5 Bonsai Pruning Tips for Beginners
There are two very important points to consider when you’re about to prune a bonsai this video i’ve got some tips to help even a raw beginner gain the confidence to prune their bonsai for the first or second time if you’ve got a bonsai tree that’s starting to look a bit hairy you know you need to prune it but you don’t know where to begin stay tuned because i’ve got several tips that are really going to help make the pruning decisions that you need to make to wind up with a cool healthy tree the first tip is to choose the best front of the tree so that you’ve always got somewhere to orient yourself in order to make tricky pruning decisions just that little bit easier when choosing the front of the tree the main things to consider are the base the line and any features such as interesting dead wood or nice rough aged bark things like that but try not to overthink it just go with what your instincts tell you you’ve got plenty of time to learn bonsai aesthetics for now let’s just concentrate on picking a front so you can get on with doing the first pruning and gain some confidence really also a majority of the viewers of my channel aren’t subscribed yet so if you end up finding this video useful consider subscribing it’s free and you can always change your mind later the next tip is to spend some time looking at your tree just to see what stuff you like what bits you don’t like and what kind of feel the tree has so for instance on this particular tree we’ve got quite a lot of changes of direction through the trunk it’s not particularly massively thick it’s reasonably narrow and tapers slowly rather than being like a big wide base and a strongly tapering pyramid there are a couple of areas without any strong branches in and also a couple of areas with lots of strong branches the height of the tree is a bit too tall at the moment tool wise the main thing that i’m going to be using today are bone size shears and a bonsai branch cutter if you don’t want to invest in bonsai tools just yet you can get by just fine using some sharp scissors from around the house and or a pair of ordinary garden secateurs there are two very important points to consider when you’re about to prune a bonsai the first is what do i need to cut off completely and then the second is how far back do i need to cut the branches that i keep to make this process easier we often break it down into two distinct steps the first step which we call the cleaning phase involves going through the tree and looking for any really obvious bits of growth or unwanted branches that we can cut off with very little thought that way we can whiz through the tree remove a lot of the clutter that we just absolutely know we’re never going to use that’s going to make it a lot easier to gain clarity on what we want to keep and then further help us to decide how far back to cut the stuff that we do want to keep so during the cleaning phase we’re going to remove any branches that are really weak and just don’t have any use maybe because there are other branches nearby that are stronger we will cut any divisions of three back to twos which is going to give us a much cleaner structure and generally any weaker bits that are growing on the interior or from crotches that we don’t need because there’s other stuff nearby to use during this cleaning phase it’s it’s important that i’m leaving myself with plenty of options while making the choices later on that bit easier because the obvious stuff is gone this stage is all about removing what i definitely don’t need and cleaning out those lines at this junction we’ve got multiple all coming from the same spot some are thicker some are thinner essentially we’ve got one two three four five six branches all coming from the same spot i can’t leave them all but until i know exactly what i do want to use i’ve got to leave plenty of options that i can make that decision later and how i choose to proceed with this branch is going to depend on the choices that i make are all around the tree in the other areas and how that impacts the design and because i don’t know what i’m doing in the other areas yet i can’t make the decision here so i’ll give myself plenty of options a little bit of discipline is required in this phase not to go too mad and cut everything off and strip yourself of all the choices in the next step when we come to actually make the hard decisions now we’ve got the cleaning out the way it’s time to actually impart a little bit of style into the choices that we’re making now one of my observations about this trunk is that it’s slow to taper and it’s got some nice movement to it so i really want to carry that theme through to the branches and i want longer flowing branches if the tree was tapering to a point and was much stronger and firmly planted in the pot then i’d probably look to create shorter stubbier branches but because we’ve got this nice line i want to try and emphasize that with the branches the last decision that i’ve got left to make on this particular branch is what length to cut this back to now i notice i’ve got quite an ugly bulge here that doesn’t look very attractive so it’s quite easy for me to just come in and cut back that brings me really nicely to the next tip which is to try and take into account how the tree looks in all three dimensions so although we pick a front from which to drive our decision making process we don’t want to end up with a tree that’s completely flat and has no depth and that’s why i want to keep this branch on the tree because i can use it to create depth as it comes out to the background and so just to make a couple of decisions on this particular branch we’ve got a dead stub on the tip there got a really tiny wispy piece on the inside that i don’t want we go right left right left i’ll probably use some wire to move it in this direction so i am going to just knock this piece off as well this small wheat branch and this small branch i’m not sure if i’m going to use them in the design but they’re too small and weak to prune if i’m going to use them they need to get stronger and to do that they just need to be left to grow so i won’t cuss anything off these two another little pruning tip that’s quite specific to alms on the inside here you can see there’s some very tiny buds and they’re not reliable on elms so when i prune back these finer pieces i’m going to go i’m going to ignore those even that tiny one there i’m going to ignore i’m going to say one two and i cut back to that second bud and then later on in the year we’ll come back and look what has developed and what hasn’t and if necessary prune back to two here and here’s my next tip with this branch coming back towards the trunk i’d quite like to move it out in that direction and we’ve got this piece that’s continuing towards the trunk and this small piece is in much better position to start moving away from the trunk so i’m going to use a technique called directional pruning to correct that directional pruning is simply cutting back to a bud or a branch that’s heading in the most favorable direction which is this piece in this example now that we’re in the upper reaches that brings me to my final tip for pruning your bonsai and that is when you need to strengthen the lower branches it’s important to cut back the upper branches harder so that they’re shorter than the lower branches are because the upper reaches of the tree are stronger than the lower the tree sends more energy there in pursuit of that sunlight so you have to cut it back further to give the lower branches chance to strengthen and catch up and develop at the same rate that the upper branches do so the tip is cut the upper branches back a bit harder than you think when you’re developing the lower branches now i’m definitely developing these lower branches they’re nowhere near what i’d like them to be so that’s what i’m going to be doing today let’s just cut back to a couple of buds on these pieces as well up here it’s important to prune even the finer pieces otherwise they’ll just absolutely rock it off in the spring leaving the branches down below behind if you found this video helpful or if you’re looking at this tree and thinking what is this dude doing to this poor tree all i can say is hit the subscribe button and i’ll be doing updates through the summer of this tree and you’ll see it build and develop and look much more beautiful than it does now this is part of building deciduous bonsai but hopefully you can see that with just a few little tips a few guiding principles to drive your decision process actually pruning your bonsai for the first or second time it’s not actually that scary i’m not going to say it’s easy it’s definitely not easy it’s decision after decision after decision but you can do it you’ve got this if i can anybody can
