Spring Pruning Japanese Maple & Airlayering

so i have here a customers they shoujo and the customers more or less like can't decide what to do lost lost its way so this obviously is an old day shoujo the trunk like that i would guess trees like this are in excess of 65 years old easily these trees all imported from japan i can see the graft extremely well grafted tree good taper but branches have become too thick and too old so when trees like this have very thick branches it is maybe time to redesign the tree customers cut one branch off from there cut this branch cut this branch i think the view was to try and make this the front but this front would not work the way we decide on the front or back of the tree is not just the trunk line and the shape of the trunk but a very important criteria or criterium for deciding front is really the nebari or the base of the tree so it's not just the disposition of branches of dimbardi as well so we look at the base the concentrate on the base this obviously not interesting this is not interesting this is not interesting but when you come around here it's nice and broad this is interesting so because of this i really have no choice but to use this as a potential front all the other sides i would discount so i have to work with this also the fact that this slightly leaning is a positive feature so this is going to be a nice natural leader luckily leaning the right way what are the defects on this tree the defects because of the age is that the branches have become too thick the proportions are wrong or not appropriate for a bonsai i have always emphasized that in order to make a tree look old and thick on the trunk looking thick you need slightly thinner branches not thick branches so these thick branches we may have to sacrifice or think of some way of doing something else with them the leader is fine the taper is excellent the taper is really really good there's no problem with the taper pity about that branch we may have to grow new branches so if you look at this tree i can see straight away that there are thin branches this is a thin branch this is a thin branch these are thin branches that's a thin branch so if i get rid of the thick branches i still have some thin branches so all is not lost okay i can see hypnotic all right you're great okay so that is my solution all right so i will i have the customer here i don't need to embarrass the customer but if customer agrees i will i will do that okay okay so i usually like to do it gradually so i won't take all of them out in one go i'll take that out i might even take this out gradually that's too long as you all know i work very fast and as i say i work fast and i say it not just to show off but that is the nature of how i work because once you have decided what to do the rest is easy this is a thick branch okay i'm still going to keep taking the tick branches off that's a tig branch obviously if this is your three pillar i know they're all these thin ones are possible to earlier where's that small tree that you were doing huh you can use very small branches too earlier okay so we've taken those off that's what we're taking off and i dare say it's already looking better would you not say the proportions of the tree have come back just by removing some of those thicker branches now this tree is obviously very healthy so there's no problem of it regenerating new branches so i'm not worried in the least that is obviously therefore now this people would say is a fall but i like it it's very natural the way i do my bonsai i like trees that look natural i don't like them looking like so stylized that they don't look like natural trees obvious blemishes i will take off so although this and this was taken off it's still now resembling a bonsai so i don't have problems with that now looking at that thick branch i probably don't need it so long i'm going to cut it back to there and from here i will get lots of new shoots so that will fill that space so you get these thin branches this i can take slightly to this side so be patient you'll get branches from here i'm glad you kept that little stub you'll get branches growing from there and you even get something growing from there so all is not lost tidy some of these ends with my glass cutter i usually like to make a full concave cut so that it heals flush if you don't make it concave you'll get a lump okay that i'll leave because hopefully you'll get a shoot coming from there several shoots even from there you'll get several shoots that back branch is nice see i've got to think ahead because if you're going to get shoots from here it may spoil the shape of the tree so i'm going to take it back a little like so so even if the new branches grow it'll fill in that space hopefully it'll fill there as well so and this is uh some of our guys were just remarking that a bit of kanuma has been used but konoma doesn't do any harm kanuma is a very nice light soil and although it's used for azaleas there's no reason why it can't be used for maples and this tree will grow very strong because konoma is a nice very light the roots will penetrate easily so you'll get good growth from there now because it's spring the sap is already rising i will deal look at sap coming if you go close can you see it's like tear drops can you see we just had a drop now can you see the drop there can the camera take it can you see it for me i haven't touched it see look look that's how fast the sap comes out maple sap you can tuck the thing and drink it fresh or you can make wine from it or spirit okay so i would say that is enough if i wanted to be picky i could cut that back to there but i won't i want new shoots to come from there look at the sap look at this up can you see so a lot of people when they see sap like this in the spring they get worried but there's no need to worry even if you didn't seal it the sap would stop it would stop in about a day or two no taste okay so i'm now just going to seal it so we have removed quite a bit look at all that look at all that that's the amount we have removed and it's got a lovely dome shape and i bet you anything within a year you'll get lots of new branches growing from here here here let them grow don't cut them off straight away let them grow get firm and maybe next year we will think of uh removing it is it too early no you the cuttings are best with what we call semi-hardwood the wood is still not hardened enough so see this is last year's wood i can talk a little about a bit about cuttings so the cutting is ideally like matchstick thin like this with a heel but because you can try there's no reason why you can't so you can use that but even this is last year's wood this is last year's wood if i go and get a branch from another tree stay there this believe it or not is also a deshojo but because it's been growing in this greenhouse these leaves emerged about two months ago and this shoot which is about two foot long more than 60 centimeter was all produced this year so it's already produced one main new shoot and then the secondary shoots and this is what we call semi hardwood it is this current years wood which has just about to get hard and firm so the idea cutting is like that like that so that's with a heel strip the bottom leaves and insert it in peat or peat and sand with a bit of hormone powder it will root if you wanted to make what we call a noodle cutting a noodle cutting is something that you cut just below the node these are called nodes so if you cut just below the node the roots will come from there and if you stick that because this also semi hardwood this is this is wood it'll be ideal cutting so that can be inserted half the depth that will make a cutting so that's a little exercise or instruction on cutting so the sap is continuing to come through but no no worry as i say usually the sap stops after a day it'll continue flowing for a day but there's no harm and again there are all sorts of theories about using sealant in horticultural college you will be taught that sealant is detrimental because they say that it can trap the fungal fungal spores but as i say a very controversial subject some people believe in using it some people don't but i prefer to use it because nothing lost by using it so we come back to this has the front so let's mark the front so you won't forget so we still got the lovely conical shape you haven't spoiled it one bit and we haven't taken major branches out i did think of taking this one out but i don't want to be too dogmatic about it you know you can take it to the extent that you want almost what we call a classic tree with one here one there one there and so on but so what there are two branches there it fills that space if i were to remove that it would create a very big gap and that would spoil it so this is where i broken the rule you know purists would say remove that but you can see straight away if i remove it it becomes too empty and it will spoil the shape of the tree so this is a natural looking tree all we need is a few more branches here and that will come in the coming year and you've got a very nice station back to its original condition there you are so i have david here who is a keen bonsai hobbyist or collector and he's got some beautiful bonsai and he has some trees which he doesn't know what to do with so problem trees are often brought to me because they cannot see a solution that might be pleasing enough or does justice to this tree so this tree i would say is about 1.5 meter could have been even taller he's already pruned some thick branches off so there was a thick branch there and those tops have been pruned off so there's some pruning pruning been done to this tree so with a large tree like this i know that there are large bonsai but this is verging on very very large maybe too large so because of that i'm not exactly happy and i don't know what david has in mind so can you just say something about the history of this tree it's been left to grow really it's probably had uh it's been repotted but it's been 10 it's been i've had probably 10 maybe 15 years but was it as tall when you got it it was tall but it wasn't as tall okay so it has grown more it's growing more because because actually all it had year on year was just a trim to keep it in a rough shape yeah but it uh it was probably four feet tall i think okay got it yeah and because bonsai has been imported to the uk since 1962 there are lots of all bonsai knocking around in the country which have become overgrown either the grower or the person owning it wanted to grow them into big bonsai or they didn't know what to do with the tree so you get situations like this so as i say for my liking this tree is a bit too large and if you want a big bonsai yes we can trim some of the some of the branches and just keep it as a tall tree and that is the end of story but i know that david is not exactly pleased with it and you don't know what to do with it is it so so let's look at the various possibilities whenever i see a tree i look at the overall picture to see what the tree would look like if i left it alone i could bring it back into a tall tree by trimming into a conical shape and i could just leave it like that but this tree has so much potential it's like human beings everyone has potential some have more potential than others and some of them you can see a lot of potential but the potential has to be brought out so what are the good points in the tree i always look for good points i'd never try and look for the bad in anything so the good points on this tree is that it's old it's got beautiful trunk and it's got beautiful nebari beautiful nebari there the base is absolutely stunning and it's like a twin trunk so originally it must have been imported as a twin trunk tree and i dare say the tree was no more than like 70 80 centimeter high so the nebari is good the trunk is good but the proportions of the tree being so tall doesn't do justice to that trunk and the nebari so as i said the obvious option is to trim it back into conical shape and leave it as a big tree now looking at the tree from different angles because whenever you want to decide the front or the back of the tree my first impressions are you know what is the base of the tree like you know i look for that straight away and then the trunk in fact this tree is interesting from virtually every side you look at the tree from this side it's nice and broad so that's a possible nimbari you look at the tree from this side this is also possible there's a nebari let's remove some of these because they may be distracting you so this is quite nice i think these guy wires i don't think we're going to use it for this design so this nibari is very nice so i'm still deciding whether the front of the tree as it is is the right choice or not because the tree has been potted in a rectangular pot obviously there was one side which was the preferred side and i think this way may have been the preferred side isn't it was this the preferred side with the tree leaning this way yeah okay so this was the preferred front again very nice nibari very nice so the neymar is nice from three sides this side also nice from here and also nice from here this is also possibility very nice and broad okay but the tree as it is so tall you don't appreciate the beauty of the trunk and the beauty of the base or the root base nibari so we could easily just trim it as i said back to a conical shape make this the leader make the tree that tall and still get a reasonable looking bonsai but there are more than one possibilities for this tree i've always said that to every problem there is always more than one solution sometimes two solutions three solutions endless solutions and this is exactly that uh example or case in point where there are so many many possibilities i said to you earlier on that the beauty of this tree is really here and it extends up to here beyond that it is a distraction so my first impression was what if what if we did something radical and brought the tree back to there that means just concentrate on this part up to here and have a short bonsai like this if you have a short bonsai this high short is all relative isn't it it will be half the height of this existing tree or even less about 40 percent of the existing height by having it there all your concentration and the eye is going to go there and here to the trunk and you will be looking at that and not be distracted by the top so this is going to be a superb solution i'm also very confident that i will be able to produce new branches in next to no time because i know maple i specialize in maples if you can home in on this tree look at that little shoot that has just started sprouting you look at the tree all over you will see new shoots there's another new shoot coming from here we will go look at that these will all become thick branches about at least matchstick in two months and by the end of the summer it could be even i don't know maybe thick as a byron so producing branches is not a problem so straight away i can see that the solution is to make it a short tree either using this as the potential front and if you want it to be even more radical because i've seen bonsai in one of my customers place he's got a mountain maple with a base about 18 inches broad and taping to a point in just about 18 inches so you can get a good taper so if you want it to be radical you could even make a tree with this side as the front and have a tapering tree with a broad base and this as the leader and taping that way so there's so many possibilities so either we make a short tree with this as the new top or disregard the back and use this using this is the front nice broad base and this as the new leader so we could air lay this we could lay this to get a nice short dumpy tree we could even lay that but we do it in stages so certainly airlay this nearly this i don't know what to do with the back i think if you use a single trunk then we have to probably discard that earlier here and get another tree from there so these are the different possibilities so it's going to be an exercise in air layering with a wheel to producing a bonus eye from this trunk so that is the radical solution we've come up with and it's now up to david to decide what he wants us to do i will just go for it go for it great that is a great solution okay so he's very excited we're going to go for it and so we're going to give you exercise in air layering so we can earlier this because this is going to eventually go because this is going to be the new leader we're going to grow new branches so it's like rebuilding a house you know it's like destroying the house not destroying it rebuilding from the base down we're keeping the footprint keeping the footprint and building a new house so we're going to aerate this and lay this i like that three area layerings and this is an exercise in air layering okay we're going to start earlier so there are three possible points we're going to early this one really this one and anyway the back one so let's start with the simple one so this has got quite an interesting curve there so that could make a nice bonsai you could even argue that you could get a twin trunk tree from that and away from there but let's do it from here because we would cut it from there anyway so the cut we make usually the width of the cut is about the width uh the diameter of the tree so if this is slightly over i would say it's like three quarter inch this is the amount of bark i'm going to remove from there so you can go right around now we always say that we get down to the cambium as long as you remove the bark i think you will be getting into the cambium don't be too enthusiastic and remove so much that you get to the bare wood because that can kill the tree there are many ways of doing the bark removal you can even put what we call a tonic a piece of wire and twist it what we're trying to do is to stop the sap flowing from there to there and because you stopped the sapphire from there to there this part is struggling to lift you'll send out roots to suck up water so if you put a ball of moss it will send roots into the moss to produce new roots to sustain the trees so that is the theory of air layering there are so many different ways as i said there's also another way i will just show you what we call a bridge so that means you don't remove all the bark but you leave a little bridge and the bridge serves to keep sending nutrients to the other side because if you remove it completely the shock can be so drastic or so severe that it can kill the top so some people do the bridge method as a safety precaution safety net but if you leave a bridge which is too big all the sap will go through the bridge and it won't send roots so it's a fine balance knowing how much bridge to leave or not to use a bridge at all i've found from experience that with maples you don't need to leave a bridge but i'm just showing you this in case anyone wants to practice the bridge method so i'm going to remove that bridge i'm not going to use the bridge for this and remember you can't earlier any and everything i know one of my youtube fans from america said that they can air their pines i don't know which pine but from my experience the only point that is uh possible to ail is one called the zeus chopin this is a very small needle uh five needle goyu matsu and that is produced exclusively by air layering but apart from that i don't know of any point that air is i will stand to be corrected if anyone has had experience in air laying say scot spine or even japanese black pine so you got to know what ale is again from experience we know that corn beam area as well beach areas maples do junipers do very easy willows of course willows you only need to stick a branch in water and it will root so you don't even need to airless so that is the width of the cut you make and now let's prepare uh the surface i like to use hormone rooting powder this is commercial hormone rooting powder and many people are confused as to where to put the home on rooting powder a lot of people put it where i've cut it no harm in putting it but the actual place which is most effective is above the cut for the simple reason that the roots are going to come from this part it's not going to come from there because the bark has been removed it won't produce any roots we don't want the roots from there we want the roots from here to sustain the tree so the hormone rooting powder is put this part rather than that side so that is enough i've wet it a little bit so it's easy to apply there's also hormone rooting liquid because the active ingredient is a substance called iba which is indolyle butyric acid and the powder is talcum powder to transmit the thing so once we prepare this the next thing is to prepare the plastic wrapper so i'm going through all this airing from scratch as it were i've done before but i'll show you again so i like to use clear plastic i know some people advocate the use of black plastic the only reason they say that you should use black plastic is that it says it excludes the light i don't know why it should exclude the light because if you wrap the moss ball around the trunk or the branch it's excluding the light from the trunk anyway so what's the point besides if i use clear plastic when the roots come through i can see the roots i've used this for last 30 or more years 30 40 years so it works so i use clear plastic you can also use bubble plastic and bubble plastic is good because it retains heat so it generates heat and it sends roots even more easily but i find that the clear plastic is good enough you notice that i use this akadama bags i don't waste anything i like to recycle and i find that the thickness of those bags is just the right thickness it's not too thin and not too thick so i prefer to use that as the thing for wrapping so this is about the right size for doing an air layering so i will put a ball of moss let me show you this by the way is moss that we have collected from around the pond and from our lawns so this is back the moss and the genuine sphagnum moss that we import and as you know we import our boss from new zealand and this is the new zealand moss i know it's been graded and it's been treated there's chemicals to kill the bugs but it's life so there's very little difference so it's the same thing so i'll use some of this and some of this because i like to experiment to see which works better but i'm sure this will do as well because i use this every year on my own trees so for a airline that side this is the size of moss volume on this side it's like a small bird's nest okay so that's what we're going to wrap around that trunk so i prefer to put it on the plastic and i will get some wire to tie the ends i don't bother with string or anything wire is very convenient because when it comes to removing it you just unwire it rather than have to cut away string so that is where i put the moss so that there's a lot of moss this side as well because this is where the roots are going to come i keep some on that side so that it keeps it moist i will now i'm going to add more moss but let me tie that end to stop the moss from falling out everyone will have their own favorite way preferred way of doing things as i say you can tie string or whatever but why i find this the most convenient thing to use okay so i've now formed a little like cup and now i'm going to stuff a little more moss you usually find that one or two uh liters how much is that you know it's like a large grapefruit so that's the sort of size you want for the moss ball and if you do it correct we are now in the middle of april i usually start my earrings around about this time because there's so much growth there's so much activity the xylem and all the nutrients are going up and down the tree transmitting all the nutrients up the tree so you know that's not big enough just like to just be a bit more generous and you notice that this moss is wet when i put it in and because i'm using plastic the plastic is going to hold the moisture in when i was a boy growing up in india i used to see the gardeners there use hessian jute sacks you know in the old days they used to use the hessian sex for transporting rice and all sorts of other goods so that was used and they used to use the hessian sacks or cloth to make early and that was okay because when they did the airlines it was in the middle of the monsoon or the rainy season and in the rainy season there's so much moisture that that you don't have any trouble keeping the root ball wet so that's okay so that's all we need to do now if we are lucky in six weeks you may get root but i would say give it three to six months and you should get root usually try to make it quite tight so that there's no leakage of air so it keeps it down and when the roots come through you will see the roots growing there you are so that's how we do air layering so i thought i'd show you the final outcome of what we did this morning uh i worked on three trees for this particular customer and this one i didn't talk about but this was a very interesting tree we're going to reshape it more of a conical shape but we transformed this completely i wish i had videoed it but not to worry this is one that we did this is the discharger that we completely change the the tree in fact the front is the other way around now look so this is going to be the front and we've got to build some branches here so that the tree will be more like this so if you re-look at the video you will see what we did and the sap is continuing to flow but as i said it will stop and then this big boy as you can see this tree was about i would say originally more than two feet high uh it was chopped at the top and the customer got a bit scared to proceed so this is how it ended up but he's quite happy with what i proposed for him so this is going to be the future tree about that high with that powerful looking trunk that twin trunk we don't need because this is going to be the front of the tree so we've already this portion to make another tree like a multi trunk another tree from here and another tree from there so we'll end up with four bonsai three new ones and that one so how good is that one not so interesting treat and we are going to get four interesting bonsai so this is how we look at that and as you can see we haven't pruned that much that was the red that came out from the deshojo and that's all the rest is an air layering exercise so i hope you enjoyed this video [Music] you

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, Indoor Bonzai, Outdoor Bonzai, Evergreen trees, Japanese Garden, Pruning, Pruning Bonsai, Garden Trees, Acer Palmatum, Maple Bonsai, Chinese Elm, Chinese Bonsai, Japanese Bonsai, Bonsai for Sale, spring pruning bonsai maple, Maple pruning, acer pruning, Bonsai pruning

Id: 36WRJD_QIaU

Length: 40min 3sec (2403 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 16 2021