Welcome to Appalachian Bonsai. Today, we're gonna be working on this hornbeam.
It's late spring / early summer. I'm going to go ahead and take off majority of
this brand new growth. I'm gonna probably cut the leaves in half and reduce the
amount of leaves on there. What that's going to do is cause this tree to
put out a new flush of growth and bud back some in preparation for little
branch ramification, a little branch structure. I don't want these branches to
get long and wild like this. I want them to be a little bit closer to the trunk.
I also don't want them straight as an arrow.
I want them to be bent a little bit here and there. It just adds extra
character to your trees. So let's go ahead and get started.
I've already shortened two branches on this. You can see some here on this
left-hand side. You can also see over here on this right-hand side. I did a
little shortening of this one earlier as well. You didn't get a chance to see that
because I wasn't recording. But anyway, I'm gonna go ahead and do a little bit
more of that now. Since we're here, let me show you what we've done. We have
pruned these branches on this side. We have a little nice fork that's happening here.
There's a curve that takes an abrupt turn this way. That is in your direction.
And then we have a fork. This forking is really nice because that's
what branches do: they grow and they fork, and they fork, and fork, and as we have all
heard Dan Robinson say it makes it "forking beautiful." So that's what we're
hoping to continue doing by pruning this back. I do have, we have three main leaf
sections here. This is all new growth from this spring. What I'm going to do is
I'm going to take off the tip. Just the tip. And reduce these down. What I'm
doing is I'm gonna cause new buds to come back into this area and those are
gonna fork out. I've already pruned this down to about
two leaves here. I'm just going to reduce that to half. I could probably take off the
entire leaf. I'm gonna leave them. That's up to you. A benefit of taking off the
entire leaf is you don't have to worry about cut leaves, which can be an
unsightly thing. This is not a finished tree, so it's not going to be
a problem this year. But you can take these completely off if you're trying to
to really put off a nice new flush of fine small leaves, especially if you're
going to put this into a show. All the new leaves that will be coming out
should come out at approximately the same time, they should be approximately
the same size, and it's something that you do during the summer time.
Okay? So you do this with maples. You can do like we're doing with this
American hornbeam here. It's definitely going to refine the branch structures.
Now, you may say 'Why are you doing this now if you're not going to show this off?'
Well, I want this tree to have the beginnings of some refined work, and
that's just gonna make my job easier in the future. You have to think many
steps ahead. I have a branch here that's sticking straight out and upward. I prefer
that it not be that way. I'm gonna cut that off. It's got a broken section here
A nice broken section right there. I'm just gonna take that off.
Come in where that break is going to be, and I'm just gonna cut it right off.
These two branches right here and here are going to grow outward, and that'll
be the nice forking part of it.
It's going to be hard for you to see some of
this action I realize, because I have all this other foliage, so let me prune that
back very quickly. All I'm going to do is reduce these long, these long parts of
this year's growth back to about three or four buds and we'll come back and
shorten them in a little bit more. I don't mind taking them down all the way
to two leaf sections (I said buds, but they are leaf sections) because it's going to be
really long coarse growth otherwise. You don't need it to be straight for a whole
bunch of branches. That whole long leaf section is gone. This has got one, two,
three, four. I'm just putting it back to the four here for now. I can come back
and refine that later. Sharp scissors help.
There we go. That's nice and easy.
We've just reduced down a lot of this early spring foliage and that's good.
There's still plenty left on here. I'm about to reduce some of that.
What we're also doing, and what we're looking for whenever we're doing this type of
reduction in the summer time, is to get rid of errant branches.
what I mean by that is the ones that are going this way, and that way. If you
can head them off at the pass, or if you can nip them in the bud, or if you can
grab them early then it will save you time in the training process. For instance,
I have a nice refined branch coming this direction (a little bit away
towards me). I have another one just above it that's
brand new it's also coming this way. It's much thicker in diameter than this one is.
Is it going to be a better branch than the one below it? I don't think so,
because this kind of comes up, and then over, and then over, and backwards to me.
It's something that we can do away with
I'm going to cut this top section off. We have a long branch here, a smaller
branch here, so which one's the better branch?
There. Now I have these two branches here.
If I'm being honest with myself,
this thing coming up doesn't need to be there, because often the [pause]
If you're looking at traditional Japanese bonsai, they're all kind of just going out. They're not
going out and then up. But I don't have any issues with that. I kind of like it.
If I want to remove it, I can't remove it. I've got a branch just below it
that could suffice for coming out this direction instead of going up.
But I'm going to leave it for now. I don't think it looks ugly. I think it looks natural.
Even the trees above me have branches that come out and then up.
You may say that it's ugly,
but you don't have to make your tree like this.
I have this old piece of wire which I can unwind because it's not growing into the trunk.
If this were growing into the trunk, what you would do is use some wire cutters.
Which I do have down here. And you would use these to cut little sections
out of that wire and then take the sections out one at a time. That way you
avoid tearing bark. But since it wasn't biting into the the tree bark, unwind it.
Right off. We have this branch coming out this way where I had cut
this from last year. This is a little bit from this year. As well as this guy here.
I don't want this coming back into the tree and up. Could I wire it out?
I could, and I like the idea of doing that. There's nothing on this side of the tree.
I could wire this out in this direction or I could cut that off. It is showing
a tendency to grow upward. I could wire this one out which I might also do.
Alright, so this one's going straight up and at an angle that I'm not appreciating.
I'm gonna cut that off right there.
It's growing straight.
Straight straight straight,
from from this vantage. Now, if you're looking at it from here it's got
a little bit of an undulation but it's not as strong as say this going up here
and then going straight down. I kind of like that.
The diameter of this is also relatively the same all the way across and then it gets
a little bit smaller which is good but there's not any forking going on
either side. It's directly above this branch.
I can probably wire this one a little bit forward or backward
whereas I cannot with this top one which is still too heavy. It doesn't look bad,
this branch right here. It's got a little refinement to it, but I'm gonna go ahead
and cut that off... like that. There we go.
Cut these in half here and see if I can get a little bit more back budding.
There are some smaller leaves in there. I'm just gonna
leave them. They don't need to be cut in half, or you can pull them off if you want.
What I'd like to do is actually remove this branch end completely. The reason being
is that it's relatively straight in relation to the full branch and it doesn't
need to be. It's also about the same thickness as the rest of the branch.
I have a branch here, and one going this way. This one's still straight from the trunk.
I'm gonna just get rid of this growth here and hopefully encourage
these guys to continue growing. I'll peel that one off there. This nub might dry
out or it might produce new buds. I'll just remove them as soon as this branch is
set, which it should hopefully within another season.
This is still in training. You don't have to be super delicate with it.
There's not much growth happening in this area.
I could maybe wind this around, but then I'd have a pair of twin branches.
I don't want that. Maybe I can encourage this to grow a little bit more.
That's the tough thing with this particular hornbeam. It's not 100% the best material.
I wish I'd had more buds popping out, but I don't.
Cutting the leaves in half reduces the amount of sunlight that the tree is getting and it forces the tree
to put out new buds and new leaves.
If you have an area that's really really weak
like where this cut is, you can leave the leaf whole.
You don't have to cut them in half. Leave it whole, and that means that more sun is going to be
gathered by it, more energy, more sugars, the carbon in the air. It's
it's all going to be extracted and used by that leaf which just makes the rest
of that branch stronger behind it. Whenever you're doing anything like
pruning or needle reduction or leaf reduction, what you're doing is
stressing this tree out. You're forcing it to grow in a way that it's
capable of doing. It's able to tolerate it as long as it's healthy.
This is a healthy tree. That's the only reason I'm able to do the type of work that I'm
doing with this. It's because it's healthy. Another good reason for doing this,
as I mentioned before, it's just to make sure that your growth doesn't get too
wild on you. Whenever you're fertilizing, whenever the spring just has
this madcap growth rate that is really hard to control. Don't worry about
controlling it. Let it grow. I mean, you can pinch and you can prune a little bit
here and there, but by the time that these leaves start to harden off in the
late spring early summer is really a great time to catch those potential
mistakes for future growth, for future training, for future branch structures.
I'm catching all sorts of things are going up, down, left, right, that
I don't particularly want. Or that I particularly do, and so I get rid of the
other ones around it. I bet you're like "Man, you've taken off a lot!"
It's a healthy tree. I can do this.
Oh! It's gone!
You may notice on this tree that not all the branches are
laying down flat. If you look at a lot of older deciduous trees, they have branches
that are going out and then they fan upward. They don't all lay down much like
a spruce. These all raise up and then down. They're all trying to seek the
light in their own which way. So, these ones are laying down a little bit more
but if you look the ones coming out towards the top of the tree, they're
lifting up a little bit. That is okay because that's what they naturally do.
I'm gonna leave that for now although I am gonna shorten it down some.
I don't want it to going as far up as it has and
that's just a balance for my own aesthetic.
Just gonna finish shorting these up here at the top. It shouldn't take me
just a second and then we'll be done.
I have two competing tops, okay?
I've got a nice big fat fork right here and there, but I have to choose a direction.
Right now this thing is kind of going up toward me and then it goes
back and around. It's almost a little bit of a spiral. And that spiral has it
coming this way, which is good.
It is a bit more over the base of the tree which you often hear that you should have the
top of the tree over the base. That's it's a guideline. It's not necessarily a rule.
In this particular instance I do want that to happen. So I'm gonna go
ahead and eliminate the other side.
There we go
There are these other leaf buds right here that are gonna be able to
grow off and make another branch again we had this one below. You know what?
It's really not gonna hurt anything.
Okay, let's get to wiring. I'm gonna add just
a little bit of wire right here to bring this down. I don't want it going down much,
but also don't want it going too far before I wire it down because it's
it's stiff here on this back side from last year. What I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna
protect the branches. I'm gonna use a piece of rubber. This is rubber inner
tube from an old tire. I'm gonna put a piece of rubber around the back side here and
piece on top there to help fully protect this from wire bite which
happens very quickly during fast growth. This is aluminum wire. I'm not gonna be
wrapping it around the tree. I'm just gonna use it as a guide. I'm gonna start by
adding just down around the base.
I'm just gonna twist this up.
Okay. Not too tight. It doesn't need to be.
I could wire this all the way around and then bend it, but I'm doing it really loose.
And it's ugly. But, you know what? This is not a problem for me.
I believe, that in all things, you should practice your absolute best,
but there are some cases where mediocre is all right.
There. That's better.
Again, we just wrapped a little bit of rubber around here with some wire.
We wrapped some rubber and some wire up here,
and then all I did was just twist it here in the middle a little bit to
bring it back down. Worked out okay.
There you have it. Just a basic prune on
this hornbeam. I hope you like it. I hope that gives you some inspiration and some
understanding of when to do this type of work and for the reasons why you
do this type of work. Some of you have asked if I would show a little bit more of
the development process and not just the collection process. So here's a tree
that's been out on the ground for about three years, and this is what this stage
is been through so far. Anyway, it's pretty simple. I hope you like that that
would give you some inspiration to do this type of work on your own trees.
Especially if they're healthy. They should be healthy before you do this type of work.
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Thanks for watching!
[July 7, 2019]
[August 11, 2019]