddling around with the periphery of the tree does nothing to modify young branches and the appearance of youth. You could wire everything and give movement that way but the results are usually inferior to pruning visually and also does not fix the long internode problem.
As far as getting strength into the tree, this is done by letting the branches grow a little and then cutting and repeating. The vigour will increase as the number of ramifications increases. Worrying about vigour in an elm is not necessary.
Letting it ''fill in more'' and then pruning is kind of doing the job back to front. Normally, we don't ''reduce the canopy inward'', we grow the canopy outward.
Hedge pruning is a lazy sloppy practice which should be reserved for the youngest trees growing in the ground when a quick size reduction is necessary. IMO
music~maker
Shohin
Ah, I'm starting to see the disconnect ... we clearly have different philosophies on developing trees.
Some context:
To some extent, yes. I look at tree development as a bit of a chess match. I make a move, then I see how the tree responds. Then I make another move, and see how the tree responds. And I'll often let the tree keep most of what it grows, at least for a while. But ultimately, I'm still choosing the branch structure because at some point I choose what to remove and what to leave behind. And then the tree makes another move ...
And to be clear, it's probably useful to differentiate between "hedge pruning" and "pruning to a canopy", even though I tend to use the terms somewhat inter-changeably. The only time I'm somewhat indiscriminate here is when I'm working on raw nursery stock that just needs volume reduced. Beyond that, I tend to be very careful with choosing my branch runs based on what I want them to do in the future.
I completely, 100% agree with this, actually. The only difference here is the timing. I look at the tree as an overall system, and I don't remove anything until it's had the maximum impact on the system and is about to cause something to thicken where I don't want it to, or until the timing is correct to tip the hormone imbalance in my favor. I'm all about creative use of sacrifice branches to selectively thicken certain areas, or waiting until auxin levels are at their maximum to get the most out of the back-budding response.
Agreed, many of the branches there will need to change somehow over time to create the impression of age. Again, the primary difference in our methodology is the timing. For a tree like this, I'm willing to gradually replace or otherwise modify the branches you're talking about over a 3-5 year period if necessary.
Here's why:
You're right - in this case, elms are pretty tough. I was honestly thinking more about branch and trunk development, and to a lesser degree, not having a branch die back. Increased vigor is a bonus. And this methodology works interchangeably with lots of other species.
By keeping growth balanced, and gradually scaling up for a bit, the entire tree gradually scales up and develops a bit of character in the process. Then you prune back and re-grow your branches the way you're describing. The reason I even started this conversation was because I think the trunk and major branches would be much better in 3-5 years by doing what I'm saying here. If this were mine, it probably wouldn't even be in a bonsai pot right now.
Who is this "we" you keep talking about? You make it sound like every body does this stuff the same way. =)
It may seem back to front, but it's just part of the scaling up/scaling down cycle. I would actually point out that we do both - we reduce the canopy inward and we grow the canopy outward. Every year I reduce a bit, and then I let it grow again. So there's both. But I've learned favoring growth yields much better results on the trunk over time. It may not always be noticeable in 1-2 years, but it most definitely is in 5. I can usually tell when somebody prunes hard every year to grow their canopy - their trunks often seem underdeveloped to me. Now, if you had a perfect trunk, and perfect primary branches, and all you're focused on is growing secondaries, then I'd probably shift to the model you're advocating for.
And to be honest, it also depends on the species of tree your working on. Not everything is going to be happy about a hard pruning.
In essence, all I'm really talking about here is letting a tree exist at a particular scale, and then moving up and down within a range of that scale over time to develop it. As part of that, it must scale up (everything must grow or die, right?), and then for artistic purposes, you must scale it back down again. That process, over time, generates interesting, healthy trees. And, imho, both scaling up and scaling down are absolutely required.
Sometimes you do need to do a major scaling down, but I try to do those only when I'm thrilled with what's going to be left behind. That way, I'm locking in the best of what the tree has to offer, and building off of that.
And none of this is anything against what you do or how you do it. You clearly are very experienced and have gotten great results.
This is just another way of looking at things - a different way that also works. As I said earlier, there's more than one way to skin a cat. =)
Cheers
Some context:
- I spent the first 10 years doing bonsai more or less how you're describing. In fact, I would go so far as to say I was probably doing more pruning than growing.
- When I bought a house in 2005, my bonsai hobby got a complete reboot, and I decided I wanted to learn how to develop every aspect of the tree, including the trunk. In a moment of self-reflection, it occurred to me that I had no idea how trunks were developed, and I set out to change that.
- So I've spent the past 12 years doing mostly trunk projects, and I've experimented with a variety of techniques, and started to develop a number of theories.
- Somewhere along the way, I came across Walters writings and realized that he thinks very similarly to the way I do, only he's been doing it a LOT longer. And then I met Dan Robinson. Many theories confirmed, and new ideas added, and the experiments continued ...
- Over the course of doing this, I've settled into a preference for a more natural style of tree.
To some extent, yes. I look at tree development as a bit of a chess match. I make a move, then I see how the tree responds. Then I make another move, and see how the tree responds. And I'll often let the tree keep most of what it grows, at least for a while. But ultimately, I'm still choosing the branch structure because at some point I choose what to remove and what to leave behind. And then the tree makes another move ...
And to be clear, it's probably useful to differentiate between "hedge pruning" and "pruning to a canopy", even though I tend to use the terms somewhat inter-changeably. The only time I'm somewhat indiscriminate here is when I'm working on raw nursery stock that just needs volume reduced. Beyond that, I tend to be very careful with choosing my branch runs based on what I want them to do in the future.
I completely, 100% agree with this, actually. The only difference here is the timing. I look at the tree as an overall system, and I don't remove anything until it's had the maximum impact on the system and is about to cause something to thicken where I don't want it to, or until the timing is correct to tip the hormone imbalance in my favor. I'm all about creative use of sacrifice branches to selectively thicken certain areas, or waiting until auxin levels are at their maximum to get the most out of the back-budding response.
Agreed, many of the branches there will need to change somehow over time to create the impression of age. Again, the primary difference in our methodology is the timing. For a tree like this, I'm willing to gradually replace or otherwise modify the branches you're talking about over a 3-5 year period if necessary.
Here's why:
- Every branch adds a little something to the trunk. It requires a pathway to the roots, and as it grows, that pathway grows, which adds character to the trunk. Pruning too early is a missed opportunity for more trunk character. Every little bit counts.
- By keeping the growth balanced, you can easily scale the tree up and then scale it back down again. This, in my opinion, is the single most important aspect of growing a decent trunk for bonsai. Scale up, scale down, lather, rinse, repeat. This only became obvious to me after a decade of doing trunk experiments. And the same thing applies at least to the major branches as well.
- Long internodes do temporarily reduce our future options, but they can sometimes still be made interesting with wire, and if not, you just prune them off after they've left they're mark on the trunk or branches. Natural trees do sometimes have long internodes, so it's not completely ridiculous to have a few on a miniaturized tree. If every branch has long internodes, that doesn't look right, but one or two, judiciously wired, can actually add an element of realism to the design.
- If you're talking about a 1-2 year timeframe, I would maybe agree with you. But if you already have a canopy full of branches that are poised to extend and scale the tree up, you actually can waste time by cutting it all the way back and re-growing.
- By letting the canopy you have extend, you thicken the base that it's extending from. When you do cut back, you end up with better taper as a result.
- If you cut back too soon, you have to re-grow everything to get back to the point where you are ready to thicken the trunk again, and you still have to cultivate and remove sacrifice branches along the way. All I'm saying here is that if obvious sacrifice branches are staring you in the face, don't cut them off before they've had a chance to do their job.
You're right - in this case, elms are pretty tough. I was honestly thinking more about branch and trunk development, and to a lesser degree, not having a branch die back. Increased vigor is a bonus. And this methodology works interchangeably with lots of other species.
By keeping growth balanced, and gradually scaling up for a bit, the entire tree gradually scales up and develops a bit of character in the process. Then you prune back and re-grow your branches the way you're describing. The reason I even started this conversation was because I think the trunk and major branches would be much better in 3-5 years by doing what I'm saying here. If this were mine, it probably wouldn't even be in a bonsai pot right now.
Who is this "we" you keep talking about? You make it sound like every body does this stuff the same way. =)
It may seem back to front, but it's just part of the scaling up/scaling down cycle. I would actually point out that we do both - we reduce the canopy inward and we grow the canopy outward. Every year I reduce a bit, and then I let it grow again. So there's both. But I've learned favoring growth yields much better results on the trunk over time. It may not always be noticeable in 1-2 years, but it most definitely is in 5. I can usually tell when somebody prunes hard every year to grow their canopy - their trunks often seem underdeveloped to me. Now, if you had a perfect trunk, and perfect primary branches, and all you're focused on is growing secondaries, then I'd probably shift to the model you're advocating for.
And to be honest, it also depends on the species of tree your working on. Not everything is going to be happy about a hard pruning.
In essence, all I'm really talking about here is letting a tree exist at a particular scale, and then moving up and down within a range of that scale over time to develop it. As part of that, it must scale up (everything must grow or die, right?), and then for artistic purposes, you must scale it back down again. That process, over time, generates interesting, healthy trees. And, imho, both scaling up and scaling down are absolutely required.
Sometimes you do need to do a major scaling down, but I try to do those only when I'm thrilled with what's going to be left behind. That way, I'm locking in the best of what the tree has to offer, and building off of that.
And none of this is anything against what you do or how you do it. You clearly are very experienced and have gotten great results.
This is just another way of looking at things - a different way that also works. As I said earlier, there's more than one way to skin a cat. =)
Cheers
Last edited:
iOne
Sapling
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Is there suppose to be buds on the Elm???
