Managing Growth on 6mo old [collected] BC's

[SU2]

I collected these two beautiful trees (one's ~1.5' tall, the other ~4' tall) while they were dormant and they bushed-out quite well, unfortunately I was having trouble w/ this bushy-ness as I was getting excellent roots/growth so figured it would be smarter to have half as many shoots, that get twice as many resources (thankfully BC's are the type of tree where the cambial flow isn't branch-specific, ie all the roots feed all the tree in contrast to other species wherein certain roots are 'tied to' certain parts of the canopy)

I began removing shoots slowly and have probably removed half of them by now, but still can't help thinking that, now that I've got good strong root-masses + such vigorous growth, that I should continue doing this, up to the point where I've just got my chosen primaries (with, perhaps, a handful of sacrifice branches intentionally left on....am glad to have removed what I've removed already, as they leave ugly marks on the beautiful trunk so want to reduce that as well as not growing-out branches that will be cut-off later if it's not for a reason, the only reason could be growing roots but the roots are strong enough at this point)

In trying to get info myself I ran across @Zach Smith 's page here where it seems he's done exactly what I'm describing, that pictured tree is 5-6mo old / collected that year and, at that time in June (his climate is very similar to mine), it looks like he's removed all the branches except for 5 that he's keeping - am I reading/interpreting that page correctly? If so then I'd think I was behind on my redundant-branch-removal process! I just wanted to chime-in here before going and removing any more than I've already done, I suspect that it's the right thing to do (so long as it's done slowly while gaging that the tree is still growing vigorously after removing any shoots) but wanted to hear you guys'&gals' thoughts!

For reference, these guys are both destined for flat-top styling, the one in the smaller oil-pan recently got slip-potted into another oil-pan to almost-double the container volume, I've secured the top leader on the small one to go upward because that'll need to grow taller / get cut-back for sure, however on the 4' tall one I think I may be able to create a great flat-top-BC just ~8-10" above the trunk height t w/o needing to grow a vertical leader / cut it back like normal on BC's, by simply training the top leaders very strongly sideways! [edited: for the tall one, am envisioning two main top-primaries just like in the pic on zach's page I linked, one of them is already branching-out really strong and getting close to where wiring/manipulation will be riskier!]




One thing that confuses me a bit about the progress-pics in the link above to Zack's BC is the lack of girth on the kept-branches, if the extra branches were removed wouldn't they have fattened-up much quicker? It's hard to tell by pics of course but am pretty sure my tall BC has a top primary that's thicker than the ones on Zack's page despite mine having had so many extra branches that were taking resources - all I can come-up with is that, were they removed too quickly, the growth-spurt could've been slowed down, something I've noticed in all trees ie drastic cuttings completely slowing growth-rates which is why I've just been removing a branch at a time on my BC's, here & there, just removing the least-wanted branches and watching its response, being sure it's still vigorous (am measuring branch-length to be sure!)

 

[Zach Smith]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean when you mention lack of girth on the kept branches, but here are the basic facts on branch and leader develop in BC:

1. Branches vary in strength from top to bottom, strongest at the top.
2. Overall branch strength is distributed among all branches, while keeping with the principle that strength declines from top to bottom.
3. By removing all branches except those needed for your design, you encourage the tree to redistribute strength where you want it. The tree will fight back by pushing buds all over the trunk (this goes on for years), which you need to remove to focus the strength where you want it.
4. Lower branches take years to fatten up the way you want them to. In the meantime, you have to keep the growth in the crown of the tree under control as it will do its best to get out of hand. Once you have a good shape in your lower branches, you can speed up their fattening by not trimming them while you continue to control the crown.

That's all I can think of for now.

 

[SU2]

Thanks for the prompt & thorough reply man, very appreciated

I'm not sure I understand what you mean when you mention lack of girth on the kept branches,

I meant that, if there's less branches, I'd expect them to grow fatter (ie, if you had two clones of the same BC, and you let one grow 20 shoots while the other grew only 10, I'd expect those 10 to be much thicker....not twice as thick since surely there's more to be gained by more 'solar panels' but to some degree the removal of unwanted branches should mean more resources for those that are kept, no?)

1. Branches vary in strength from top to bottom, strongest at the top.

For sure, each of my vigorous BC's has clearly chosen 1 of its top branches to be a leader and those branches are almost twice as thick as the ones around it, very very apically-dominant! If I'm going for a flat-top style, should I still leave my trees as the bushes they are in the pics of my first post? I guess I'm starting to think that a majority of those middle branches should be removed, that they're not boosting the health of anything except themselves and are doing so at the expense of what I will be keeping (as well as making more, larger scar-marks when they are eventually removed- I've been removing obviously-unnecessary branches slowly and they're still small but the marks left are obvious, will certainly take a season just to hide them..)

Overall branch strength is distributed among all branches, while keeping with the principle that strength declines from top to bottom.

3. By removing all branches except those needed for your design, you encourage the tree to redistribute strength where you want it. The tree will fight back by pushing buds all over the trunk (this goes on for years), which you need to remove to focus the strength where you want it.

Okay this is what I was trying to be sure about- if I kept them as 'christmas trees'/bushes then I'd be wasting resources on branches that'll be removed later, this was useful/necessary in the first 6mo while they filled their containers w/ roots but now that they're further along and I'm slowly cutting-off redundant branches it seems I'm getting better growth from the remaining ones and that's why I'm here- I look at my trees, then I look at your article, and your tree has just a handful of branches at ~this time of year (in its first year) and I can't help but think I'm WAY behind in branch-removal!! If they were yours, and you were going for (generally) what you're going for w/ the tree in your post I'd linked, how fast would you work towards getting down to just your primaries? I'd been doing it slowly but I did a harder round (removed easily 10% foliage) recently and I got a handful of brown-tips (literally a millimeter or two, and only on the side of the tree getting the most light, think it's just-shy of what it wanted for transpiration- this browning happened the day after the cut and never got worse, that was about a week ago)

Part of me is thinking to do a pretty heavy cutting session and put them in partial-shade for a week, then gradually introduce to full-sun again; the other part of me thinks to just keep removing shoots at a constant rate, would you advise that way? I like the idea of being able to gage the tree as I'm doing it, so if I remove 2 shoots every few days I can make sure it's still growing vigorously everywhere else, seems it'd have the added benefit of really letting me see what branches are best to be retained- the peril is that the longer the unnecessary branches remain, the bigger scars I'll have & the more resources wasted!

Hope your growing-season is going well man, happy gardening!!

(Oh! On a funny/random note, the bc-with-a-knee that, after 3mo, put out 2 little shoots, has spent *weeks* growing those shoots slowly&steadily to about 2" apiece, it's the weirdest back-budding behavior I've ever seen in a collected tree in my entire time in bonsai!! Just keep hoping something pops higher-up, the 2 lil shoots are on the buttressing of this monster BC! The BC hardwood cutting I made is also still growing slowly but surely, it's growing so slow I'm not sure how it's still going but it is!)

 

[Zach Smith]

Try not to overthink the process. If your trunk is what you want it to be thickness-wise, then once you have a full flush of branches go ahead and select the ones you want and do the initial styling. Don't worry about strength distribution right now. In your second round of growth it will be more than obvious where the strength is and which branches need to be cooled off by pinching or pruning. In the meantime, new buds are going to pop so you need to remove any you don't want (which should be almost all of them, unless you find you need another branch somewhere). KISS, man, KISS.

 

[SU2]

Try not to overthink the process. If your trunk is what you want it to be thickness-wise, then once you have a full flush of branches go ahead and select the ones you want and do the initial styling. Don't worry about strength distribution right now. In your second round of growth it will be more than obvious where the strength is and which branches need to be cooled off by pinching or pruning. In the meantime, new buds are going to pop so you need to remove any you don't want (which should be almost all of them, unless you find you need another branch somewhere). KISS, man, KISS.

Thanks, I just wanted to be sure that what I do isn't overly-aggressive! I've removed some more but just to be clear I'm now planning to go and remove a seriously larger amount, leaving me with maybe 4-7 of my strongest branches - I'd imagine it's fair to say that I've messed-up by waiting so long to do this, right? If I could go back I certainly would've been removing the weaker branches at a quicker rate!

Really love this species these are great trees, can't wait til next collecting-season starts!!

 

[Zach Smith]

It's no problem to edit branches now. I'll be into BC summer defoliation soon, and this is followed by a last strong round of growth for the season. Note: I don't defoliate BC in their first season out of the ground.

 

[SU2]

It's no problem to edit branches now. I'll be into BC summer defoliation soon, and this is followed by a last strong round of growth for the season. Note: I don't defoliate BC in their first season out of the ground.

Awesomeness thanks!!! Will you be blogging about it? Will keep my eyes open! And thanks for mentioning that (re not defoliating in the first year), I wouldn't have done so w/o knowing it was OK but your mentioning it would've sent me to google if you hadn't noted that Going to bring them each to ~6-7 branches today so I can be sure of the last couple I want to remove, already have a pretty good idea of which are going to be next year's branches though so should be straight-forward!!

 

[Zach Smith]

Yes, I expect to do a short video showing the technique and will post to my blog. Either this coming weekend or the next.

 

[SU2]

SWEET!! Thanks in general for all you do, truly a credit to the hobby man! Can't wait to see

 

[Cable]

This is the thread I’ve been looking for! I don’t know a whole lot about BC but I have one I’m pretty happy with the trunk thickness. Wasn’t sure whether I should start removing branches now or wait until they thickened a bit. Now I’m thinking it is the right time.

 

[Cable]

One thing I need to decide is how tall. I had originally planned to cut it down to 24” but I’m kinda liking it at its current 36”.

 

[SU2]

One thing I need to decide is how tall. I had originally planned to cut it down to 24” but I’m kinda liking it at its current 36”.

View attachment 197579

Whoa why are your branches all so short? Have you just been pinching and pinching? I was removing branches from mine yesterday and realizing 'crap, you haven't pruned once'....my top primaries are long & thick with several sets of secondary branches, am unsure if I should be pruning back to the first two sets of branches on all my primaries now (am thinking I probably should be, hesitant to go do it now as w/ my luck it'd be the wrong move ;p )

Re height, that looks taller than 36"...but in any case it does look especially tall IMO. Is the middle aerial root of that cluster alive? I can't tell if it's going into the dirt or just terminating right above it, those are the types of roots that I think can look good but would need a considerable amount of development/time to achieve that- thankfully they're real fast growers!

 

[Cable]

When I got this all of the woody branches were at the top. I pruned them off and then all the green branches dropped over the winter.

Yes, that root is alive. I like it but nobody else does. lol.