Cascading azalea advice

[Leo in N E Illinois]

You branches are thin enough that you don't have to use rafia. But do wire this year, each year they get more and more brittle. I'd wire after flowering or in autumn.

 

[Bonsailane]

Bart,, I think you will Find enjoyment out of your cascading Azalea ,
I found my azalea at a nursery that is going out of business last September .
it had been neglected for a long time .
It was already wanting to cascade but I wired it up to keep the branches from growing upwards .
I want to slowly reduce the root system over the next couple of years so I can get it into a traditional cascading pot .
And I really couldn't ask for better dead wood on a tree ..

 

[Bart99]

You branches are thin enough that you don't have to use rafia. But do wire this year, each year they get more and more brittle. I'd wire after flowering or in autumn.

Thanks Leo!

Here's what it looks like today. Damn those flowers are big!

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

Beautiful!!! Well done. Enjoy the flowers for a week or two, then cut them off. Cut them all off when more than half are past their prime. Doing so will signal the tree it's time for vegetative growth. You can at the same time thin excess from up top, and reduce numbers of branches to two at any given point. Then you can wire. A full day of fun, you can do all this in one sitting.

I like the color, vibrant.

 

[Bart99]

You will want to keep the same pattern on the cascading trunk as you would on an upright trunk, left-right-front-left-right-front, etc. You want a 3 dimensional arrangement of secondary branches.

Folks -
I started wiring last night and I quickly got stuck and I'm not sure what to do. I understand the "left-right-front" concept that Leo mentions in the quote but I'm having problems applying it to this tree.

The cascade and all the branches are basically going in the same direction and are all in the same plane, meaning that if I cut off the cascade I could lay it flat on the table and all of the branches would be touching the table. The entire cascade is in two dimensions and not three. The branches (nearly) all go down from the pot and away from the pot.

Every time I attempted to set a branch to the right or left it looked very unnatural to me.

The way I picture a tree like this in the wild is it is hanging over the edge of a steep and shady ravine and all the branches growing in the same direction towards the limited sunlight.

Is that "wrong"? Or is it just boring?

(Pictures and additional questions in the next post)

 

[Bart99]

Here's the entire tree and some close ups and my descriptions of the branches.

Branches 1 and 2 (almost) come off of the same point of the cascade. Actually branch 2 is directly connected to the cascade and branch 1 comes off of branch 2 very close to the cascade.

Branches 3, 5 and 6 all come off of the same node on the cascade.

Branch 4 is tiny and comes off the cascade just above the node of branches 3, 5 and 6.

5A and 6A are offshoots of "main" branches 5 and 6.












My questions are:

1. Which branches should be removed?
2. Which branches should be wired and which direction should they go?
3. Will wiring the branches in different directions make the tree look forced and unnatural?

Thanks!

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

Hey Bart,
My thought would be that in the branch group 3, 5 & 6 one needs to go, I would cut off 6, as 5 has a more noticeable change in direction, but you have the tree in front of you, it could work well if you cut off 5 and kept 6. At this stage it is young enough there is no right or wrong, and plenty of time to grow out. But you do have to start creating movement, because in a year or two these branches won't bend.

Just getting rid of one of the two, 5 or 6, will make wiring choices easier. You don't have many branches yet, but the plan is to get it growing well enough that it will start back budding.

So don't worry about the sequence, right left, front, because in time the number of branches between the lowest point and the rim of the pot should double or triple.

So wire # 4 to the direction it is ready headed, forward, and if you cut off #6, forward and to the viewer's left, and put a little wiggle into it. If you ended up cutting off #5, then #4 should come forward and to the right.

But wait, there's more.

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

Okay, your azalea looks healthy, but notice the number of leaves above the rim of the pot, looks to have more leaves than the cascade branch. If you want it to stay a cascade you have to be ruthless and prune off damn near all or most of the green above the rim. Prune every branch above the rim to no more than one or two leaves. Remove half of the above the rim branches completely. The azalea wants to grow up, and you need to re direct that energy down into the cascade branch. That is the tree trunk, the cascade. Next photo you post should have more leaves and branches on the cascading trunk, than above the rim. Actually if it were mine, I'd remove ALL the branches above the rim. The azalea will put out many back buds constantly on the trunk above the rim, after the cascade has been developed, you can easily add branches above the rim. Right now they are slowing growth of the cascade, so get rid of them for at least the next 2 years.

Don't worry

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

Now, once you have pruned off the excess stuff above the rim, and have gotten rid of one of the 5 & 6 pair, we'll look at #1 & 2. They are actually a single branch. They need to be wired to create one horizontal plane. I got to quit typing tonight, more later.

 

[Eric Group]

Here's the entire tree and some close ups and my descriptions of the branches.

Branches 1 and 2 (almost) come off of the same point of the cascade. Actually branch 2 is directly connected to the cascade and branch 1 comes off of branch 2 very close to the cascade.

Branches 3, 5 and 6 all come off of the same node on the cascade.

Branch 4 is tiny and comes off the cascade just above the node of branches 3, 5 and 6.

5A and 6A are offshoots of "main" branches 5 and 6.



View attachment 146146

View attachment 146147

View attachment 146149

View attachment 146153


My questions are:

1. Which branches should be removed?
2. Which branches should be wired and which direction should they go?
3. Will wiring the branches in different directions make the tree look forced and unnatural?

Thanks!

I think it is time to make some decisions on your own! This is the fun of styling a tree... you cannot "make a mistake". I understand the hesitancy when doing something for the first time, but this is how you learn.

Keep a few aesthetics in mind- try to position branches on the outside of curves when possible.
Cascade= cascading waterfall! Think of water flowing down an undulating rocky hillside!

A few horticultural things- the tight bends you can get in a Juniper or pine may not be possible with an azalea- they can be quite brittle and snap on you... so bend it slowly and a little at the time. Azaleas have thin bark that scratches easily, and heals wounds slowly (if at all), so try not to damage it too much, and I encourage you to avoid dead wood altogether. They have soft, spongy wood under that thin bark that rots away to dust pretty quick especially when wet.

Beyond that- this is not a school excercise where you have to do every thi right or you get a bad grade and final decisions are yours to make. Just do what looks good to you... this is a tiny little young trees that will change dramatically in the next 4-5 years. A perfect tree to learn on, but don't feel like any decision is final as they grow and change and so do you.

Honestly... this is not a good cascade candidate to my eye... you just found a wheepy small branch hanging off the side of an informal upright if you ask me. The top is where all the size and interest lies, but again- it is YOUR TREE, do with it what you like. I'd ask a few questions of people on a forum about technique and basic principals, but we cannot see it in 3D, you can. Go have some fun and show us what you came up with... people will chime in with their opinions and suggestions.

 

[Bart99]

Thanks so much for the continued great advice Leo!

Regarding the branches above the pot, believe it or not I already removed a bunch of them ( see the above picture with the blooms to see how much growth was there a couple weeks ago )

There are a couple branches above the pot that are very small but seem to be wanting to follow at the cascade down over the edge of the pot. Should I let them keep going to form additional cascades, or should there only be one cascade?

Thanks again for all of your tutorials!

 

[Bart99]

Thanks for your input Eric! I hear you, but every time I've tried to work on this , I get paralyzed and can't make a decision!

 

[hunter_02]

Thanks for your input Eric! I hear you, but every time I've tried to work on this , I get paralyzed and can't make a decision!

Hey Bart. How's your weed? I see you haven't posted about it in almost 2 years and I was just wondering.
I had to laugh when I read your post. I used to feel the same way, then about 35 years ago I ran into an older Japanese fellow that said to me, "Big man,( I'm 6'2" and weighed 255 at the time)pray that when your trimming your little friends that you screw up. Because what's going to happen is it's going to develop into something nicer and prettier than what you had in mind to begin with. That kind of takes the pressure off.
hunter

 

[Potawatomi13]

Is it time to start wiring?

Why no wire(2016)as advised?

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

Why no wire(2016)as advised?

At the time, the OP was brand new in bonsai, said they were uncertain of how to wire, and the tree was young enough, branches thin enough that there was plenty of time for the beginner to take Colin Lewis's free online course in wiring, practice on twigs and branches off landscape trees in the yard, and otherwise get some practice. Rather than insist they dive in with no experience and likely break branches like most of us do on azalea the first time we wire azalea. It did not need to happen immediately.

It would eventually need wire, but the owner of the tree needed to get a little experience on sometime more forgiving first.

That is why.