Pruning My Pink Pixie Bougainvillea Bonsai
Hi everyone nigel saunders here it is another rainy day today it’s uh supposed to clear up this afternoon so hopefully then i can get back to the repotting of my fujia forest you know who does like this weather are the ducks their beaks are all muddy they love digging in the mud hi guys you digging in the mud look how dirty they are hello hello until i get my eaves trough up there i’m just catching the water and barrels you don’t get a whole lot but i get some i’ve already emptied this once and the barrel over here or the garbage container this was full i emptied it into the plant room so i’ve got the barrel in there about two-thirds full which is really nice i was right down there right at the bottom of the barrel yeah so i can probably finish filling the one in the plant room and then i’ve also been dumping some in my my i b c container here so you can see i don’t know so much of a water level yet but it’s slowly going up which is good you can see in the back of the truck here all the maple flowers that fall down there’s only a few here but that’s what they look like there’s a cluster there yeah and they they fall down off these maple trees and they get all on the roof of the house and then it goes down washes down into the east trough and down into the barrel so you got to strain it all out and then they’re followed by keys and then there’s always branches falling off and yeah it’s quite something to keep your rain water clean i have no idea if the rain is going to stop this afternoon it is supposed to but in the meantime i’m going to go into the plant room and i’m going to get some pruning done uh my bougainvillea needed pruning badly do a bit of a bit of work in the plant room until the rain stops there’s a look at my water barrel so i’ve got quite a bit of water in it it’s up to here well i guess it’s i don’t know in between half and two-thirds full so that’s good i’ve got lots of water now yeah so i think i’ve got the light on the jade here the big jade i got from jock uh just to warm it up uh i don’t want it staying too wet down there the soil so i’m going to repot that into nice bone sized soil find a good pot for it yeah that’ll be uh i’ll be a fun project i may i have that pot that i had the uh capox in kapok trees in downstairs that kind of uh cream-colored pot that would look really good with this tree so i may get that out and plant the jade in that that’d be a good project for today but i’m going to start with the bougainvillea over here it is just growing like crazy i’ll see how the weather does if it clears up i may go outside and finish the cedar repotting that little force and my clump style cedars if it doesn’t i’ll continue working on in the plant room here repotting the jade maybe pruning the bougainvillea maybe my ficus here anything that needs uh some kind of work i’ll just uh work away at that my ficus here you can see the soil is quite dry and that happens overnight because i have the fan on in here it seems to circulate air around the room and things dry out fairly quickly in here so that’s good in this shallow pot you want your soil to dry out you know daily or not go fully dry but you want it to get on the dry side at the end of each day that way you can keep watering and fertilizing it so it always has good air in the soil fresh air and the right moisture level so when your soil begins to dry out it stimulates the roots to grow the root tips will grow searching for more moisture if you keep your soil damp all the time especially on a ficus the roots will just happily sit there and not grow and you won’t get a lot of growth on the top of your tree either so usually you know when your roots are actively growing so is the top of the tree and vice versa when the top of the tree is actively growing usually the roots are growing too i’ve got my pink pixie bougainvillea bonsai out on the turntable having a look at it there’s a lot of shoots that have grown up really tall they need pruning back and i may reduce the top of this really long branch i’ve been thinking about it for a long time and today might be the day that i cut it off and replace the branch leader with the one that’s more in a radial pattern and towards the back a bit it’ll also reduce the height of that branch a bit yeah i think it’ll improve the uh the styling of the tree my worry is that you know this is kind of a natural feature and it’s a bit unusual but i just don’t want to take it back so it looks too too planned you know with branches in perfect spots and everything in order i want it to have a natural feel to it also so that’s why i kind of always left that branch there but it is getting really thick and tall and i think it’s time to replace it with that one towards the back so that’ll be exciting i’m going to start today by pruning back all these new shoots pruning them back to a set of leaves closer to the origin of where they came from and i’ll be using directional pruning so i’m looking for leaves that face outwards and at the base of all those leaves is a dormant bud that will activate and grow new branches in that direction so i am looking looking for those outward facing leaves and pruning just above them so here i go that one comes off there this one and some of these may be pruned off when i do reduce this branch but this one can come off here and this one right here like that i have one coming out the front here listen to that wind outside and then there’s one up top here i can prune back to here like that there’s a large one out this side or a long one that i’ll prune back to here like that one up here i can prune it back to here this is just regular maintenance pruning the shoots you know you want to let them grow long enough that they get about i don’t know six to ten leaves on them maybe more depending how much you want it to gain vigor but you want to get them so they’re you know the trees nice and bushy and leafy before you prune it back that keeps your tree strong if you’re always pruning it back it gets weak it needs a period of growth to get all that energy back into the root system it’s going to get quite cold in the next few days we even have a low of minus six degrees celsius coming up it’s getting pretty cool and it could even snow tonight we haven’t had snow in a long time but it’s possible tonight [Music] that’s why you got to enjoy those good days when they come because they may disappear fast all right now we’re getting down there i’ve just got that one out the back here i can come off right here and is that it i think that’s got it pruned up pretty nicely let’s have a look at it from the front now there’s a look at the tree from the front so this is the branch i was going to reduce back and i’ll show you what my plan is so i rotate it around this way we’ll be able to see up and i’ll show you what i’m going to prune here’s a shot looking up at that branch so you can see the branch comes up and then it comes forward with this quite thick section here and then towards the back i have a split here and i have some thinner branches so my plan was to remove this entire thick section off here it’ll leave a bit of a scar there but you know the earlier i do it the less of a scar i’ll get and the quicker it’ll heal the scars out front so it’s just one of those things you have to do i mean i have a scar at the back of the trunk here that isn’t fully healed and that’s after many many years so yeah it’s just part of the character of the tree having pruning marks on them so let’s get to it let’s get that side of the branch pruned off all right well you’re looking at the front view and i’m looking at more of a side view here so you’ll see what this looks like before me so here i go i’m coming in with the pruners and i will try and root this part i’m cutting off as a cutting all right i think that’s good here i go one two three it’s off oh my goodness that was a big cut so there’s there’s the cutting i have you can see it’s a good little woody cutting i haven’t looked at the front of the tree yet so i don’t know what it looks like let’s do that now i’m coming around front i’m having a look at the tree from the front now it didn’t really change the overall shape much because this branch is quite high still i may have to do some pruning on that one to get it kind of reduced in height so it’s not reaching up so far yeah it definitely gets more taper in that branch which is nice gives it a bit more character that branch and yeah that’s a pretty ugly scar on the front but i think that’ll blend in fairly quickly all right i’ll try pruning that branch up now here’s a look at the pruning scar right here i’m going to try cleaning it up a bit just so it heals over nicely i’ll have to come in from above here take a little bit off that’s pretty good there i think that’ll heal over quite well now i want to look at reducing the height of this a bit it has a lot of shoots going vertical on it so i may be able to do some more pruning on that branch well i have a nice shoot coming out horizontally here which is a nice shoot it wasn’t getting much light because the top was so vigorous but i think that’s a good branch to develop and i think i want to take there’s a vertical one coming up here that would be a good one to remove or at least reduce back at the moment um i want the vigor going into this little branch here i don’t want it you know growing all these uprights here so i’m going to i’m going to take it right off i i uh yeah i’m just going to do it i’m going to take that right off i’ll show you a close-up here’s a look at that branch so i was going to remove this whole upright section from here all the way up so here i go just gotta come in here at the right point i think right about here off it goes like that at the back of that same branch i have another division here and someday you know this part may replace this entire section as if it gets too thick but it’s nice to have a division back there so i can grow this branch out in this direction and this other one coming forward i’m going to finish pruning up my side branch now taking a bit of the height off of it like that so that’s got that branch pruned down quite a bit now i’m just going to trim this just going to trim it up here clean up that cut a bit like that oh that’s nice perfect yeah that’s quite a quite a severe cutting on this branch but it looks really good it’s going to heal nicely it’s got nice movement and taper and a good direction coming out this way and it’s going to divide and fill out these sections i think it’s a good step forward for the tree i’ll give the moss a bit of a misting just a little dry on the surface here [Music] with my fresh rain water that i just collected very exciting to get that my barrel filled up again the tree looks a little unbalanced at the moment these branches here and here will fill in eventually i get more ramification and leaf density and it’ll look a little more balanced but that’ll come in the future i’ll rotate the tree around now so you can see it from all angles so here’s the front and we’re coming around to the right hand view coming around to the back now coming around to the left view and back to the good old front here’s a look at the cutting room floor i took a fair amount off for such a small tree my bougainvillea did flower last night it was really beautiful there’s another bud coming up here that should be out in the next few days i’ll see if i can get a shot of that when it comes out in the last video i gave a tour of all the tropical trees in the plant room and i forgot to mention that i still have some tropical trees down here in the basement so let’s do a tour of those now all right let’s start the tour i’ll start with my lemon tree here it’s wanting to grow there’s new shoots coming out when the days get warmer but it’s too cool down here for any growth so it’s just kind of dormant i’ve got my aloe here doing really well it’s growing even in these temperatures there’s a little pup coming out the side here these are my succulent vines i guess they’re from mexico and they’re looking good down here they’re staying dormant and they’re still alive that’s good here’s my mimosa it wants to grow too you can see there’s a few green leaves on the tip here but it’s just not warm enough so once i bring that upstairs into the warmth it’ll start to grow here’s my orange tree i brought it down here just because i had no room upstairs i ran out of room in my plant room so it’s uh just chilling down here looking good it did have a flush of new growth but yeah i just didn’t have room for it over here is my yucca forest and they spent the whole winter down here and they’re still looking really good i don’t think there’s any problems with them i did have that one aerial route i don’t know if you can see it there right in here there’s an aerial route growing off the tree yeah so they’re looking good they’re really getting very mature bases on them i really like them as bonsai and over here is my ponytail palm and again that’s uh being down here in the basement the whole winter it’s looking pretty cool liking it there’s my doorway on it i’ve got to commit to this doorway i’ve either got to let it heal and close that wound up or you know carve it out you can see how it’s getting smaller now so i don’t know what i’ll do it’s kind of a cool feature i was going to put that skeleton fellow inside it that pirate like he was in a prison and died in there over here i’ve got another one of these mexican succulents vines that was my original one the ruster cuttings it’s doing all right and then i’ve got my guava seedlings here and they look like they’re doing all right too i don’t know uh i’ll see i’ll bring them up into the warmth and see if they come back to life they may not it maybe it’s too cool down here over on the bench over here i have my pomelo seedlings i don’t have my led light on that was a gift from a viewer really nice i don’t have it on at the moment but uh they’re doing really well these pomelos and they’ve been down here in the basement the whole winter chilling uh my geranium it’s been in the basement the whole winter and it’s it grows on the warmer days down here when it gets up to well right now it’s 11.9 degrees celsius which is fairly warm for the basement and yeah it grows in the warmer weather and then it goes dormant when it starts getting down to like five or six degrees celsius and then over here i have my natal plums and they look okay they’ve been chilling down here in the basement the whole winter they’re still nice and green and and again they try and grow when it warms up down here but most of the time it’s just too cool so that is it for the tropicals if you haven’t seen a tropical in yesterday’s video or today’s then it probably isn’t alive unfortunately because that’s all i’ve got it’s still cloudy and rainy outside so i’ll have to leave the repotting of my cedar clump style for another day and that’s all for today i’m nigel saunders thanks for joining me in the bonsai zone [Music]
