Spruce/Picea Abies

[barrosinc]

Similar timing as Scots and mugo. After candles unfurl into shoots and before they set buds. Here the time is approximately between July 4 and August 15.
I always feed heavily.

Thanks!!

 

[M. Frary]

Thanks!!

I don't know the dates for South America but you can figure that one out Max.

 

[Tycoss]

View attachment 80651 I pluck all the new growth in half while it is still tender enough to easily pull and have it snap in two. Generally waiting for new buds to extend an inch or more. If you do it early enough, all of the new buds will grow on old wood. If you wait for new growth to get harder, and cut the new growth in half, the buds will form mostly on the new portion you didn't cut off.

You've done the right thing, thinning out the canopy. Light is your friend in getting things to bud back.

The first pick is a birds nest spruce where nothing has been done to it. Just the natural growth that has now begun to produce buds for next years. Very limited new buds back toward the trunk.

The next two pick show the new buds forming on old wood and non forming on what I plucked earlier this spring. At the end of the growing season I go on and cut all of the bud less tips off.

The fourth pic shows the density of the pad being formed after numerous years of plucking.
View attachment 80646View attachment 80648View attachment 80649View attachment 80650

Great explanation of how to promote back budding in spruce. The images are very helpful. I actually live in Alberta, and have only seen a wild "alberta spruce" once. It is mostly a domestic cultvar. I find the typical wild pieca glauca here much more desirable for bonsai. They backbud far easier and develop flaky bark much earlier. In fact, I blame nursery "Alberta spruce" for scaring a lot of potential bonsai artists away from p glauca and spruce in general. Line your trees though fourteener, they appear both natural and refined.

 

[Tycoss]

I agree too that Alberta spruce want to grow upward with dense foliage near the tips. These will probably need to be thinned often, since they almost "want" to look like a topiary. It you want the stereotypical "conifer" shape with horozontal or drooping branches with foliage budding further back on the branches, regular p. Glauca, p. Pungens, and p. Englemanni are all much better North American species. Ironically, here in southern Alberta, Alberta spruce has a poor reputation as a landscape plant, since it doesn't handle wind, drought or extreme cold as well as standard Picea Glauca or Picea Pungens (Colorado spruce). Despite all that your tree looks bitchin!

 

[M. Frary]

Don't fool with Alberta spruce.
Get the real ones.

 

[BobbyLane]

This tree is no longer with me, i'd sold it on within a few weeks of buying it, ended up being too wide and big for my balcony. the thread has some good info for Spruce owners, so feel free to use it for discussion folks

 

[parhamr]

Here's my new Norway spruce. It's a dwarf 'Elegans' cultivar of Picea abies:



This is after major branch selection pruning. The tree wants to be a twin trunk and I'm tempted to make it a flat top style. For now, however, it needs to recover.

 

[Tycoss]

It sure looks stout. I'd like to see it rotated a few degrees to the left. Looks like the bark has good texture too.

 

[parhamr]

@Tycoss alternate angle:



Yes, it's stout!

 

[Tycoss]

Actually like the first angle better now that I see both. Makes the slight inverse taper near the base less obvious, and puts the interesting branch further forward. I like it. Very unconventional for a spruce, but i think the genus is more versatile than many people understand. I'm interested to see where it goes.

 

[parhamr]

This is my first spruce, so I'm mostly getting a feel for the genus. I expect to grow out the tree enough to solve the inverse taper. I'll be watching for opportunity to make a single-trunk informal upright, but I haven't yet tried any flat top trees, so that's most of my draw to the current form.

 

[just.wing.it]

I too have jumped into the spruce world this year....
Picea Abies.

 

[BobbyLane]

Here's my new Norway spruce. It's a dwarf 'Elegans' cultivar of Picea abies:

View attachment 123089

This is after major branch selection pruning. The tree wants to be a twin trunk and I'm tempted to make it a flat top style. For now, however, it needs to recover.

if you choose this as a front, id be looking to reduce and make a dead wood feature out of the left apex, from here...the right trunk looks to be the most interesting with a nice taper and shape...you wont get a real spruce feel unless you reduce one of those...

seen this

as he says, common for one of the those trunks to be dead in the wild.

 

[parhamr]

@BobbyLane thanks! Yes, that is an option I am leaving in reservation to consider.

 

[BobbyLane]

Im going to follow on with this thread, i do love Spruce trees and all the natter has given me the bug again, i'd love a European larch but a little tricky to source atm and i dont want to pay a lot for one.
this new Spruce was £20.., from a bare root nursery, they had so many and the root balls are all wrapped, so it was a bit tricky to see which ones had decent nebari. ive been assured that what they had are Picea abies, Norway spruce, i wanted to make certain or wouldnt have bothered picking this up. but they seem to know their stuff and they had Picea pungens and picea glauca in the nursery also. this one looks a little different to the first spruce i started the thread with, which i now know was not picea abies at all...

2016-11-15_04-59-58 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr

Chopped down from a much taller tree
2016-11-15_05-00-16 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr
2016-11-15_05-00-26 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr

The tree has quite a powerful base, but its this branch on the low left which helped me make the decision, it has good, natural movement...i can see a candelabra style from this angle, think there are one or two options, to keep only the left branch and wire up as a leader or keep both....
2016-11-15_05-00-38 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr

there are quite a few side shoots coming from both branches, one of the things i look for now when buying raw material is are there enough branches with which to make a decent image, i want to see, a good base, decent nebari, subtle movement and low branches are just the icing on the cake, there is also a little muscle in the base and the tree as a whole has slight taper, but i plan on making it stout and powerful, i think i can do something quite interesting with it, we shall see..
it doesnt have the gnarled bark of a yamadori spruce, but hey you can't have it all

 

[BobbyLane]

First stage
IMG_3002 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr

These two branches will be wired up as leaders and the main trunk hollowed out
IMG_3005 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr
IMG_3006 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr
IMG_3007 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr
IMG_3009 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr
IMG_3010 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr
IMG_3011 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr

IMG_3012 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr
IMG_3013 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr
IMG_3016 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr

Im using the tree in this vid for inspiration and this is the path im following....candelabra style, main trunk dead and two branches growing up to form leaders, all similar heights as if competing to be the dominant apex..

 

[Tycoss]

I really do like the trunk base on that. There are Picea abies around here at nurseries, I'll have to give one a try. The wild Picea glauca here are usually very tall thin things with very little taper. I have one Picea glauca that started down the path to candelabra style in the wild. It is in other threads. Great bark, but nowhere near ready to style yet. I love the thick spire of deadwood on this. Hope it survives all that work.

 

[BobbyLane]

Hi @tycos, yes i completely agree, a lot of work has been done, ill see how or if it recovers, i enjoyed working on it, hopefully i can enjoy it even more in the future, i think it has potential .
I didnt wire some of the weaker branches just yet, ive removed some superfluous roots to see more of the base, the two big main roots that go deep into the soil, are the ones feeding these two branches, i can tell by the muscular veins going up the front of the trunk, i believe this part of the tree is very strong, i think even if one of these apex's died off, i could make a credible image with just one apex. i'd be shocked if they both didnt make it!

IMG_3042 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr

IMG_3038 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr

IMG_3037 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr

IMG_3027 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr

IMG_3025 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr

IMG_3024 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr

I quite like the angle with the deadwood at the front, although it could be said its a bit too much in the face? i think both angles work, seeing the deadwood partly obscured through branches adds a little mystique from the other angle.

 

[Cee]

Nice

 

[barrosinc]

I think I would keep only one trunk.
It looks to symmetric.
And it would still have the same concept of WP tree.