Another look at a Fine Bonsai Chinese Elm
What we got here is a chinese elm it’s looking real good today is the middle of march and what we need to do to keep this the way it is uh we’re going to prune it heavier so that it’ll look like this as as we get to the growing season only uh they come in and do the work themselves but uh he wanted some help so i have this for a few days hopefully that i can get this work for him done it’s pretty nice so the goal today is to make it so that this will stay like this so the technique that i’ll be using today is for maintaining uh what we have so we’re going to prune a little bit heavier necessary so when it starts to grow it comes back looking like this so anyway you will be a little bit harsher than we normally do but it’s for a very special season so this is pre-growth season so you could see that this is just beginning to butt out anyway here we go i guess we could start here and then well there’s two branches running parallel this is the main and this is the secondary one so we’ll get rid of something like this and then right here it forks off so do we go this way or this way so in relation to the front i think it will look better if we went this way and see how it’s starting to dip down so if you save that then you have this branch going in the direction you want without having to apply the string or wire okay on the same branch we still have going this way this is the main this is the secondary so we gotta cut it at least to here actually it might even be better there but i like to go with when there’s uh existing uh sub branch um let’s see okay now we’re up on top i think it’s going to start to get too big but there’s a branch down here so i’m going to take this off and then around here i’m gonna take the big ones off and make it smaller and here we have i think this small one and the big one so i’ll take the big one off now this is towards the apex where everything needs to stay proportional right we don’t want any big branches up on top they belong down below branch but we don’t want to keep getting too much longer so i think i’ll cut it off here like this and then this one here don’t need to be so long so i’ll cut this and let this little one do the work now and see you notice that on a lot of these i’m cutting off the big and saving the smaller right that gives us a little bit better sense of taper actually this one looks like it might be better if i just cut it off here go that way because this is the front and it’s coming forward too far so i’ll show cut again okay so i’ll move towards the other branches okay now this one here i’m gonna cut this bigger one off and then shorten this up shorten this and then try to save that once again trying to get it to dip down rather than keep coming up so there’s a right here there’s a branch that going flatish or slightly dipping and one going up so if you take that off then it’ll stay where you want it to be this one right here that’s the front and i think you’ll come off better here and okay see this one we’ll probably look for a branch that’s going that way so we could get a better angle so a lot of this will get done as we let it grow back right okay we got the front we got this one and this one all in the same area do we keep both well we should take one off uh but which one now if this is the front this one coming forward so i think we should actually take this side off or not or maybe i should go like this and then kind of fill that space in see these are all the decisions you have to make and i’m going to take this off any mistake will only last a couple months actually eventually all of it will come off but i i saw this area that maybe could use a little bit of green so i left that for now and then took that one off okay this area i think this one is much too long it’s too strong so i took that off and then do something like that and then i think having it long is okay but kind of busy so i’ll start to open it up some and a lot of these bigger ones take off and then try to keep this taper going the lower part i tend to leave it long so that it’ll fatten this area also there’s a scar here that needs to heal it’s doing its job is starting to roll over now this area is a concern here i’m going to trust see what happens if i go that way but i think what it is is this branch is much too big for where it is usually on the lower part it’s okay but this is uh what’s happening i think it’s in the wrong angle and there’s a little one here that’ll take its place so i’m going to take this off and then as we go this way it forks off i like the angle going down this way but it’s not as interesting so i’m going to go ahead go this way and maybe something like that okay let’s go ahead and take a look at this whole thing i think there’s maybe two three four branches that could come off but i think i said it before i usually don’t do that unless i have people here that owns the tree but i think well especially as we go on and develop more uh i think more branches could come off keep it simple and clean when i first saw this pot he had this uh nice band well it’s getting kind of uh worn out looking now but that’s a strip of copper and evidently he could keep the um snails out they don’t like to go over copper but anyway uh if you’re wondering what that was that’s what that is it’s a strip of copper and i always thought that it was a fancy design when it was brand new but anyway i think i’m done for now like i said uh if the owner was here i would kind of watch their reaction and make recommendation in terms of taking some branches off but i think i’ll stop for now and then i did feed it so that if any mistake was made it will be taken care of this branch i think could be shortened quite a bit and [Music] this branch not sure whether it should stay or not anyway those are my questions but i think because this is not my tree i will stop here so anyway i was assuming this was a chinese elm but i have some doubts i mean my it might be something else uh mike uh he likes to attend bonsai shows and he has picked up some unusual plants so sometimes i make assumption and i find that it was wrong something more rare well at least i don’t have it around here but anyway so it doesn’t matter whether it’s truly chinese elm or not this is the same technique that we should use so anyway this is hero saying goodbye i’ll see you again real soon in another chapter so this was mike’s tree
