[Bougainvillea, twin-trunk omono/dai size] Advice on how to approach this flush of growth I got in the past ~month?

[SU2]

[Yup, I know Bougainvilleas are not technically trees ]

So ~a month ago I gave this guy his "2020 intervention", usually do 1 hard intervention annually on bougies here where they grow like weeds, and moved him into a smaller box (and gave a pretty large root-prune, rootplate is developing so well though!!) and hard-pruned all his canopy:


< different light shows it differently, sorry no other angles. Box is ~1/3rd the volume of his previous "grow box"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now, ~1mo later as his resultant vegetative flush is nearly complete, and flowering-indications abound on various tips throughout the canopy, I'm a bit uncertain of just how to proceed:


[Birdseye-view: ]

I don't "let" them flower (IE, I remove flowering bracts as they occur, I know "it's still growth" but it doesn't photosynthesize and trees tend to slow growth when in-bloom, whereas when you cull their flowers they keep pushing at least IME/in the right conditions)

I certainly want to remove a lot from the top, it's growing out of proportion to lower limbs, but - from years of pruning-back branches on bougies here - I'm beginning to get the impression that "Let the branches 'run' so they girthen up, then hard-prune back once you have a good skeleton, then go into hedge-prune & ramification approaches" line of thought doesn't work so well on bougies. I've built trellises for them and had 5' branches where the branch-collar hardly thickened-up at all, I've almost got the impression that you get girth quicker by hedge-prune approach right off the bat with bougies.

So, gonna remove mass from the top (and wire), but would love to hear people's input because I dislike cutting back to 2 nodes on wood that's hardly formed/lignified but it's going to be a waste to let those branches up top thicken much more they are just growing way too quickly for the lower branches I may take-out a couple "big secondaries" from the right-trunk's top... Would very much appreciate input/advice on how I could approach this guy, the 'final vision' is a basic "two overlapping triangles" canopy design with a smaller triangle (obviously) on the smaller trunk, feel like I need to 'cull' the top to balance things out but don't really have much to spare up there in the way of primaries..

 

[Forsoothe!]

They don't grow like weeds in Detroit, but I would offer the opinion that your grow box & roots needs to be smaller to slow down top growth. Also, I tip prune constantly in the pre-flowering mode to control/protect the architecture from getting away from me. The first flower buds, which I always foil by tip pruning and therefore lose the flowers on that primary are the beginnings of bull canes that will grow to the moon while the rest of the plant lounges away. The flowering tips come out almost one at a time until after a half dozen or more have been foiled, then the whole plant goes to flower bud extension simultaneously, and with shorter extensions of each cluster rather than becoming bull canes. Your plant is much bigger of course and you might use a similar but different process where you let that primary extend such that the secondary buds do form flower buds but still are shorter than they would have been, they become a cluster rather than nodes along a long cane. Your size plant can use them as ramification, whereas they would be out of scale for me.

 

[SU2]

They don't grow like weeds in Detroit, but I would offer the opinion that your grow box & roots needs to be smaller to slow down top growth. Also, I tip prune constantly in the pre-flowering mode to control/protect the architecture from getting away from me. The first flower buds, which I always foil by tip pruning and therefore lose the flowers on that primary are the beginnings of bull canes that will grow to the moon while the rest of the plant lounges away. The flowering tips come out almost one at a time until after a half dozen or more have been foiled, then the whole plant goes to flower bud extension simultaneously, and with shorter extensions of each cluster rather than becoming bull canes. Your plant is much bigger of course and you might use a similar but different process where you let that primary extend such that the secondary buds do form flower buds but still are shorter than they would have been, they become a cluster rather than nodes along a long cane. Your size plant can use them as ramification, whereas they would be out of scale for me.

Well yes I do but they're still out-of-scale for me, I was doing it because "to build ramification/taper, you 'let it run' then hard-prune", right? But with Bougainvillea it almost seems you get girth just as easily by letting it bush-out (like it wants....)

So now I am "bringing it in tighter" each time I do 'reframe' it, same with the box getting smaller each time, so the top & bottom 'finish' and hit Refinement around the same time.

(Re flowers, I'm pretty aggressive I get them way early on most of the bougies I care about, on them I remove flowers the same way I remove a leaf with a leaf-boring insect's trail or bug-chew of any sort, I pull flowers from a large portion of my bougies in the same manner and they continue on with growth - past attempts at pruning to "stop" flowering yielded opposite results, resultant growth was so pushy to flower it was almost unmanageable, but if I just pluck the flower cones as soon as they're large enough to easily pluck with 2 fingers the tree just seems to keep going )

 

[SU2]

Also, I tip prune constantly in the pre-flowering mode to control/protect the architecture from getting away from me.

In revisiting your post this ^ struck me... I find them "getting away from me" much easier if I tip-prune, because then I have a branch trying to push new branches from each of its nodes up to a dozen (maybe that's growth-pattern here in FL? Have actually got a Maple that responded to a partial defoliation in this manner maybe 1.5mo ago and am still actively fighting it as it tries throwing like 100 new shoots which it - of course - could not possibly sustain, but it went into that 'shock' mode and is just throwing growth from virtually every node, small/susceptible/weak growth, have been fighting off any new(non-apical) shoots it produces in the same manner I usually go at Bougies' flowers!)

My language in my reply was imprecise Re flowers, I meant I'm aggressive when it comes to removing them, I see them as robbing growth and the frequent/routine removal of flowering-bract-cones, as soon as they're appearing, is the fastest path for vegetative growth on Bougies, they want to be flowering and defoliation, tip-removals of any sort, just exacerbate the hell out of this (what % of the summer do yours flower up there? Mine can spend 50%+ of their summer stalled in-flower, tried so many approaches over the years and found that if you can just keep-up with removing flowers from an actively-flowering specimen it's like it tries to "make up" for what you pulled" and it extends its length to put out another attempt at a bract-cone)

 

[YamadoriFL]

@SU2 nice bald cypress. I have a similar one I got from Wigerts.

 

[Forsoothe!]

In revisiting your post this ^ struck me... I find them "getting away from me" much easier if I tip-prune, because then I have a branch trying to push new branches from each of its nodes up to a dozen (maybe that's growth-pattern here in FL? Have actually got a Maple that responded to a partial defoliation in this manner maybe 1.5mo ago and am still actively fighting it as it tries throwing like 100 new shoots which it - of course - could not possibly sustain, but it went into that 'shock' mode and is just throwing growth from virtually every node, small/susceptible/weak growth, have been fighting off any new(non-apical) shoots it produces in the same manner I usually go at Bougies' flowers!)

My language in my reply was imprecise Re flowers, I meant I'm aggressive when it comes to removing them, I see them as robbing growth and the frequent/routine removal of flowering-bract-cones, as soon as they're appearing, is the fastest path for vegetative growth on Bougies, they want to be flowering and defoliation, tip-removals of any sort, just exacerbate the hell out of this (what % of the summer do yours flower up there? Mine can spend 50%+ of their summer stalled in-flower, tried so many approaches over the years and found that if you can just keep-up with removing flowers from an actively-flowering specimen it's like it tries to "make up" for what you pulled" and it extends its length to put out another attempt at a bract-cone)

I don't really understand this. Maybe I shouldn't have offered my experiences because the amount of growth I get overall is not like yours in FL. I get one or two flowering periods a year and they last about 6 to 8 weeks. They are not the same periods every year or for my different species (colors). I need to keep them at a given size, 12" to 15" or so.

As to the question that tip pruning robs growth from plants: Of course it does and that's why I, and I assumed, other people do it. The very last thing I want is "lots of growth". I need growth within the profile I have and anything that exceeds that profile has to come off anyway before it screws-up my design, so if I short-cut the growth habit and make it stay within bounds, that's what I do. And I do it even though at times that means I wind up with less flowers that desirable or even none! It has to stay in bounds, period. The length, taper, placement, etc., of wood can't change just because the tree grows. I choose where and how, and it has to be where and what I can use to maintain the general shape and size over years and years. If the tree is smaller, if I steal energy and flowers and whatever else, so be it. Florida people don't have those constraints, or at least not in my scale. I assumed everyone would understand my situation and the fairly small box I have to live within. Sorry for any misunderstanding or misdirection.

There's another difference in my practices verses other's growing practices: Whatever size a plant is when I acquire it, that's the size I keep it, forever, sort-of. They can grow slowly and in-scale over time, but never do I "let grow and chop". I apply the same kind of thinking to everything I grow: tip prune and force the plant to stay within a profile and if over time it gets "bigger" it does so all over and in-scale and is never allowed to stick out of the image in my mind's eye. They fill in, they fill out, they mature the design I intended in the first place. Lots of trees take ten years or more to make them pretty to me, but that's the way I proceed, right, wrong, or indifferent. There are other ways that other people do things and some may be better or faster or whatever, and that's fine for them. I'm happy with me doing it my way. No offense intended to others with other methods.

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

In my mind, the only reason to grow Bougainvillea is for the flowers. If you are removing flowers all the time, you should just switch to growing boxwoods or junipers.

Who are you in a race with? Let your trees bloom, at least once or twice a year. Enjoy the flowers. The flowers should help you feel less manic, less homicidal. Relax. Bonsai is not a race.

 

[Carol 83]

In my mind, the only reason to grow Bougainvillea is for the flowers. If you are removing flowers all the time, you should just switch to growing boxwoods or junipers.

Who are you in a race with? Let your trees bloom, at least once or twice a year. Enjoy the flowers. The flowers should help you feel less manic, less homicidal. Relax. Bonsai is not a race.

 

[Clicio]

In my mind, the only reason to grow Bougainvillea is for the flowers. If you are removing flowers all the time, you should just switch to growing boxwoods or junipers.

Who are you in a race with? Let your trees bloom, at least once or twice a year. Enjoy the flowers. The flowers should help you feel less manic, less homicidal. Relax. Bonsai is not a race.

I couldn't agree more!

 

[Forsoothe!]

In my mind, the only reason to grow Bougainvillea is for the flowers. If you are removing flowers all the time, you should just switch to growing boxwoods or junipers.

Who are you in a race with? Let your trees bloom, at least once or twice a year. Enjoy the flowers. The flowers should help you feel less manic, less homicidal. Relax. Bonsai is not a race.

As a matter of fact I am locally known as a flower guy. I have lots of trees that bloom and I try grow almost anything that blooms nicely, failing more often than not because many species just don't take to bonsai pot culture well. But I'd rather have tried and failed than to wonder, what if... My own standards of bonsai keep me trying to make bonsai that flower instead of flowering potted plants. To each, their own.

 

[SU2]

I don't really understand this. Maybe I shouldn't have offered my experiences because the amount of growth I get overall is not like yours in FL. I get one or two flowering periods a year and they last about 6 to 8 weeks. They are not the same periods every year or for my different species (colors). I need to keep them at a given size, 12" to 15" or so.

As to the question that tip pruning robs growth from plants: Of course it does and that's why I, and I assumed, other people do it. The very last thing I want is "lots of growth". I need growth within the profile I have and anything that exceeds that profile has to come off anyway before it screws-up my design, so if I short-cut the growth habit and make it stay within bounds, that's what I do. And I do it even though at times that means I wind up with less flowers that desirable or even none! It has to stay in bounds, period. The length, taper, placement, etc., of wood can't change just because the tree grows. I choose where and how, and it has to be where and what I can use to maintain the general shape and size over years and years. If the tree is smaller, if I steal energy and flowers and whatever else, so be it. Florida people don't have those constraints, or at least not in my scale. I assumed everyone would understand my situation and the fairly small box I have to live within. Sorry for any misunderstanding or misdirection.

There's another difference in my practices verses other's growing practices: Whatever size a plant is when I acquire it, that's the size I keep it, forever, sort-of. They can grow slowly and in-scale over time, but never do I "let grow and chop". I apply the same kind of thinking to everything I grow: tip prune and force the plant to stay within a profile and if over time it gets "bigger" it does so all over and in-scale and is never allowed to stick out of the image in my mind's eye. They fill in, they fill out, they mature the design I intended in the first place. Lots of trees take ten years or more to make them pretty to me, but that's the way I proceed, right, wrong, or indifferent. There are other ways that other people do things and some may be better or faster or whatever, and that's fine for them. I'm happy with me doing it my way. No offense intended to others with other methods.

Heh, was 2/3rd of the paragraphs through and thinking my reply was "we're talking different phases of development though, that's the confusion/misalignment here" but then in your 3rd paragraph you come out saying as much -- your approach of "Whatever size a plant is when I acquire it, that's the size I keep it, forever" is antithetical/polar opposite to mine, wherein I'm getting larger materials (or propagating thick hardwood bougie limbs from big hedgerows) and growing monsters on/from the stock I collect.... You're getting material that's not wild/yamadori, and are keeping it in-bounds (which is as it should be for such a phase in a bonsai's life), just different phases-of-development is all!


But, I still have to assert the phenomena I'm quite sure I've noted (even though it has no real application to your bougies, of course) which is that the usual "yamadori development approach" of 'Let the branches run, hard-prune back, repeat 2-->5x to get your 'branch structure' before starting pivot to Hedge/Silhouette type prunes', it does not work optimally on Bougainvillea (like it does on Maple, BC, Ficus) for getting thick branches......I suspect it's Bougies' growth tendencies, being a shrub, but so long as you thwart the flowering inherent to doing it this way, silhouette/hedge pruning from early-on (like, after 1 or 2 grow-out & hard-prune sessions to get some basic structure) is a far quicker way to girthier, more ramified specimen. Letting bougie branches run does not give the same girth on the collar of the branch as most other species, they fatten&lengthen for a bit but then just lengthen lengthen lengthen w/o thickening (you could let it run far longer than that but no way that'd be efficient) Whereas w/ the bougies I did prune 'more than I shoulda' (doing silhouette work when i should've done grow-outs & hard-prunes) turned out to develop better over the past years!

 

[SU2]

@SU2 nice bald cypress. I have a similar one I got from Wigerts.

Thanks! Like your username, makes me wonder why you'd be buying BC's ;P Wigert is a madman though (in the best way) am eager to get a BRT from him sometime sooner than later! Will probably wait til summer next year to formally 'update' my BC's but think by 2022 I'll have closed some massive wounds

 

[SU2]

In my mind, the only reason to grow Bougainvillea is for the flowers. If you are removing flowers all the time, you should just switch to growing boxwoods or junipers.

Who are you in a race with? Let your trees bloom, at least once or twice a year. Enjoy the flowers. The flowers should help you feel less manic, less homicidal. Relax. Bonsai is not a race.

I agree about the flowers but there's flowers today and/or flowers tomorrow. In the same way I may sacrifice flowers on my hedges out front to ensure better structure of the hedge over time, so too do my best bougies get approached in a manner that'll get them to the finished product as quickly as possible....I don't seek to enjoy flowers on half-finished bougies, but to finish them then enjoy their flowers on their awesome, finished skeletons

This is certainly a subjective thing, to each their own -- I did mention earlier though, it's not that I don't have flowering bougies, I have nearer 150 trees in my backyard nursery, it'd be impossible to get them all, if you got the impression I'm not relaxed in this then it's a failing of communication as bonsai has almost become a retreat in life for me when I have the time for it (life/work has become pretty all encompassing the past years!)

(also, 1-2x/yr....my bougies would bloom 2-3x that if left untouched, even w/ my efforts it's a routine occurrence that i've got a flowering bougie that i didn't want flowering, but yeah the less-preferred 2/3rds of my bougies don't get the time/attention for flower removal until I notice that decaying flower cones are causing bug issues!)

~~~~~
PS/as-an-observation: I cannot help but see parallels between my type of developing bonsai, and that of how "mr olympia" bodybuilder types do their shows......heavy growth to facilitate a smaller % of desirable growth, optimally timed for shows etc......so, in such context, many of my bougies were "the kid just starting to bench press", they had no time to devote to worrying about bodyfat they needed calories/testosterone and steel for years, then you can cut weight and enjoy seeing the fruits of one's labors. I know there's various approaches to developing a tree but for my final designs, coming from the stock I begin with, requires lots of growth to work with and requires really radical interventions in the beginning years!

 

[luvinthemountains]

Speaking from the perspective of someone who does not live in Florida and has to keep my single shohin bougie inside under lights for most of the year, I suspect your theory still applies here, @SU2. Earlier this year, this one I have was just sitting unchanged showing little desire to push growth. Then, I hard pruned it in fall when it came inside, and it suddenly pushed out a TON of new growth. But it was long and spindly, and did nothing to bulk up the branches.

Over the past several years, I have built some decently-sized woody branches by repetitively and aggressively cutting back. I will count on that technique to rebuild new branches later. For now, I cut all of those branches off for a redesign. The apex will be grown out and chopped back again and again to build bulk. "Unrestrained" growth has done nothing to fix my taper problem. We will see.

Well, now I realize I have rambled, but there it is.

 

[Forsoothe!]

Heh, was 2/3rd of the paragraphs through and thinking my reply was "we're talking different phases of development though, that's the confusion/misalignment here" but then in your 3rd paragraph you come out saying as much -- your approach of "Whatever size a plant is when I acquire it, that's the size I keep it, forever" is antithetical/polar opposite to mine, wherein I'm getting larger materials (or propagating thick hardwood bougie limbs from big hedgerows) and growing monsters on/from the stock I collect.... You're getting material that's not wild/yamadori, and are keeping it in-bounds (which is as it should be for such a phase in a bonsai's life), just different phases-of-development is all!


But, I still have to assert the phenomena I'm quite sure I've noted (even though it has no real application to your bougies, of course) which is that the usual "yamadori development approach" of 'Let the branches run, hard-prune back, repeat 2-->5x to get your 'branch structure' before starting pivot to Hedge/Silhouette type prunes', it does not work optimally on Bougainvillea (like it does on Maple, BC, Ficus) for getting thick branches......I suspect it's Bougies' growth tendencies, being a shrub, but so long as you thwart the flowering inherent to doing it this way, silhouette/hedge pruning from early-on (like, after 1 or 2 grow-out & hard-prune sessions to get some basic structure) is a far quicker way to girthier, more ramified specimen. Letting bougie branches run does not give the same girth on the collar of the branch as most other species, they fatten&lengthen for a bit but then just lengthen lengthen lengthen w/o thickening (you could let it run far longer than that but no way that'd be efficient) Whereas w/ the bougies I did prune 'more than I shoulda' (doing silhouette work when i should've done grow-outs & hard-prunes) turned out to develop better over the past years!

I agree with all that and would only note that Boogies are vines and that's why they don't grow "in a tree shape". You can afford to throw away wood because you have the growth to give, I don't, and I have to conserve all the wood I can. I do that by not allowing any growth except where and how I want it. I couldn't grow big ones on a bet. If I can keep them alive, that's a victory!

 

[SU2]

Speaking from the perspective of someone who does not live in Florida and has to keep my single shohin bougie inside under lights for most of the year, I suspect your theory still applies here, @SU2. Earlier this year, this one I have was just sitting unchanged showing little desire to push growth. Then, I hard pruned it in fall when it came inside, and it suddenly pushed out a TON of new growth. But it was long and spindly, and did nothing to bulk up the branches.

Over the past several years, I have built some decently-sized woody branches by repetitively and aggressively cutting back. I will count on that technique to rebuild new branches later. For now, I cut all of those branches off for a redesign. The apex will be grown out and chopped back again and again to build bulk. "Unrestrained" growth has done nothing to fix my taper problem. We will see.

Well, now I realize I have rambled, but there it is.

Heck yeah am very glad to hear someone else noticing this! Has to be because of its normal growth patterns/morphology IE being a vine but yeah what a waste of time, trying to "grow out" long limbs on bougies I bet mine would be 50%+ further along if I'd caught onto this sooner! Live&learn