Bonsai Tree Pruning | Deciding Which Branches To Prune Bonsai Made Easy August 2021

It’s time for the last of the winter bonsai tree pruning so i’m going to prune about five or six different bonsai trees and i’ll show you the exact pruning decisions my name’s dave and you’re watching blue sky bonsai stay tuned [Music] so first up we have this japanese maple variety deshojo which has the lovely distinctive red leaves in spring this is a small show in size once quite a nice little bonsai’s got a lovely little trunk it’s got a good trunk flare at the bottom but here what we see is one large chute that went wild last year now you might want to keep this growing on some bonsai as a sacrifice branch and just let it grow wild to help thicken up the lower trunk but in this case what we have here is quite a big branch an out of proportion big branch i like it because of the position and because of this smaller branch over here so i’m not going to keep that as a sacrifice branch we’re just going to clip it straight off so i’ll do that right now and this is a new shoot it’s not going to endanger the health just by clipping it a nice flush cut there i’m going to put it in water and that might root later in the year now what i’m left with here a dual branch a split quite low down in this big branch and i’m not so happy with that so actually what i’m thinking i’m doing is just just chopping this whole bit off here in fact i’m going to do that now i am going to leave a bit of a stub because this is really quite an old branch here so i’m going to leave the flange collar just underneath there to keep it healthy as i showed you in that video so let’s just make a cut about here leave some of that flange collar there we’ve got the color underneath you can see some dead wood on top so next year i’ll come back to that and make it curve down right into the line of this trunk here so the trunk itself will get a lot better taper now not much else to do with this one except the very top leader here i think can just be a bit shorter we can prune that back to just two buds one each side here so we’ll do that now leaving a tiny stub there for a die back that’s the first tree done my japanese maple deshojo show you that later in spring now the next tree is this crab apple and really not one of my favorite trees i’ll be honest the curves to me look too contrived too kind of forced obviously it was one of these young shoots that was curved it was wide in its infancy and it’s kept the shape [Applause] [Music] so here’s a bit of the tree’s history over the last few years it was grown in a deeper nursery pot to fatten up the trunk but that also had the unfortunate effect of fattening up some of the branches in places you wouldn’t really want them so each year i tried to prune back those branches more and more and i tried repotting it each time in a way that would hide the ugly scars [Music] but there comes a time when you can only do so many chops and there’s only so much hiding you can do so up till now i’ve left that trunk as a zigzag affair and i’ve now let that first branch grow out sideways and hope that it’ll fatten up the lower trunk but i really don’t like this bro this branch is too high i’ve been planning for about three years to just get rid of it someday another possibility here would actually be to do a major trunk chop there and make this the new leader so this crab apple i’ve been having a really good long look and a really good long think about it and the more i look so if we look at the rear side of it you can see all the chops that i’ve done in previous years and they haven’t healed over too well so it’s at the moment it has to be this side as the front however i’m thinking now that this main trunk doesn’t taper off very well and if i make this actually if i make this branch the new leader that makes a new trunk taper very nice however you’d be able to see the chop really clearly you can see what the chops look like on a crab apple by looking at the back they form ugly calluses and what i’ve decided if this becomes a new leader then this from here makes a new front good angle good trunk flare at the base and chop it somewhere around here yeah i’m going to chop this trunk here [Music] and i don’t feel too emotional about it because i’ve always struggled with the design of this it’s just too curly it doesn’t look like a natural tree to me so i’ve got my saw and i have to thank juice for reminding me to mention the branch saws for bonsai the cutting edges are when you pull and not when you push [Applause] to decide where to cut across probably about here are you ready for this making a tremendous racket turntable here there it comes [Music] good straight chop very healthy i’ll put a bit of wound sealant around the edge there and from next you when i tidy that up i’ll saw it again straight over do a flush cut and from the front you won’t see that let’s get the turntable back here that was a big chop but like peter chan says if you want to enjoy the hobby of bonsai you need to be prepared to chop sometimes large bits off your trees to keep them small and beautiful i’m just going to tidy this up now at the moment it kind of looks like a semi cascade but it’s not supposed to i’ll start by cutting this bit off here and we’ll see how it looks from the new front this is too long and taperless it’s got movement but it’s long taperless so what i’m going to do is chop back to here and we’ll see if a new leader emerges there’s plenty of places around here where a crab apple can back bud [Music] now you know what i have chopped this a bit lower they’re very vigorous it’ll bud all over the place it’ll grow like wild this year and then next year i can make some more branching choices for for the future direction in spring i’m going to repot it as well because these root very vigorously and this part is pretty small for how vigorously they root might just use the same pot again it’s quite a nice little bowl let’s go into the next tree now the next tree is a very simple one it’s another deshojo japanese maple bonsai cute little tree this lovely bit of trunk curvature really not much at all to do have a look at it and tidy up the first branch that shouldn’t be there so just clip that one off [Music] nip it in the bud as they say nice little flush cut keep it flat there now here we’ve got three branches coming from one point and i’m going to leave it like that because this has a possible future styling as a broom style it’s not like that now but it could be a future broom style so i’m gonna keep that and the other thing is that when you look at maple trees in nature quite often they do have this kind of style of go up a bit and then branch out several branches from one point so there may be some inverse taper at that point but it’s okay looking natural is what i want out of my trees but for now it’s all i’m doing to it again in spring i’ll repot this because it’s quite a vigorous grower and this is a very small pot let’s go to the next tree now the next one is in a rather big pot because i’m growing it to try and get it fatter as you can see it’s this japanese maple [Music] the variety of japanese maple it’s called an orange dream of course it’s not very orange at the moment but when it buds in spring all of the first leaves come out a beautiful gorgeous orange colour before they turn yellowy green now what we have here is a tree that is just growing in a big pot to fatten up but i want it to be quite a bit fatter than this so it’s going to stay in this pot for another two years and in the meantime this first branch here it’s too low if i was going to make a lovely little show in size tree this might be quite a good first branch but it’s just too low so i’m going to chop this branch off right now as always i’m going to leave a stub i’m going to clear it up next year you can see a chop that i did actually two years ago and then tied it up last year it’s tidying up nicely [Music] so you