General guide for mid-spring work?

[Scrogdor]

I'm getting a little lost as to when to prune/ if I should wire maples in the spring. Or some links to good educational videos of mid-spring work if anyone has some recommendations. Dealing with shoots that go straight up confuses me a little bit as well. Are these just cut, or wired in the spring, or is it best to wait until fall to wire them?

I understand repotting/ major structural pruning, it's the ramification that is confusing me.

Thanks

 

[BrianBay9]

You should consider checking out the East Bay Bonsai Society ( https://www.eastbaybonsai.org/ ). They meet in Oakland at Lake Merrit. You'll bet more thorough answers in you take your tree and get some hands on advice.

 

[dbonsaiw]

I'm getting a little lost as to when to prune/ if I should wire maples in the spring. Or some links to good educational videos of mid-spring work if anyone has some recommendations. Dealing with shoots that go straight up confuses me a little bit as well. Are these just cut, or wired in the spring, or is it best to wait until fall to wire them?

I understand repotting/ major structural pruning, it's the ramification that is confusing me.

I'm generally in the same boat, so take this with a grain of salt. And I really only work with deciduous. I will generally wire when I need to wire. If I have a choice, I'll do it in early spring because I can still see the branches, and will otherwise keep an eye on the wire during the growing season so it doesn't bite into the branch. I personally don't wire in the winter because I don't really do anything with my trees in winter and want the trees to be growing when I muck with them. I tend to do all my repots and some heavy pruning in the early spring.

As for work done in the mid-spring/early-summer:
Heavy chops
airlayers
Random pruning

My understanding is simple pruning can be done at any time. If, however, what you are looking for is to ramify the branches, you will let the first flush of foliage harden off and then prune back to a few bud pairs in the late spring and let the tree grow a second flush and ramify. Rinse, lather and repeat every year.

 

[Shibui]

Dealing with shoots that go straight up confuses me a little bit as well. Are these just cut, or wired in the spring, or is it best to wait until fall to wire them?

As usual, it depends.
Mostly I just cut straight up shoots close to the base. Whenever you cut shoots of maples new buds will grow around the base, sometimes lots of them. As these new buds develop choose 1 that's growing close to the desired direction and trim off all others.
Occasionally I wire out upright shoots. The earlier the better, esp if you want the bend right up close to the trunk. They soon harden up and getting a good exit angle becomes almost impossible.
I discovered I could get a better trunk/ branch angle by taking very young, flexible shoots, bending them down and placing the tips under the pot to hold in place. In just a week or 2 those shoots have set in place. This won't give good branch structure of bends in other directions but it will set up that important branch/trunk angle and I'll normally chop back to first node later in summer to start ramification and taper anyway.
Wiring young shoots is more problems than it is worth as they thicken so fast it's almost impossible not to get wire marks.

By fall those shoots will be too hard to do more than gentle bends so definitely need to get on with it earlier.

Also depends if the tree has been recently root pruned or in poor health. In both cases it pays to leave all growth to help feed new roots and chop later when the tree is vigorous again.

 

[Dav4]

This thread has more info on developing maples then any other single thread here. Lots to digest but worth the effort.

Ebihara maples

Over the years Jonas Dupuich has written some very nice articles about some of Mr. Ebihara's techniques in growing Japanese maple. Here's one example. http://bonsaitonight.com/2009/02/14/ebihara/ Jonas talked about a number of grafting techniques and how Ebihara developed these beautiful...

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