Japanese Maple ARAKAWA Late Spring Pruning - Arlefthos Bonsai
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While this maple is still actively growing, evident by the fresh new growth in the tips
of every new shoot, my aracawa that woke up 2 weeks earlier than the other maples seems
to be done with this spring growth.
So this is my preferred time to prune the new growth of the season and the best time
to take softwood cuttings and do air layers as well.
Unfortunately it seems that I've lost one of the 2 root grafts I did 2 months ago and
it is the most important one out of the 2 so it looks like I have to do this one again
in 9 months.
So what I'm doing now is prune all of the new growth back to 1 or 2 set of leaves, except
the branches that I need to elongate.
This late spring pruning of broadleaf deciduous trees is so important that without it it would
be very difficult if not impossible to develop high quality deciduous bonsai trees.
I consider this tree to have finally quite dense foliants close to the trunk and in the
important areas but dense don't necessarily mean ramified.
In order for the tree to transit from dense to beautifully ramified bonsai it needs to
be pruned in late spring, push back the new vigorous growth and get a second one later
in the summer that will be less vigorous and more compact with wiring in autumn to move
this tree one level higher.
This area on the left is overgrown so I'll take it back a lot for new back budding to
take over.
Now as the apex is taking shape I still have a sacrificial trunk to help with building
up a more smooth transition here and even though this is quite acceptable I decided
to keep the sacrificial part for this season and air layer it out in 12 months.
But I will remove some of the lower branches to separate the sacrificial part from the
actual apex.
Most of these will become cuttings at the end of the day.
Some more pruning that I seemed to miss before.
In some cases it is necessary to prune while the tree is still actively growing and I will
discuss that in the next video while I work on my sohin maple.
Thank you for your time.