videos on shaping quince clumps?

[badatusernames]

Ive basically reduced what was a nice flower arrangement with roots to rubble on a fairly common flowering quince after trying to figure out how the traditional quince clumps are formed. i figured it’d help me when i’m ready to tackle the chojubai.

turns out i have absolutely zero idea what i’m doing and am now regrowing a common flowering quince from virtually scratch, but, im not a flower arranger and it was bugging the hell out of me. so i guess maybe worth it.

since i’ve got some time on my hands, does anyone know of any videos showing how these clumps are formed during initial styling and throughout their life? I feel like I’m way off base and trying to reverse engineer something that already has an answer.

i’m also kind of pissed at myself because, well, it was turning into kind of a cool flower arrangement and i basically ended up nuking it. but nothing is permanent but death, i suppose.

 

[pweifan]

Sorry you're frustrated with your results. Do you have any before/after pictures? Also, I'm hoping you kept the trimmed branches as cuttings? Chaenomeles root from cuttings pretty well.

There are some articles on flowering quince that have been linked from this site pretty frequently. That said, I don't think I've ever seen a video dedicated to them.

 

[BobbyLane]

on any flowering species, you dont arrange flowers, you arrange branches.
if the branch structure is decent, it will look decent in flower too.
tons of quince images on google and pretty sure theres a few progressions on here, good place to start so you can see how branches are arranged

 

[BobbyLane]

i found this in secs. thats a quince.

 

[badatusernames]

Sorry you're frustrated with your results. Do you have any before/after pictures? Also, I'm hoping you kept the trimmed branches as cuttings? Chaenomeles root from cuttings pretty well.

There are some articles on flowering quince that have been linked from this site pretty frequently. That said, I don't think I've ever seen a video dedicated to them.

No, I don't, and tbh I think it's gonna sit on the back of my bench in shame for a bit til I forget about it a bit. I definitely kept the cuttings, so no worries there. Maybe once the pain recedes a little bit I'll start a thread. I'm not too burned up about it, but I don't really want to dwell on it right now if that makes sense.

on any flowering species, you dont arrange flowers, you arrange branches.
if the branch structure is decent, it will look decent in flower too.
tons of quince images on google and pretty sure theres a few progressions on here, good place to start so you can see how branches are arranged

Yeah, I was actually looking at the kokofu 95 book and seeing how they arranged trunks and branches, and that's actually what I was trying to accomplish - as it stood, it was really a bunch of sticks without much branching and a flower, and a good knotted rooty base to build something kind of wild on top of. It's possible this is what I needed to do anyways to really accomplish "bonsai". Like, as it stood, I guess it could have been called a a forest, and some branches were starting, but what I think it really needs is to be put in a grow pot and trained for several years with a final design in mind from the get-go. I feel like I was trying to throw the plant into reverse and gun it at high speed back to the last intersection, and that was no bueno.

I'll dig around for progression threads, that'll be helpful.

 

[BobbyLane]

some flowering species arent known for their ramification some ramify very poorly and are prized for their flower and fruit. thats something to consider and research into. from what ive seen, quince can get pretty dense and twiggy.

 

[LanceMac10]

We talkin' Japanese quince? Clump should be no problem. They throw suckers like crazy after a drastic prune. Not however, a good time to do it.

 

[badatusernames]

some flowering species arent known for their ramification some ramify very poorly and are prized for their flower and fruit. thats something to consider and research into. from what ive seen, quince can get pretty dense and twiggy.

I also have a hunch that there’s a reason I’m seeing a ton of THIS KIND of Japanes quince. It flowers once a year, is pricy enough to be worth a nursery selling, apparently common enough to find, easy to propagate, and people are asking for quince / chojubai.

I don’t know if that means it’s good for what I’m doing, or if it’s basically just a weird vine tbh.

ok fine here it is since we’re chatting. This is after I took off…. Well, maybe stuff I should not have taken off. It’s bad, I know. I removed most of the wires and hid it to let it grow somewhere I can’t be reminded of my fuckup

 

[badatusernames]

We talkin' Japanese quince? Clump should be no problem. They throw suckers like crazy after a drastic prune. Not however, a good time to do it.

Yeah

whups

it had uhhhhh a lot more going on before this picture

and yeah we don’t need to get into what else I was doing when I did this, but what you’re assuming is correct.

 

[badatusernames]

I’m looking at this now and feeling hopeful actually

it isn’t much but I do think there were some chops that needed to be made, and I’m looking forward to what I can do with it

 

[badatusernames]

This chojubai I was really thinking about is pretty damn happy tho

 

[badatusernames]

Seems like I chose the right species to absolutely destroy, already bouncing back even in a shallow pot. The chojubai remains largely unmolested.

 

[Maiden69]

This is the technique I am going to attempt once I am able to get some cuttings rooted. I just bought all the components necessary to build an EZ-Cloner clone to start working on soon to have something to do over the winter.

Onuma's mini-bonsai growing techniques - Bonsai Tonight

Growing techniques from Kazuo Onuma for developing chojubai, shimpaku juniper, and Japanese maple.

bonsaitonight.com

 

[badatusernames]

This is the technique I am going to attempt once I am able to get some cuttings rooted. I just bought all the components necessary to build an EZ-Cloner clone to start working on soon to have something to do over the winter.

Onuma's mini-bonsai growing techniques - Bonsai Tonight

Growing techniques from Kazuo Onuma for developing chojubai, shimpaku juniper, and Japanese maple.

bonsaitonight.com

Oh, this is interesting... I'm trying to envision how this would work functionally... does this sound right?

-Take cuttings (as many as about your desired trunk thickness)
-Let them root in lava rock (or do you root them first and then bind them together to keep them as close as possible?), let it get gnarly and potbound -
-Take bottom off of pot, put in colander with red lava rock, remove pot (probably let roots grow into colander before fully removing pot)
-Chop the emerging branches entirely
-Water as normal, red lava rock washes away, new trunk with new primary branches sits above the soil line as roots grow into colander
-Develop quince clump from new primary branches

Sorry to kind of repeat it back to you, I just want to make sure I understand.

 

[Cadillactaste]

Study styles you like. I make mental notes then see if any can be applied to my material.

I'm drawn to cascade clumps. This is my white chojubai...that I made back in what...maybe 2019 from five cuttings that came from Brent at Evergreen Gardenworks. Didn't have a recent image so grabbed one tonight.

White Chojubai cuttings to a cascade clump...

I couldn't locate a thread on these other than on a ten year post thread I joined in on. So...starting this for documentation. Five white chojubai cuttings from Brent at Evergreen Gardenworks. *He's got some really good material guys. He does no disapoint. Got them spring 2019...Put them...

www.bonsainut.com

 

[Maiden69]

Oh, this is interesting... I'm trying to envision how this would work functionally... does this sound right?

-Take cuttings (as many as about your desired trunk thickness) - you could do many, I think he uses only one. All the branching you see is the chojubai suckers from the roots that develop as the roots are exposed
-Let them root in lava rock, let it get gnarly and potbound - I know Jonas states several years, but I think you can achieve that many roots in one season
-Take bottom off of pot, put in colander with red lava rock, remove pot (let roots grow into colander before fully removing pot)
-Chop the emerging branches entirely - depending on the size you want, remember he is making mame/shohin trees so he don't want thick branching
-Water as normal, red lava rock washes away, new trunk with new primary branches sits above the soil line as roots grow into colander
-Develop quince clump from new primary branches

Remember Japanese quince is a brush, and its basally dominant so it will develop suckers to grow wider. That's how he develops his clumps. I pondered using quite a few cuttings to achieve the same at a bigger scale, which will provide something close to the results he get.

 

[Cadillactaste]

I also would like to point out...I see flowering quince (Chaenomeles speciosa) totally different than say, a clump of trident. I think they are more forgiving with one understanding the characteristics and what is acceptable. You won't get girth and amazing taper. You may get some taper. But you have to work within the ability of the species you have at hand. After studying clumps myself...they are their own nugget to admire.

 

[badatusernames]

Looking at Bjorns today has me fairly convinced the answer is largely hard chops and time which I think others have said either here or elsewhere in the forum.

I have some ideas based on that for mine

 

[Mike Westervelt]

According to Michael Hagedorn, who has hundreds of chojubai, all his clumps are created from a single plant.

He says they take a while, but once they develop a large root mass they start to sucker, you decide which and how many to keep.

Then they wires only the initial trunks, first inch or two, and thereafter almost exclusively use directional pruning 2-3 time per year to induce movement.

I'd strongly encourage anyone interested in developing chojubai to search the blog at crataegus.com, there a lots of good posts about them.

 

[badatusernames]

According to Michael Hagedorn, who has hundreds of chojubai, all his clumps are created from a single plant.

He says they take a while, but once they develop a large root mass they start to sucker, you decide which and how many to keep.

Then they wires only the initial trunks, first inch or two, and thereafter almost exclusively use directional pruning 2-3 time per year to induce movement.

I'd strongly encourage anyone interested in developing chojubai to search the blog at crataegus.com, there a lots of good posts about them.

Thank you I will!