Pruning an Azalea... I need your help, please :)

[bonsaifromscratch]

Hello everyone,

As I wait for Spring, I am thinking of pruning my first bonsai. I got this Azalea last year at Home Depot and let it stay in its container since then. It looks like it is already forming flower buds. I am going to let it bloom and prune it after it's finished flowering.

I have two pictures here. The second picture shows my plan for pruning it. After that, I plan on trimming the roots to repot it in a bonsai pot. Any advice, feedback, or suggestions would be really helpful. Thank you!

 

[edprocoat]

Perhaps it would be better to let it grow for a few years, unless you want a very small plant. Azaleas grow sort of slow and this is a young one. You may be able to wire a little movement into the fine branches but if you leave them alone and fertilize it heavy the more the branches grow the thicker the trunk will become. If you prune it now it will take a while to recover and not get much growth on it this year. Its easier and quicker to trim back a large plant down into a decent Bonsai than to trim a small young plant and try to grow it into a decent bonsai. The trunk thickness is what gives it the appearance of age.

ed

 

[bonsaifromscratch]

Thank you for your feedback. Should I transplant it to a bigger container? I am unsure about transplanting it outdoors since it would be difficult to protect in winter (zone 5b) and also the soil may not be as acidic as it could be.

 

[edprocoat]

Slipping it into a larger pot would give it more room to grow out and would be a good idea. You could use a colander as they air prune the roots at the edges where exposed to the air and keep them from circling. You could make a grow box out of wood too. There are tons of examples here, I have one in a thread I posted about some apple trees I chopped, I used a screen for the bottom to keep the roots from growing down too much, its here in B-Nut at http://bonsainut.com/forums/showthread.php?13865-Apple-trees-! This is just one example for you to consider. these have a nice enough trunk for what I want, I am working on the branches right now.

ed

 

[CHUCHIN]

Thank you for your feedback. Should I transplant it to a bigger container? I am unsure about transplanting it outdoors since it would be difficult to protect in winter (zone 5b) and also the soil may not be as acidic as it could be.

Stick it in the ground and give it a few years to mature

 

[edprocoat]

Most Azaleas are USDA zone 6-8, maybe planting it in the ground might not be the best idea in Illinois. There are some cold hardy cultivars of Azalea too, but you would have to be certain which one you have in zone 5b. I guess you could build a cold frame and mulch it in to survive the winter. When regular azaleas freeze they will die down to the ground and resprout from the roots basically starting over but in your zone the roots may die off too.

ed

 

[Mellow Mullet]

Choose some branches the you want to keep for now and wire them for shape. Wait until after it blooms to prune. you can remove it from its pot and remove 30% of the roots in the spring, then plant it into a larger and shallower container. It will take years to gain any kind of girth on the trunk, even if you plant it in the ground, so take a good look at it and try to plan what will make it look its best.

John

 

[Harunobu]

Well, he needs to select a trunk and get rid of all those branches that are just as big or even bigger than his trunk line. If he just lets this grow he gets a plant with 20 trunks, or rather 20 branches and no trunks at all.

Imo, he needs to cut it back, which takes 2 or 3 years. Then he needs to grow the trunk, which may take 10 years.
He should cut back almost all branches to the first leaves at start of the growing season. Then do it again after the azalea recovers.
Don't want till after it blooms. Just wastes time. No idea what the logic behind it is to do it after flowering. He wants to see the flowers?

I would go for the same trunk line as in his picture.
I would definitely prune those two branches he left. Even more so because they come from the same node. They will cause reverse taper in 3 years.
But the really thin branches he does have on that trunk line, he can leave on. There's that one that is thin and grows the 'wrong way'. I'd leave that because it doesn't cause reverse taper any year soon but helps build the trunk.

Then he will eventually get a trunk that is the right taper, has some thickness. But movement will be a problem and I think with this cultivar it is hard to get that fine growth that we see on satsuki bonsai. This cultivar likes to grow long internodes. All shoots that do backbud will elongate fast and be sparsely foliaged. Shoots that are going to be weak will never appear in the first place. So fewer buds and twigs but those that are there will have long internodes.

You can see very well the growth habit of this one. It has no foliage on a branch but then suddenly grows 5 or 6 sidebranches from a node.
This means that for this cultivar once the trunk is finished it is very important to prune new growth back to two branches with each 2 leaves.

 

[Mellow Mullet]

Imo, he needs to cut it back, which takes 2 or 3 years. Then he needs to grow the trunk, which may take 10 years.
He should cut back almost all branches to the first leaves at start of the growing season. Then do it again after the azalea recovers.
Don't want till after it blooms. Just wastes time. No idea what the logic behind it is to do it after flowering. He wants to see the flowers?

Well, that is one of the main reasons why we grow azaleas, the flowers right? As far as growth habit, I think more about that can be determined after training is started. The current branching is a result of pruning at the nursery for landscaping.

 

[jkd2572]

We like them for flowers yes, but if I were going to cut back hard and I mean no leaves left I would remove all flower buds in the spring before I do it. Flowing wastes energy. I plan on doing this to one this spring taking a 3 foot plant down to a 4 inch tall trunk with numbs to start branches. It will be a little guy.

 

[Mellow Mullet]

If you cut it back to just some nubs, then I would imagine that there would be no buds left on it anyway. I usually leave a couple of them just to enjoy them. There really is no waste of energy on the flowers, it is what the plant does and is supposed to do.

 

[jkd2572]

So what do you think about leaving all the buds on the 40 year old satsuki every year in my avatar? Honest question, because I'm still learning about azaleas. Everything I have read says you should not let them bloom every year to save up strength.

 

[Mellow Mullet]

First, I am not trying to be sarcastic, an "know it all", or anything like that. Just giving an opinion on something that I am passionate about, Azaleas.

That being said, the only thing that I know is what I have learned through personal observation, I, too, love azaleas and have been working with them. I also live in Mobile, AL, whose moniker is the "Azalea City", everybody grows then, not as bonsai, but in landscape. If the plant is healthy, there is no reason not to let it go through its natural cycle and bloom. If you pull off the buds, it does not automatically say, "oh well, I have no buds to flower so I guess I will grow foliage". I have some that I have let bloom and some that I have slaughtered with hard cut-backs and they both produced the same amount of foliage. Also, there is a member of our club who studied in Japan and worked a lot on azaleas, he said the they never cut the buds off for any reason. So, if I had a 40 year old azalea, I would let it bloom, every year. To not do it would be kinda like getting up on Christmas morning and throwing all of the presents away before opening them. Let those buds open.

 

[Neli]

Another option if you dont want to wait:
It flowered yesterday. Mame azalea:

 

[dick benbow]

I read thru all the posts and was amazed at the different well intentioned opinions. I think that's the challenge in any hobby chatline, being able to discern what makes sense.
You said this was your first bonsai, so I'm thinking you want to work with it in a pot rather then stick it in the ground.
A safe soil to use is kanuma, it's PH and water retention properties make it perfect for your tree. BTW there is a pecking order of when to begin spring work. It has to do with leaf size.
Always start with the smaller leaf varieties first and leave the thicker ones till later. In my neck of the woods (seattle) mid februaru is the usual time for small leafed varieties and early march for the bigger leaves.
Because your trunk is so straight, I think a more formal, type pruning approach my work.
Young plants are aggressive growers and tend to out distance their limbs in proportion to the trunk. So it means to give them scale (proportions) t helps to lower their height and scale back their width.
Keep thinning inside to allow them to breath.

 

[Dav4]

So what do you think about leaving all the buds on the 40 year old satsuki every year in my avatar? Honest question, because I'm still learning about azaleas. Everything I have read says you should not let them bloom every year to save up strength.

By the time a flower bud sets, 99% of the energy involved in flowering has already been spent, so removing those buds really doesn't spare anything other then the enjoyment of the tree in bloom. However, a satsuki in full bloom will have most of its leaves covered by flowers for at least a week or more and this is an energy drain. With this in mind, I'll let my satsuki bloom every year but I'll remove ALL the flowers right after the peak. For me, it seems to work but others will disagree.

 

[Harunobu]

Removing flower buds is a waste of time. Bonsai people are super perfectionist and ritualistic so they remove one needle at a time from 200 large pine bonsai.

Azalea people are a lot more casual. They don't care for the facade of a superior tradition. They just do what is practical.

Only time when they remove flower buds is to reduce the number when an azalea goes on show. If it's too densely packed then it doesn't look as good.

Well you get different opinions when there are people who suggest he wire up the larger branches and put them in place. Never touched an azalea.

 

[Neli]

In Japan, flower buds are removed 30-50% as soon as they are seen not to exhaust the tree. I do that too.I remove the flower as soon as it lost its petals, if I have left any flowers at all. I let it rest some years.

 

[Harunobu]

At whose satsuki nursery did you see that?

Removing spend flowers is something completely different to removing flower buds in autumn. Which one are you talking about?

 

[Mellow Mullet]

Well you get different opinions when there are people who suggest he wire up the larger branches and put them in place. Never touched an azalea.

Are you saying that you have never touched and azalea?

John O. Lee