Potentilla Bonsai From Garden Material
Making a small flowering bonsai using cheap garden centre material.
Which branches do I prune?
Which branches do I trim?
How I shape the tree to become a bonsai.
I’m pruning and wiring this pre-bonsai potentia from garden material. Let’s go so i’m going to come and have a look at this first branch to start with try and decide what if anything i need to remove i’ve got three coming from this crotch here i’m gonna remove this one so i’ve had the idea to do like one take videos where i don’t do any editing i just start work do the work chat through it and see how it goes post the video no production value or anything like that so if you end up liking this video let me know in the comments if you want more or you have other ideas give me a shout i’d love to hear from you so timing wise of this work the second flush is coming to maturity now i missed the window for the first flush so now i’m pruning the second flush which has managed to regain some energy and hopefully we’ll get further flushes from this pruning so this is potential fructocosa came from a garden center piece of material i put it into a pond basket training pot to start with did i yes this one went into a pond basket training pot and then it’s gone into this small pot because i didn’t have a bonsai pot that was suitable at the time if you do a hard pruning on these you can get die back that goes all the way through to the roots and you can get unwanted shari so i i pruned to stimulate crotch growth which they’re quite obliging to create and so now i’m coming back in to establish the primary primary lines this one here is pretty straight and coarse after this bit i don’t need it to come out that long so i’m gonna just cut back to that secondary piece there it’s getting quite vigorous that branch there just shooting off to the sky it’s coming from a crotch where we’ve got multiple pieces in this instance i’m going to remove this piece simply because it’s got longer internodes and there’s stuff behind it that i can use for instance i can bring this down get some nice movement introduced lovely this is the crotch growth i mentioned i wanted to replace a thick coarse piece i cut it back quite hard got all of this crotch growth coming from just in here and now i can choose which pieces of those to keep which to remove i don’t have to worry about well i don’t have to worry too much about unexpected shari developing along down the trunk because there’s there’s plenty of living pieces to keep sat moving i’m gonna take this this week a piece off here and at least now i’ve got down to three that i can choose from in this area over the other side here we’ve got a thicker branch nice primary piece of structure we’ve got some crotch growth that i don’t need that can come off and as we come further up the tree it gets a bit sparse so we’ve got this branch it needs a bit of movement but that’s okay it’s in a nice position it’s secondaries i think we can do something here so let’s just remove that little shoot off there and then this strong piece is just going off very straight and skywards that can get cut off then up in the apical region got a group of three in here i’m wondering do i take one of the sides or the middle piece just wanna try and get a feel for how the trunks moving up to that point then i can make a decision okay so it’s going in this direction and there is a shoot that just continues that line straight up here so i’m going to just remove that one and that way we can prune back to introduce some movement okay let’s think about the uh the front of the tree so i think somewhere in here we’ve got some nice movement and then sort of sort of a 180 degree turn we’ve got some nice movement in here it’s quite bare along the back there i’m just wondering do i keep this piece out here and just reposition it i think that this branch has got a lot going for it it’s in roughly in the middle of the other two so it’s neither too high nor too low but then it’s also quite two-dimensional with the other branches it’s you know it’s not a lot of depth to it they each have merits each of these three have merits the middle one’s sort of coming more towards the back filling in some of this empty space here or potentially filling in some of that space the upper one is sort of got the potential to fill in some space to this area then this one down here while there’s you know there’s plenty of i don’t know it’s a tough one all right i’m going to remove the lower one i’m going to prune this coarse piece out and then this straight piece here can also go on this branch and i’m also going to take out this little one here right on the crotch there that’s not needed small one down here again that’s not needed starting to get a lot more clarity now so i’m just going to chomp a bit out of some of this old dead wood try to reduce its visual weight as it does sort of contribute to the appearance of inverse taper there just carefully bite around the branches that we want to keep don’t have to do it all in one go i don’t think you have to be careful not to take two bigger bites though it’s looking better already but now i’m gonna prune and wire wire and prune nice so this is the front that i’m working with just want to come up a little around a a little tweaky down so this branch is a nice little back branch i’m just gonna very carefully keep an eye near the crotch just tease it out i am going to just nip that end piece off i’ve got a nice little bit of ramification there now nice take that back to there i’m gonna look for a nice pair let’s cut back to here lovely and then the final piece just want a couple of nicely positioned buds really a bit shorter on that one this one up here come back to two leaves again i’m going to take the tip off this one cut that back to a nice length and we’ve got two leaves here same on this piece there we go these are nice and fine sauce which is the one mil nice fresh roll of one mil here okay so with this branch i kind of like it where it is emanating from the trunk there just give it a bit of a bit of extra sauce so it’s not too you know too straight and bland right so we’ve got a downward piece there let’s get rid of that guy how’s that for length how’s that yep let’s get in there the battery’s running low enough to change the battery in a minute one take tuesday says oh god okay so with this piece kind of just going straight up i’d like i don’t want to kind of want to bring it to the foreground a little bit let’s see how we do there we go a bit of a crazy on that i can find my shears then hang on a sec the foliage is pointing in the better direction now i turned it upside down without paying attention right cut you back get you back and then the wire boom now i’m going to cut this bit off i don’t know about you but i think it’s starting to look pretty nice not perfect by any means there’s no need to think about that this bit this one’s bothering me you know there we go oh that feels much better ah lovely so this branch is very straight and this branch needs some attention as well so i’ll pop some wire on those get beefy now gonna get beefy with the two mill this time okay so there’s a little chute on the inside of this bend here that’s gonna get in the way of the wire so i’ll just nip that one off just wanna try and get some wire on this straighter section up here it’s a little bit tricky but i think we’re almost there yeah so it’s a bit awkward along here look i’ve come across this thick piece and then back to that branch that was a conscious choice not just that i’m an idiot i mean i am an idiot but it’s not just because i’m an idiot um i’ve done it because like the one or the half turn that we would have had wouldn’t have been enough support otherwise so by giving it that little bit of extra just means it’s going to be that bit more stable less prone to wobbling let’s come in between these little pieces here boom that’s nice there we go right so at the moment i’m looking at this one and it’s just going down but it’s in a really usable position and there’s nothing else nearby in the absence of something better i’m gonna use it i’ve got to be very slow and steady with this one i don’t want to snap it being a bit thicker it might be a little bit brittle okay so just for the last move i’m going to come turn that back up yes yes this is looking nice i’m excited yes let’s finish off that wire okay so there’s a nice little straight section here but i’ve already got two to cut back too so that’s nice yeah good all right i’ll start by coming back to some nice inner shoots then have a look oh no that’s good that’s good yes yeah baby boom same with that as a flower bud on the end of this one i’m gonna leave that that’s gonna look nice okay and then the one that’s just above it’s coming from the trunk here so really you’d expect it to be in sort of somewhere in this area rather than that area so let’s see if i can persuade it to do that then go very slow listening very carefully [Music] there we go that’s at its limit there pushed it quite far can you see that lighter color just lay it down for a second i’ve got a little piece down here coming from a crotch well there’s already two so let’s just just clean it up a little bit don’t want to keep that bit so i’m gonna cut this straight piece back to there it’s not very attractive angle that though is it let’s be honest yeah so that’s not my favorite branch on the tree by any means but it is what it is in fact i don’t like this downward piece on it at all from below that bit can go that’s cleaned up a lot more there that’s better right i don’t think this branch has any business being that long same with this one let’s find some buds to cut this bit back too [Music] there we go so it’s not strong enough to wire that it’s not in a great position i do like where it’s coming from on the branch but i can’t do anything about its position at the moment so that i’ll have to stay and then up at the apex just a little group of three here there we go there’s your front somewhere in there i’m gonna wire this apical region just to take out one or two of those a couple of pieces in here that i’ve got a bit of a bit of straightness [Music] all i want to do is just pop a little bit of movement into it tweak it to its own little bit of space cut this strong chute back let’s head in straight vertically there we go i’ve just compressed that apex a little bit we’ve just got one final strong i’ll cut back to a pair of leaves like that there we are i’m quite happy with that i’ve moved the apical region towards the front when i come to pot it might be that we tweak it a little bit make it more engaging i mean we could also use this as the front just have to see how it goes that was one take ish tuesday if you like this video i want to see more please hit the like button it really helps the channel out if you particularly enjoyed it write a comment down below any further ideas and suggestions especially if you want to see more thanks for watching and take care
