Maintenance pruning

[Kae]

So, I'm looking for some basic advice on pruning. I'm a beginner.

First, I've looked at many videos online and even read a book I have on bonsai, but most of the advice on pruning out there seems to be what to do when the plant is really wildly grown and how to bring it down to a more bonsai-level.

I'm looking for specifically how to prune those small sprouts that come here and there and how to keep the leaves small. I'm talking about the details and the everyday (or something like every week, actually) pruning.

In the pictures are a couple of ficus trees I have that grow pretty easily and actively. For the tree on the left, the branches are pretty much where I want them, but the leaves are a bit too big. As you can see on the tree on the right, the branch to the right has pretty nice, thick growth of leaves of a size I like. I want to get the other branches there. Which sprouting branches would you cut and where?

Thanks beforehand for your replies!

 

[leatherback]

I think you will find it much easier to work the trees when they are healthier, which means, let them grow. All bonsai need aphase of good growth and then be brought back. Most of the year trees look scruffy.

As for reducing leaves.. That will happen as the tree ramifies. Forramification you need absolute health, after which you can prune growing tips and leaves so budding occurs on the branches.

 

[sorce]

Welcome to Crazy!

Sorce

 

[Paradox]

I am going to echo what Leatherback stated.
This tree needs to grow and increase the number of shoots and leaves before you should be pruning it back.
As it is, there isnt enough to prune.

 

[Kae]

doesn't that mean that i'm letting the tree grow branches that i know i'll prune anyway, and thereby it wastes energy it could spend on other branches, that are there to stay?

 

[leatherback]

Where do you think the energy comes from?

If you want to grow bonsai you need to let gow of the idea that you grow things that waste energy. It is a constant switch between letting it grow stronger and pruning back to get the results you want.

 

[Forsoothe!]

doesn't that mean that i'm letting the tree grow branches that i know i'll prune anyway, and thereby it wastes energy it could spend on other branches, that are there to stay?

Yes. I tip prune many times a year, whenever something threatens to grow outside of my mental picture of the desired canopy. Smaller leaves are a product of having more leaves growing than would if you weren't constantly driving the foliage inward by tip pruning and denuding. Wood is accumulated as a result of having leaves, the more leaf surface, the more wood grown. If you tip prune buds that are elongating instead of chopping off branches, you accumulate more wood. You can also increase the number of leaves by denuding ~once a year, or so. I remove all leaves when I put them outdoors in early May and tip prune at that time, too. After the new canopy has hardened off about the end of June it can be done again, but not twice a year every year. Each time that is done you force the tree to use all its resources to put up a new canopy. The new May canopy would be a replacement of the old canopy anyway and makes all the leaves the same size and a little smaller, but since the tree has not had a whole growing season to rebuild its resources the June canopy will have smaller leaves. By tip pruning every terminal bud you force the tree to activate more tertiary (interior) buds so the whole canopy is tighter, smaller, the same size and will look nice through the whole winter indoors. Sooner or later the leaves get small and so close together that making them smaller and more dense would be counter-productive and you stop for some number of years. Then, just growing it on and keeping the canopy shape in bounds with tip pruning, removing the occasional big leaf, and general editing leads to perfection of the whole image. They get better and better without denuding in June at all and only denuding at the end of winter when the tree goes out in the sun.