How to improve your small Maple Bonsai

the month of May is usually a very very busy time of the year today is only the 10th of May and in early May we call it mid spring and late May is what we would call late spring or even early summer and this is the time of year when so much happens this tree was leafless until about a month ago and all these long shoots that you see here at least 45 centimeter long they have all grown in the last three weeks so if you did nothing to it this tree will become completely out of hand it's only a fairly thin Mountain maple but already it is so bushy most deciduous trees in fact all the serious plants whether there are roses or even trees or zhirkova trees they all have to spurts of growth the first spurt of growth is in what we call the early spring and then they have a second spurt of growth from end of June early July onwards these are the two spurts of growth and it is at this time of the year the first spurt of growth that you've got to control these trees these are maples mountain maples which have been trained into the S shape most Mountain maples are usually trained as just straight trees and put in a pot and the cell has very nice bonsai but if you can create an S in the tree that is even better of course to create an S shape you can only do it when the shoots are really young like this nor thicker than a matchstick when they're powerbal you can work it into a nurse once you get taken and this it becomes virtually impossible to wire into an S so then these have been wired into an S and we've got to maintain it in that so let me show you how I'm going to deal with all these trees that I have here so as I said the S shape is they're clearly visible and I'm going to just refine it so let me do the first stage so the first step always you should know me by now is I just change to the outline irrespective of whether the shoots are crossing not just trim to the outline and that should be okay now if you weren't skilled at wiring or shaping or refining as long as you did this it will be better than leaving it to grow completely unchecked like this so let me reinforce again now this is a tree which has good about twelve inches around and I'm just going to bring it back to this conical shape and then the next stage is I'm going to show you how to wire it and shape it so let's do all the form trim it back to the outline and then we will take it to the next stage of course if you keep doing this I've got nothing else this treaty could get very congested and it will become so dense that then you get a lot of dye back on the inside of the tree so look at this one even the weeds grow very strongly at this time of the year you must be getting sick of the vapors because we have so many maples and they are by far the most popular on the deciduous trees that if anything you're longer to come an expert at maple oh you will not want to see another maple again so that's what I've done now that's not the end of the story we got to do more than that so let's get back to the thin ones first so here we are now this tree here clearly very nice s and we're going to wire the branches so we develop the broad structure much more and of course as with most of these deciduous trees they bought back from the old wood almost willy-nilly you can't control it there's so vigorous so usually the branches come from the outside of the elbow this is available the branches come from outside the elbow very seldom will you find a bunch is coming from inside the elbow so always think of the branches coming from outside the elbow so this is a nice balance here because it's coming from one side that's a nice one which is already developed now this one I'm not so sure that's part of the inside but this is a nice one to do a lot but this is rather young so let me show you the options for this okay so if I look at this one this one in fact is very very tuned am i just letting Google to get thicker and then I would but this one I wouldn't watch for now but I can ride those to wonder why should I use I'm always said to you that of all the sizes of my rabbit are available the two most popular sizes are maybe one a thousand two millimeter but once you get into something thicker two and half millimeter is also a very useful size of water tonight so what I'm using now here is two millimeter but remember again what I've said in the past there is no hard and fast rule you've got to play it by ear if a tree is more mature you'll have more mature branches so it may not need or it may not be sufficient to use the thin piece so you may have to use the thicker piece of our sometimes I just wanted an open car source to just guide the branch along this one I'm going to use as a sacrificial now this is a thicker one they're all congested branches here like this congestion wait there this has been installed at about and why are these - now that's a thick one we used to and Hofmann to a half mil not a sticker streamer so - so remember two and half to one and power of the very popular sizes maples not very easy on the trunk so you've got to be a bit careful when you wire maples so since you're only guiding the branch along there is no need to keep the wire tight and certainly check it as it goes so I do what is call it an open car so it's like a coil of a spring and it's like a cube almost for the branch to grow along the tube the tube of wire if you can imagine what I'm saying it's like an open coil like a spring part of the spring so that's how we call it you see we don't tighten it it's just kept loose it may look a bit messy now but in about three months time I can take some of it off and see how it's doing and if it's folding and I can probably dispense with it you will not so fine with most assiduous trees whether it's as a coke or whatever they tend to have dominant shoots so let me explain to you what a dominant shooters if I come close and show you these two shoots there they are the dominant shoots and it is taking over from the original apex so you got to be a bit careful if I remove some of these leaves I will show you the choice of shoes that we have I was so prolific I'm not worried they will grow again so if I show you close up can you see the three shoots this one this one and the one at the back so that three shoots there now this was the original apex and these two are the new vigor shoots that Becca could become the effects as well so you have a choice of what to use if this is the front I could use the new one or I could use the old one as well so there is a choice there so maybe even I get boxed sometimes I will remove the most dominant one which is this this is the most dominant I'm going to take this out so I've taken that one out I still have to there I have one which is coming this way and I have one at the back there I could use either of those so to get a better taper I may remove the duct one I don't have any fillers of the top dying because I know that these maples are so vigorous that they should be okay so that is the structure deltaj okay and I can then why the top and give it a slightly twisting look so while the apex and linking it to a side branch to branch principle to hold it and then introducing a slightly curly bit to continue the S shape so that is how I have continued to make the tree grow and at some point it will come back on its side itself like that so this is the structure that I've done so many of you will say although I much prefer it like this bushy but this given another four weeks will become bushy like this so don't worry as long as the structure is created it will fill out and whooshing so let's deal with the second one it's another of those curly ones now this is very interesting too because I can see there is tricky or controversial thing here these very thin branches I will wire with a very thin one and off move our because it is really really thin why do you want to just guide it along so no need to keep it tight I'm just putting an open quality spring you guide the water and lead the shoot going in the right direction but not strangling the branch in any way so I just made the budgets come down like this and the branches were taken out this part is very interesting here this is something which we don't normally encourage because it's a branch going on the inside of the curve but if I removed it completely it may become true bear so I will keep the inside I will keep the inside and see how it goes so sometimes there are exceptions to the body and this is clearly an instance where there is an exception to be made wiring a branch which is growing on the inside of the elbow but because the circumstances are right right because if I removed it it would become too bad that she would become a true bear in the middle so I've won that one of the inside so that I can have some presents there well there are some very strong shoots here if you can see up there back there this one is a very strong shoot very very strong I can bend it I'll try and bend it but again if I bent it it'll be on the inside of the curve so what I may do I've already chopped a very vigorous shoot over here not to show you if I'm self videoing you see how congested it is this suit there is very vigorous that's the one I want to get rid of I think I've taken off completely so I'm just creating structure so once the structure is created I will just let it grow and it should take care of itself when these young thin branches develop and become more mature in fact they're so thin there is probably no need to even water let's see I might just guide it load a very thin piece of wire so in that case I might even have to use one millimeter water don't worry about making it look like a tree that you would put on an exhibition we're just training it so this is the process of training so don't worry how it looks because after three months you can remove these wise they're so thin they will have set the tree in position so that is the tree structure typical informal pine tree and the structure is made and then I will leave it to fill out so these are the two elements so this is what you should be aiming to achieve just the structure with nothing else now let's look at these two more mature ones these as you can see I have won them in fact a few months ago before the leaves came out and because I have structured it the structure is all right you can see the beautiful structure being formed and all I need to do this make sure that there isn't too much congestion in there the other packs is very congested in entrepreneurship somehow do we need all of them if I've beat too many branches there you may get what is called the inverse table aware afford clutter branch is going where the cause that pocket is from to thicken and the lower portion will be thin so that is what we call inverse table many of you are still wondering what inverse taper is making sure that sometimes you mustn't try and create too much ramification because if you create too much ramification you will get died back on the inside so this is a more mature tree so this tree was very like this only a year ago and see how much it has developed I'll put it in a slightly bigger pot so this is the progression from this to this in one year this is also a slightly more mature tree now all right now I can see that there are lots of false industry there is the main trunk which you can see and then there is this rogue chute here which is becoming very dominant and it's taking away that so you could create inverse taper I don't know if you can see it clearly this bit is an unwanted branch and if I leave it to go too much it will become a problem later on so this is one of those difficult situations where you literally have to take a rather radical decision whether you make it like a twin from going from there which looks odd can you see it looks very odd this is this barge here so what do we do also if I bring this branch out here it's coming or growing on the wrong position I could keep it as a sacrificial to take in the trunk but at some point I will have to remove it I know that I can sell this tree as a commercial bushy tree but in all conscience I could really let it go because this is really a fault so as I have often said this one is fault I'm going to take it out and we'll take it out so taking that out there are many options for this tree two birds one of them so let's see what we do some of you may suppose the tree but I won't have supposed to tree let me just work and see what shape I can get so all our reviews towards affirmative one was one of the branches is quite thick using the gym class just to loop this war can open coil this also I'm gonna make like an open car I'm not lying right right I'm just making this open file that may explain to you what the open coil is like you see it's just an open coil it's Rob tight so it's like a tube along which the watch is going to go we need pecks of course the original apex seems to have died and this side bunch here is tending to be the apex so this is quite nice because it's coming back on itself so let's emphasize the new impacts by removing some of this four years each of these trees is like a jigsaw puzzle because there are so many options that it becomes very interesting as a problem that you like to solve again there's a lot of congestion at the top and if I'm not careful as I said earlier if there's too much congestion you'll end up getting in the stable at that point so I'm going to take some of that out because I'm really looking to the long term I'm trying to be a perfectionist here I know that many of you don't grow these maples into this mess shape because the S shape is quite hard to create but for those of you who are trying to create the S shape makeup this is how you deal with the tomatoes sometimes it seems very very drastic because we virtually took a very nice bushy tree which commercially a lot of people would give the right around for because it looks nice and bushy but I know in my heart of hearts that it wouldn't be right to sell that truck it had a leader going in the wrong direction so I'm quite about create a tree that is warm a classic style in fact this tree I may have to reposition so again I'm just making like an open corner with the coil of a spring and the branches are just going to grown in that tube of the spring so it's not really tight whirring it's just use wiring to guide the tree along so I'm more or less made the branches going in the right direction so everything is going in the right direction very hard to appreciate the tree in two dimensions because the camera doesn't record the feeling and the depth of the tree and just try to give you the best view or angle to see the tree so these branches are growing this way and those are going that way put it on the turntable so this is a better view now that I'm holding the camera you can see I made the branch grow from the outside of the elbow there are two branches in fact there's a bit of a gap there I'm not worried about that that this is coming out from this elbow that is also coming out from that elbow and then the apex will be created so that will fill out in time so I'm quite happy with that one this was a very difficult one because I took out a very very major thick branch so I do know where that branch was but it was something like that take branch like that I took out took out a very thick one so that will grow into a nice tree this was the most complete tree which didn't need much doing because this is what I had already worked on last year so this is the back of the tree you can see how full it is they really developed fast so you don't have to worry so you can even do a lot of leaf cutting at this time of the year and produce a new crop of leaves and then you get a lot of refinement so let me go back to the front of the tree and you see how nice the dome shape is created so that is virtually complete so although I did some severe work on this one this past tree will become like that by the end of this summer which were not so thick again I created the branch structure position all the branches so that they grow in the correct way I must aim with this one so I've made sure that the branches are all going to grow in the correct direction so this is quite radical work but for the sake of the tree it will become nice and classic with all the branches in the correct position so these are these s-shaped may put that I proved look at some of the branches I took out look at that one just stick one I took out this was the one I took this branch out from here it was growing there I could take that out so I didn't feel about doing it because I now have a clear conscience that I know that that should have been taken out it didn't really belong there it was like growing with two two heads or two leaders so I took that out and that tree is going to have all the branches in the correct position so I hope this has given you some insight so if you have young maples and they're still wire we'll make it into an S grow it in a big flop or to get it strong and then you can create the branch structure so this is how some of our big maples are created from young maples like this so I hope you enjoyed this one [Music]

Channel: Herons Bonsai

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Keywords: Herons Bonsai, Bonsai, Bonzai, Herons Bonzai, Herons Bonsai Nursery, Bonsai Nursery, Garden Centre, Peter Chan, Bonzai UK, Peter Chan Bonsai, Indoor Bonsai, Outdoor Bonsai, How to care for Bonsai, How to look after bonsai, Indoor Bonzai, Outdoor Bonzai, Evergreen trees, Japanese Garden, Zen Garden, Pruning, Pruning Bonsai, Large Bonsai, Garden Trees, Acer Palmatum, Maple Bonsai, Chinese Elm, Chinese Bonsai, Japanese Bonsai, Bonsai for Sale

Id: QAGiC9m6To0

Length: 33min 56sec (2036 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 05 2020