5yr Native Tree & Pot Challenge - COclimer89's Western Sand Cherry "Pawnee Buttes" (Prunus Besseyi)

[COclimber89]

I became aware of these contests recently and thought, "I'll be a season behind everyone but why not?" Picked this Western Sand Cherry up from my local nursery. Assuming I can't do much with this besides keeping it healthy until next spring, I will wait until the buds start to swell and then prune it waaaay back, leaving a branch (shortened) as the new trunk line, plus a couple sacrifice branches up high. Work on new trunk, branches and ramification through 2023, repot in spring 2024, continue developing for ramification, cut the sacrifices early 2025, get as refined as possible in 2025 for final submission (photos in flower, fully flushed, and in fall colors/fruiting).

If anyone has any thoughts, this is my first deciduous bonsai so I'd be very open to suggestions. Haven't seen the nebari yet but went feeling for it and it seems like there's a decent start down there. I'm a little concerned about most of the branches coming from the same whorl, which makes me want to hard prune a few of them... but doing so now would probably weaken the tree, yes? I should wait until next spring, shouldn't I?

Thanks, I'll post updates if I do any work.

 

[Keithconn]

Awesome. I too just stumbled upon this thread. I was so excited thinking it just started but am willing to dive in. Good luck n

 

[COclimber89]

Since no one gave me any advice I decided to make the bold (stupid?) decision to do some hard pruning back on the 7th. I had had to cut a couple stems back on old wood already anyway because they had broken on a windy day, and upon doing so had no sap weepage, so I figured may as well try and see how it goes. All the new foliage had hardened off, at least.

So I removed a number of undesirable branches and sealed the wounds, identified my front and chose a style (semi-cascade), chose my major cascading branch as well as a vertical trunk line for counter balance. Left them unpruned, so they can keep lengthening and thicken up some. Everything else got pruned back to 2-3 leaves. Then did a bit of wiring to start setting the structure (see first photo).

Then left town on Thursday, crossing my fingers that my new irrigation system would keep everyone happy through the weekend. Back today, and this thing is backbudding like MAD (see other photos).

Gonna let the new shoots emerge and elongate before pruning a bit again later in the season. I left a few primary branches off my chosen trunk lines unpruned, I might select a couple of sacrifice branches and prune the others back, not sure yet. Will be watching wires closely for any signs of digging in, I probably won't really leave them on all that long.

I think I quite like this tree!