Creating an Informal Upright Bonsai - Tiny Tree Tuesday

hi folks i'm darren and this is tiny tree tuesday this is the bonsai show where i sit down with one of my tiny trees you sit down with one of your cups of teas or coffees or a beverage of your choosing and we talk about working on the tree this is cortoniaster it was in the garden when i moved into this house and i spotted that there was a branch with a nice bit of movement so i created an air layer it's my first ever air layer actually ages ago there's a bit of wire i've trimmed it from time to time but now it's about time it did something a bit more serious with this tree right so i haven't seen the base of this tree since i put it in this pot which was the year after i did the air layer so i've never seen the base of this tree i'm not going to repot it but i am going to pull back all the old or the new or the fresh fertilizer let's pull the top look at that we've got roots in there straight away lovely being able to see the nabari is important because it's going to help us to make any decisions about any you know planting angle changes that we could make when we repot it it's just going to help us design the tree you know making informed decisions because the base is a very important feature of the tree when you're designing it you know if you've got you've got a really nice interesting spread of roots on one side and not so much on the other side you want that nice spread of roots to be in the front of the tree you know not hidden back behind so we've got to take it all into account ah there's some structural routes lovely lovely um yes i so i've been away a little bit i haven't been away um i had a bit of a camera slash tripod issue which took ages to resolve and then ended up with a bit of a virus not that virus luckily um me and the wife ended up with a bit of a virus during half term as well it meant that i couldn't do any filming and without any footage to edit i couldn't put out any videos so sorry about that because it's all brown down here it's not that easy to uh really figure out what's going on we've got some structural roots here look there's some nice roots in here some more there so i'm just in there and under under this section of trunk we've got some more on that side in fact you've got more on that side than we have the other side but it's all good and because it's an air layer what you tend to get is a really good spread you get a really good like strong lateral spread of the roots just about anything's possible with this nabari there's nothing particularly challenging to deal with it's uh it's all looking good so choosing a front then there's a nice route out here that could anchor a bit of a an angle change and again we could uh we could just as well go the other way and we'd have a nice sort of flowing movement in the trunk there so that's an option right okay so we can either go with keeping the angle pretty much how it is we can try and get more of a a very bendy upright on the go or i think there's a bit of scope to go for more of a like a semi cascade type of effect in terms of the base there's nothing stopping us doing any of those the base is pretty damn good for all of that one thing i have spotted is in amongst all this there is a uh a completely dead stump i'm not completely dead i tell a lie there is some living stuff on it um but i don't see it being part of the design anyway so i'm gonna take that dead stump out and that can be the start of the work and even though there's a living piece on this stump which you can't quite see from where you are i'm gonna take it right back to the trunk because it doesn't actually really do anything for the line the movement and tapers better on the um the thing that i'm cutting back to so i'm just going to go with that just continue to take bites out of it until we're almost there okay and that's where the stump was and it was just coming up like this had no taper or direction change unlike the piece that we're leaving behind which is much nicer so i'll just clean that cut up and put some paste on it i have a new knife for cleaning up cuts this one's just about had it and to be honest with you it wasn't really that good all i'm going to do is just take off the edge of that green cambium smooth out any lumps as well while i'm here i can assure you that my fingers are nowhere near getting cut if it looks if it looks like i'm in danger of losing a finger it's purely the camera angle yeah it's important to use a clean cut edge on this cambium a much better chance of it healing cleanly i have to say tony asta's not the best healer so any if you've got any designs of healing any cuts anything you can anything you can do to swing the odds in your favor well worth doing even this is a fairly large cut it's not exactly a small pruning wound i'm actually using callus mate which because it's cotoneaster like i just said they don't heal particularly brilliantly this delivers a really good hit of the hormones that promote healing and cell division so i've left one two three branches and the trunk leader i don't really need all of those bits there in the long run but having them there's gonna help it heal in the short term so i'll just go with it for now okay so as we follow the uh what is essentially the trunk line along we've got a branch on this side we've got a branch here we've got a branch down underneath there and then it comes off up into this tuft up here lovely let's have a look to see if that large cut has done anything to change my mind or inform the decision about whether to go for a cascade or an upright sort of design do [Music] i know what we're gonna do i think having the tree slightly angled this way tipped up a bit the reason i've changed the planting angle just a little bit is to take this first bit of trunk off vertical so now we've tipped it a little bit so it's like that and then we've got a branch right here that i can use if i want to to disguise the chop that we've got here might not be necessary but it's an option and the trunk sweeps over in this direction comes back around moves away from the viewer and then we can use this bit to bring the apex back over the base somewhat and back towards the viewer and that takes all the boxes nabari wise we've got some nice structural rootage here here and out here so there's a really nice spread of roots for the viewer to look at i think that's bang on with the angle and the front chosen i now turn my attention to this first branch i'm just going to tweak it up just a just a small degree i then want it to come up and back again the length back to there all right i'm going to prune out some of these shoots from right in the crotch there we don't need those close into that junction that's just going to make it swell there we go so the next branch that i'm going to turn my attention to is this one out here i do think that one's a keeper in the long run i'm not i'm not just keeping this branch as a sacrifice for the healing i am probably going to end up keeping this one long term and we've got a very we've got a bit of a strong upward shoot here and it's also got this weak piece at the same junction i'm not needing both of those i'm going to take the vertical piece off there's a dead twig just there this is much too long cut that one back there this is also much too long and cut back there okay so now we're up following the brat following the trunk up onto this next branch now we've got some shoots on the interior right next to the crotch that we're not going to need there we go and one back here clean up that primary structure so on this branch we've got a weak piece there we've got a small piece at the front there then we've got a stronger bit off to the right no off to the left i've got to decide do i want to keep all three of these no not really this week a piece a is we can be it's in an awkward position inside that bend so i don't want that one i do want to keep this branch and it's got a nice piece of ramification it's got some nice twigging we've got one branch there continues got a small branch there some another branch there then two stronger branches at the end and i cut this one back to three leaves i'm gonna cut this strongest piece back to two and also this vertical piece can come back to two as well there we go and we've got a sort of a formative pad just there that's looking quite nice now this bit up here is coming from the trunk and going straight upwards with it being near the top of the tree it's in danger of getting away from us i do think it's got some utility we could put a bit of movement into it and put it into a nice position so there's some used to keeping that let's leave that for the time being while i'm here i will take its spent flower buds off that's going to save the tree energy okay so i'll put a bit of wire on that branch i will just pluck out any buds that are quite close to the inside that i'm not going to need right now i'm turning my attention to this apical region this branch kind of continues the trunk i don't need that yeah this one's in a better position to fill in that space it's much more usable and of course we've got a split into and it divides into two here i'm actually not mad at that there's a little shoot on the inside just on that bit that i can take off it's just cluttering up the junction unnecessarily that one okay so this piece is really much longer as the apex i need it to be it's clearly the strongest part of the tree now so i'm going to cut it back to some side shoots and remove some of those berries that are forming from the spent flowers don't need those pretty as they are at this stage we're in the development phase we want to drive all the trees energy into growth not into fruits we don't want seeds at this stage definitely not no no no it's just a stub from my previous pruning there i can cut that off and then just the final thought so i'm gonna keep both of these apical shoots i'll bring one a little bit further around to the back and then this one's gonna come up and forwards to form our apex i'm gonna need to put a little bit of wire on so i'm just going to clean out some of these shoots or some of the buds and leaves that are pretty close in to those crotches just so i can get my fingers and wire around without leaving damaged material behind okay so i'm going to put a bit of wire on these utmost branches [Music] so [Music] so [Music] this branch is going to come down and backwards [Music] actually now i've changed my mind don't know i'm coming down this one's going to come across here then we'll have this branch out in the light over here and this one out somewhere here now this branch i do want come in somewhat backwards this that's nice but i just don't need this piece on the inside of that bend and also i now know that i don't need this big long pieces it's on a downward position on the trunk and i don't need it in you know it's going to be shaded out by other branches in the area and when this piece is a bit more structural structurally sound i wire that out as a secondary it's not in the best position at the moment but i had to move it round into this location so that's just a temporary thing i think i wonder if i can just improve it just a little yeah so it's a bit better now where it is i've just just rotated that branch when it's strong enough i'll wire it so it sits something like this as a secondary i'm just going to put a marker in for the front so so we can see what we're working with a bit easier i'm not happy with the length of this branch i think it's longer than it needs to be so let's just address that while it's on my mind it's not to really bother me even though i said i'm going to keep it for healing again that's really bothering me i've had enough of these things that i was keeping as sacrifices just gonna get rid of them it's just making it so hard to judge what needs to go where i'm not good enough for that yeah let's cut just get rid of them trying to be too clever for my own good just trim the length off some of these bits that are facing skywards don't want to get carried away as you can probably see this one's turning out to be quite a sort of a traditional informal upright kind of design unintentionally just seems to lend itself that way i'm gonna put some wire on this first branch [Music] and then carry it up to the apex [Music] [Music] so [Music] huh [Music] so for this branch i don't need to do much i just want to introduce a bit of movement to it and also just point it up just a little smidge take the tip out of it that branch is going to look awkward for a while it's just going to give us a nice foreground branch to work with as it grows and develops in the short term though it doesn't look great okay and then the apical region we're gonna go let's take it back towards the viewer somewhat oh that's looking better i've tweaked this branch as well i was looking a bit awkward they were almost sort of crossing over it just just didn't look right i think it's looking a bit better now now everything's positioned roughly where i think it needs to be it's just gonna address the length of this apex that branch as well that's a bit long yeah this is a bit extra right i think we're there accidental informal upright take a bit of weight off that one yeah okay well i think that's looking all right i'm not mad at that at all i think that's pretty much the structure in place so there we go that's a cortoniaster earlier that could be a cute could be a cute little tree in time there we go all right i'll put some of that soil and fertilizer back and put this one back out on the bench i'm pretty happy with that what do you think nice and traditional makes a change for grow bonsai what do you think they don't have to be naturalistic or weird sometimes they can just be a bit traditional lovely youtube i hope you and your trees are doing great please consider subscribing because i have a ton of good content on its way q a's tutorials tree progressions and even giveaways so now is the time to subscribe i hope you consider it also these videos take a lot of time and effort to make if you can check out grow bonsai over on patreon the links down in the comments and in the description it does cost a little money but it has a lot of interesting benefits and it's about to absolutely explode with value i'm super determined and dedicated to do my bit for the bonsai community by creating content that helps you the viewer but i simply cannot do it without your continued support so thank you so much for watching and i'll see you on thursday

Channel: Gro Bonsai

Views: 2,449

Rating: 4.9314284 out of 5

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Id: edeQjhOaQGc

Length: 22min 27sec (1347 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 15 2021