Ideas About Growing Bonsai From Nursery Stock Part 2
I’m, going to be working on this little spruce that I picked up this winter and i figured i’d show you guys what i was doing. Um, this is a dwarf Alberta., spruce starting Bonsai from nursery stock
I got it at Christmas time for 10 bucks. These things are available pretty much everywhere, all the time real common nursery material. They’re cheap. They’re tough. They’re, pretty darn strong. You can’t really know.
If you can see it there’s buds all over this thing, so it’s. You know it’s, cheap, accessible material to practice. With and we’re gonna we’re gonna have some fun today, um, i’ve, seen this done before online and i wanted to try it.
We are going to we’re gonna compact. This tree down, basically it’s, going to be about half the size. It is now we’re, going to put some pretty heavy bends in it um and see what happens so. I’m going to speed through, but basically what i’m going to do.
Is i’m, going to remove all the branching for at least the bottom half of this trunk? I’m, going to clear it all off. I’m, going to wrap it in electric tape. I i could be doing raffia but, for you know, a low end type of a tree project um.
The tape will be a lot easier and faster, and i don’t know that my raffia skills are camera ready. So that saves me that embarrassment um we’re gonna strip. This trunk wrap it up. I got some heavy gauge number six that i’m gonna try um and we’re gonna put some beds in it.
So i’m gonna speed that part up, and then i’ll meet you at the end, all right that didn’t take too long um after i got through the the part we’re stripping Off i went through the rest of the tree and did uh like normal cleaning is what we would call it that’s, especially with spruce troops grow in a world habit where you’ll get a a spot where there’ll be three four, sometimes five branches, all coming out of one big chunk on the trunk, and that creates these bulges.
I don’t know if you can see them on here. You can see there’s like a bulge up here here, bulging here from uh, just too many branches in one spot, creating heavy growth in that area so trim things off just thinned it out a bit.
I wasn’t trying to remove everything, because we do need something on this tree um, but i went through it all: cleaned up, uh pulled off needles off the trunk to make room for our wire make sure there weren’t needles In the crotches of branches, when we get wire put on those um about ready to put some wire on um, i thought i’d.
Show this uh it’s uh! It’s about the third week of march. Right now i actually brought this tree into a warmer room for a few weeks to to speed it up, but you could see um can we get focused? I don’t know their uh.
These bright, green buds are starting to open that’s. The new growth coming out so like right now is the absolute best time to be working on a spruce tree, whether it’s, a heavy styling or it’s. A repotting because this tree stored up all this uh all these resources and energy in the fall, so they could survive through the winter and now, when you see these buds moving, it means this thing’s, ready to spend it’s.
All of its energy – and you can do that by regenerating roots after repot or recovering from bending or pruning, so this thing is charged up and ready for work, so that’s. Why we’re, doing it right now.
Another thing i’ll show real, quick about pruning spruce this one ‘ S got pretty pretty heavy number of buds on here, but when you, when you trim a spruce tree, you always got ta prune to a bud.
So if this was your branch, you ‘ Ve got this long. Let’s, get a good background here. Boop there we go. You got this long central stem and if that’s getting too, you know too far past your shape or your your desired silhouette.
If you’re going to trim that back, you’ve got to trim it back to a bud, and this one. Luckily i mean this thing’s, got five buds just here on the tip it’s got side buds here here here here here here here, yeah, they’re all over the place, but depending on where you wanted, you Could just you could say you could trim it right there and this you still got a bud here.
You can’t even see that we ‘ Ve got a bud here. If that was still too long, you could come back to this inner node where there’s a bud here or if you the whole thing with you know. Maybe this is too long too.
We get rid of that or you could cut that branch off completely and that becomes your new central stem and that’s got two buds at the end. It’s, got a bud here, butt here, but here you could trim that back too to a bud point is any place to make a cut.
You got to have a bud there, otherwise that branch is basically dead. It’s, not going to grow a new bud at your cut site. So when you’re pruning back a spruce, you always got to prune to a bud and then, like normal uh standard bonsai operation, you’re gonna eliminate heavy areas down growing.
You want only no more than two branches at one site so and – and you also can go for like an alternating theme, so we got branch here – branch here we’re, going to cut that branch out pull these needles.
Are we remember that one, these little weak guys pull the needles off and then that’s, a branch that you can wire shape style? This guy comes over here, yeah it’s, not bad okay, ready to put some wire on this guy um gonna stab this down, get it anchored real good, um um.
This heavy gauge is getting real squirrely up here at the top, where it’s softer. So you got to make sure you’re, supporting the wire and not crushing branches that you’re, putting it [, Music ] on there.
We go that’s about. As far as i’m gonna get it, i think, which is fine. Now let’s, leave it on there in case. I want to use it as a handle. So now the fun part you’re going to. I’m, going to bend this as low as i can.
I’m going to hold down at the base, so i don’t rip it out of the pot. Probably gonna have to put a guy wire to hold this closed. I’m gonna have to hang it over the edge because um all right, let’s, get some guy wire see if i can thread this through.
Okay, you see it yeah so bring this around outside it’s, pretty good all right, so there’s been number one. Now we’re, going to bring it back up and over in some kind of way. Let’s, see how that goes, that’s actually even easier, so that’s, not bad at all.
I’m gonna twist this a little as i just twist more come here all right way, smaller. So then comes up and over around the back, and now it’s, laying back over behind it and kind of over. So i’m bringing this out this way.
This can all be up for styling decisions later on, assuming it recovers, which i think it will. So i think i want to get that first bend a little tighter all right. So i left, i left a lot more branches and i think we’ll ultimately need these will probably go and depending on what kind of shape you want to put in this, i don’t know this whole top could eventually go And do something with this and we keep this branch coming out.
Let’s, see let’s. Get it going this way all right and keep this branch coming out like this tree could end there. Apex could come back this way. You really can ‘ T see that very good. Can we, okay apex could come back and have a few branches sprayed out this way.
This branch comes out. This way shorten these side branches up or we could keep. We could get rid of all that. This could all come. We could build this part of the tree and have a sort of triangular-shaped pad over here.
With this, i kind of show that kind of like over here, yeah a lot of options, but for now that is twisted up pretty nicely and give you guys a good look of everything, and this could be. This could end up being planted at an angle like this.
As a cascade, in which case this come all the way back around or it could go up, could grow a branch down no options, but it’s. A very simple, very cheap, little uh experiments to play this spring and see how she does um check out our facebook page cleveland, bonsai club.
I will post uh videos or not videos. I’ll. I’ll post some pictures uh. Maybe in the fall or this summer to show you that this thing has survived and where it goes from here, who knows thanks for watching.
Start Bonsai From Nursery Stock Part 1
