Developing Maple Bonsai trees

Good afternoon and welcome to our garden, the International Bonsai Arboretum in Rochester, New York. First I'd like to congratulate Oscar Junker and Bonsai Empire for providing excellent, valuable and authoritative information for the bonsai world. Thank you Oscar. First we have to talk about developed trees and undeveloped trees because everything is different. The trunk is most important. This tree, this is a trident maple. It's got a nice trunk. This was field grown for about 10 years and I've been training it for 40 years. It was about 15 feet tall as you can see in the first picture in May 1980. It was cut back to a trunk and allowed to grow. Four feet, cut it back, four feet, cut it back and this is how it developed. The photograph is October 2012 and the other photograph is November 2012. Now what's interesting with this, field grown, I grew it to develop the trunk. All the branches are the same age, every single one. But notice this bigger one, the lowest one is heavier. That was allowed to grow several feet. Once it got this great thickness, I cut it back. This is by drastic pruning. Some people call that a trunk chop but that's street talk. The correct term is drastic pruning. So this is 40 years in development in the bonsai town. I cut it down, grew it up. Well this one, same species, this is a trident from a young seedling. I've had it in a pot over 35 years. I had a couple dozen and I selected two or three, kept those, kept selecting, selecting, selecting and finally I kept this one. So this was grown up, that was cut down. Bonsai by subtraction, bonsai by addition. Two totally different concepts. It's got nice roots, doesn't it? As you look at my maples, you'll notice almost all of them are in oval containers, mostly with outer lip glazed. That's my taste. Okay, when you start, especially from small ones, you need to shape the trunk. Here's a young trident maple. It's a one, two, three, three or four year seedling. We're just getting it established in this pot using a very coarse soil mix and you can see roots all the way up and down. That indicates good watering. If you only water from the top a little, all the roots develop here. So to drastically prune this for a bonsai, where do you think we cut? A couple different places. We cut it to here. We can allow this one to grow. That's okay. We saw this long stretch. You might get some shoots in there but it's better if we go this way. Notice I'm making a horizontal cut and large cuts bigger than my thumb. I like to seal it with a bit of cut paste. Anything to seal it to keep out air and maintain the moisture. So we can also go, this branch is a bit heavy, so that's the beginning of a trident maple. Next, here's a Japanese maple with the dwarf seedling. It's about this tall and it was cut down once. This is one year's growth but if you take a look, look how small the twigs are and how close the internodes are. It's developing quite nice. Now if you want a larger bonsai, leave it like this. On a smaller tree, we can cut it smaller but when you get to this stage, while they're still young, is the best time to weigh the branches. Actually this branch is a little bit too heavy for the top of the tree. You see the one here? There's a bud here and a bud in the back. You want everything heavy, remove only down low. There's a bunch of branches in here. For younger plants, when they're first being trained, I like to leave extra branches. I'll leave opposite branches for a while. Okay, so I'm just going to wire two branches down a little. This is training wire. This isn't exhibition. Wire it towards yourself. It's easier just to give it a start but you're always going to have a straight trunk here. Now that's a probably four year seedling of a dwarf radian. In my garden, I don't know if you can see it, but there's a rough bark Japanese seedling and really in color. That's one of my cuttings about 40-45 years old. Each year produces seeds. For every other year, my wife, Diane, gathers the seeds, cuts the taproot off, and does seedling cuttings. In one of my blogs, I think in May 2018-2019, we have complete directions. But here's one of those seedlings. This is a three-year-old seedling. Okay, now it was pinched once here. Two, three, it's been trimmed four times. But now the trunk is interesting but perhaps it's added a little bit more movement. This is a time where old leaves come off. You don't want to leave the leaves out during the winter. There might be bugs or disease. So there's the structure of the tree. Got a few roots. I see some bumps coming here. So perhaps this one will develop some rough bark. If it does, the rough bark should develop on the entire tree and the surface roots. Oftentimes rough bark Japanese maples are grafted onto smooth seedlings. My large one in the garden is one of my cuttings. You can't see it here, but there's a surface root about three feet all covered with the rough bark. I think we can get a bit more movement in the trunk. Now this is for shaping, developing bonsai. I normally do this in spring, late winter. A little nubs. I got lucky, right? No, it's almost 60 years experience. No, I don't think I can bend it. Need another piece of wire because the bottom is a bit heavy. Sometimes I'd rather have two pieces of wire than one heavier piece. Now if you do this wiring in spring, you have to watch very carefully because maples grow very quickly and it might cut in two or three weeks. Notice I'm using my finger. This way, wiring is a temporary training technique to shape trees. And when you're just training for yourself in your own garden, put the wire on. If you're going to show it to people, then you wire it differently, exhibitionally. Since this isn't going to last long, the important thing is that it holds the branch and the trunk. This is a Japanese style pliers. Notice you need only at the tip, so all the pressure is concentrated, the power is concentrated. We can go like that. Now we've got a couple of branches. And as I mentioned, for young developing trees, I like to leave extra branches. Okay, a couple are heavier. This is number 12 copper wire. 14 would do too. Try not to cross, but if you do, don't tell anyone. Up and over. Once and you stop. Now for a developed tree, when you do this, you might be showing it or taking it for a critique of the class. So you might want to do a little bit neater wire. I'm holding it here. If you put the wire on correctly, and the right size, it holds. I want to get this one down, holding it here, and put some wiggle in it. All right. Put another piece of wire. We're going to trim the tree a little bit. This is a four-inch pot in very coarse soil into a gallon can, like an eight-inch pot, for a couple years. But since it's going to grow fast, you need to watch the wire. There's a lot of wire on the top of this tree, and that's where it'll start biting in quickly. Ideally, it shouldn't bite in. So you're looking at the front. Put a piece of wire on there. Even if you're not going to use the branch, give it a little bit of shape. This isn't the sacrifice branch. If this were a sacrifice branch, the best way, I don't have any here, I'll show you. I can tell you about it. To use a sacrifice branch, let one branch go wild. No leaves until the end. And you train it up and over. Get it away from the tree so it gets full sun. Ideally, it should be in the back of the plant. This is for deciduous trees. If this were a pine tree, then what I would do is let one grow in the back, maybe two, maybe three years. Then I'd cut it off and train a new one. Keep replacing, because you're going to get too big of a scar. Notice the branch is getting shorter. Basically, when you're developing trees, you want to get as much growth as possible. They're heavily fertilized, allowed to grow wild. Whereas for a developed tree, which I'll show you later, you want to maintain the shape. Cut back on the fertilizer and maintain more trimming. We cut at this angle. Now that's from the front, side view going towards the front. And top view, there's branches all the way around the tree. Try not to have one above another. So this is the initial shaping for young bonsai. Now, I showed you about this one. This is a dwarf seedling. This is a common seedling of Japanese maple. But you can see how many times it's been cut back. One, two, three, five times. It's healed already. Callus tissue. And if you notice the callus tissue, we make the wound long, elliptical, pointed at the top and at the bottom. So as the water and carbohydrates come up and down, they'll go around the wound. And it recovers much quicker. So this is for a small shohin bonsai. I grew these for a workshop. Okay. So basically, developing bonsai, you want to encourage growth. Develop over here, you want to maintain the growth. This has been grown in a container for about 35 years. This was field grown to develop the trunk and develop the branches in the container. It's very difficult to grow the branches in the field. They grow too fast. This is a Sagan Japanese maple. Brain is a cascade. You notice there's a lot of curves, a lot of movement in every branch in the trunk. It's magnificent in spring. This is a cultivar Sagan. So is this one. This one generally doesn't turn bright red, only in spring, fire engine red. And it's got a good shape, nice roots. It's got two fronts in the tree. I don't know if you can see it, but there's a lot of guy branches here, guy wires. I use a lot of guy wires. And my technique, I just put it on. I don't worry about cutting it because I change it once a year. Okay. So the young trees let them grow. There's three types of pruning, drastic pruning, seasonal pruning. Okay. For the seasonal pruning, whenever it grows too long, you cut it off. Now, look at this one. We missed one. It's very difficult when you have such densely potted trees. Look at this one. Usually I do this operation in spring. It grows, you cut it back. It grows, you cut it back. That's seasonal pruning. The third type of pruning is thinning out. And I have photographs of this how it was thinned out before and after. You might say when you're looking at the photograph that it looked pretty good, but it has to be thinned out. You got to go back in spring, after winter, hopefully in May, and I'll cut back all these back to one bud to maintain the shape. But by that time, all the new buds will be red so you can easily see. I do that in winter, late winter. Here's another dwarf variety of maple. That's called Keoheme. That grows horizontal, horizontal. It's a cutting I started over at least 30 years ago. And it's got a nice trunk, but I need a branch in the back. I couldn't get one to shoot there. And what I did is, in our traffic, I'd like to thank Mark Arpeg for filming this. What I did is I took a stapler, use a staple gun, here, here, and here, and over there. When this piece becomes thicker, I'll cut this piece off. But where it is doesn't bother me. That's in our traffic. You can also drill a hole. I've done that before. I can show you that one later. Now, maples have different growth patterns. This one is horizontal. It grows this way. Another one, Kotoheme, grows upright. So it's a challenge to get lower branches horizontal. Okay, another type of trimming is defoliation. So I'm going to show you that. Okay, there are two types of defoliation. Partial defoliation and total defoliation. This Katsura, Japanese maple, was totally defoliated. You'll see there's a photograph of it in spring and in summer, in June. After it was defoliated, I thinned it out, cut back branches, and then it started leaking out in spring and late summer. So here it is here. This tree is still in development. It's still got big heavy branches. Many should be removed. Totally defoliated. Mark, can you get the big tree? The big tree in the garden is also Katsura. Same age as this one. Maybe 30. I forgot. Okay, so this is tree in training. A developed bonsai like this, this is a bit of history. That's a common Japanese maple. 120 years cultivated in containers by tender loving care. Count Matsudaira in Japan. He's the one that started Chōhin Bonsai, and he's one of the originators of the Kokufu Bonsai Exhibition. This was originally one of his. I feel very lucky and fortunate to have him. Now, I grafted this branch in this branch, in arch bracket. Let it grow long and turned it around. Okay, this is an old tree, and I'm trying to get new shoots inside to keep it young and healthy, the branches. So on June 10th, we partially defoliated. On June 26th, you can see the new growth coming. We'll put in July, and in August, add nice fresh leaves, all the same size. Now, this tree next to it is not a small bonsai. This is the variety Kotohin. It's an air layer off another tree, about 30 years old. The dwarf cultivars don't like to be leaf cut, but they've got small leaves to begin with. So this, I let it grow and cut it back, and spring thin it out. So you got total defoliation and partial defoliation, depending on the species. The tree in front of me is a shoujo maple. It comes out brilliant red, and we trimmed it a couple of times and let it grow. See long shoots here? In spring, we'll cut them off before they start. You can see I already missed on purpose to give it more vigor. It's a nice tree. It gives a lot of people pleasure. I talked about shaping younger trees. Here's a young common Japanese maple, which my wife, Diane, she got some seedlings, and she put some curves in it. Unfortunately, we took the wire off before it cut in. Now, these will be wired down, and probably this will be cut off with a concave spoon to create a new top. Maybe this one too. Keep replacing the top. You want the top thin and the bottom long. These will be wired down. Okay, another type of defoliation is at this time of the year, you don't want to put your trees away. Those who do put the trees, protect them from winter, put leaves on. It becomes messy. Leaves can harbor diseases, pests, and you want to take them off. Here's a shishigashira forest, maple forest. These are all air layers off the same tree, so when it comes time like this, you see they're all dry. You can brush them off gently. Use your fingers, but if you see behind me, we have a lot of trees, a lot of maples, so we have a special tool to help us do that. That gets most of these, but you got to be very gentle with the buds. Now you can see the true beauty of the tree. It's no wonder you see most of the big shows in Japan in winter and in autumn, so you can see the structure, and it's a bit more difficult to grow deciduous trees than evergreens. Evergreen trees, you can hide a lot of stuff, but you can't hide anything on deciduous trees. It's naked, so you can enjoy its beauty. This will take maybe 15-20 minutes to totally clean up. Here's one. One of my friends just pollinated yesterday. You can see the buds, and with this type of a maple, it's got to thin out the buds. Here's a kashima maple from a cutting. Interesting, the cutting is about 45 years old, and so is the container, so they're matched in quality and age. Here's a trident maple. It's got nice roots. This trident maple is growing over a rock, but you can't see the rock. It completely engulfed it, and here's another kashima Japanese maple cutting. One of my students started the cutting in one of my classes. She grew it in a box for a few years, and when she got kind of elbowy, she couldn't take care of it. I got it back and continued its shape. So I hope I answered the questions that you asked. Basically, you got to do developed trees or undeveloped trees. Developed trees are more drastic with your trimming, more persistent. Undeveloped trees, you want to get the trunk shape, let the branches go, and cut it back, and as I showed you, you can do a large tree drastically pruned or small tree and grow it up. I hope you enjoyed my garden. I hope I answered your questions.