Colorado Blue Spruce Chop Advice?

[dallin_hubb]

Hello all! I just picked up this little guy and I don't want to make the same mistakes I've made with my other trees and jump into things before I have as much knowledge as possible. I've recently been admiring the 6 year JBP contest thread by Ryceman3 and it taught me a LOT about how you can grow a tree into a bonsai as quickly as possible, but that was with JBP and not Spruce, so I'm wondering if the same techniques could still work. I was planning to let the tree continue to grow a long sacrifice branch, and in order to keep that growing upwards while also not letting the foliage closest to the base die off, I was thinking of chopping the branches near the middle and just keep the top branches and bottom branches, as shown in the images. I'm not sure how I would go about creating more movement in the trunk though, so some advice about that would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

P.s. The images of the bottom foliage should be going in a circle, counter clock-wise!

 

[Potawatomi13]

Keep upper tree for a sacrifice and when trunk big enough cut back to first branch and develop from there for better trunk movement. In the meantime remove other lower branches up to upper sacrifice area and be developing that first branch as the future tree.

 

[dallin_hubb]

Keep upper tree for a sacrifice and when trunk big enough cut back to first branch and develop from there for better trunk movement. In the meantime remove other lower branches up to upper sacrifice area and be developing that first branch as the future tree.

Ooh, so you can chop it just as drastically as I've seen with like maples and stuff? Nice!

 

[stubmle]

Ooh, so you can chop it just as drastically as I've seen with like maples and stuff? Nice!

I wouldn't go quite that hard... a maple you can cut back to a leafless stump and it will recover. You can remove a lot of material from evergreen conifers, but if you totally defoliate them they will usually die. You have to cut back to existing foliage. I would recommend you read about sacrifice branches & how they work before you start cutting.

Also consider looking at progression threads for blue spruce- there are a good number on the site, though I don't know if any started as nursery stock. Good luck!

 

[dallin_hubb]

I wouldn't go quite that hard... a maple you can cut back to a leafless stump and it will recover. You can remove a lot of material from evergreen conifers, but if you totally defoliate them they will usually die. You have to cut back to existing foliage. I would recommend you read about sacrifice branches & how they work before you start cutting.

Also consider looking at progression threads for blue spruce- there are a good number on the site, though I don't know if any started as nursery stock. Good luck!

Yeah I have done only bit of research about sacrifice branches, so I'll have to read up more. Do you know of any good progression threads with Colorado Blue Spruce? I haven't really been able to find any good ones

 

[River's Edge]

Ooh, so you can chop it just as drastically as I've seen with like maples and stuff? Nice!

I think if you reread the advice given by Potawatomi13 said: you will recognize some differences in the approach and also expect the timeline to be much longer.
If there is a bit of movement in the lowest part of the trunk selecting which branch to keep in the first whorl might make a difference. Also if the first whorl is reasonably high up you may wish to select one for new leader and one for primary branch. Wiring one up and one down. In that case it helps to select one a bit higher than the other to eventually make the cut on a bit of an angle.