AusBonsai

In late December a profoundly generous member of my local bonsai club passed a number of his trees on to me. This one is a flowering almond. It's in good health, with a large base and good proximal taper. It's been in this large pot for 3 years, I understand, and is not grafted.
I intend to reduce roots and move it to a large orchid pot in late Winter; I also plan to carve some of the base, eventually.

I'm in two minds about the straight section indicated in the second photo above. The natural habit seems to include a lot of growth in straight bits, and this bit is pretty straight and featureless. I'm weighing up either grafting a branch there to add some interest (there's a long shoot on one side of the apex that is long and flexible enough for a thread graft, I think), or going for the trunk chop (or airlayer) when I repot.
I'd be keen for any opinions on what others would do!

Cheers in advance!
Andy

Almond can be difficult as a full sized tree let alone bonsai. They are prone to a number of diseases. Avoid pruning in cold, wet weather if possible and take care not to over water.

Many of the upper branches also have straight sections with little taper so a I don't think you'd lose much with the trunk chop and could develop a top that matches that great base.
You will need to trim and prune new shoots much more regularly to prevent straight sections developing next time.

I'd go the trunk chop as shibui suggested. You've got this awesome gnarly base that gets a bit spoiled by the straight and taperless section that it leads to.

You could air layer but that's a riskier option - a trunk chop can be sealed to prevent diseases, but an air layer is open to the world. Having said that I currently have an air layer going on an almond that I dug in winter because I just can't say no to more trees

Cheers, team!
I will report back in spring.

This one has gotten the jump on me in terms of pushing growth. I left it for the flowers and was surprised to find that leaves have appeared almost overnight.

Would this still be safe to trunk chop and repot? Or ought I wait til next year to be safe?

A year on. I’m much happier with the direction this is moving in. It grows like wildfire, and has been cut back hard regularly through the growing season. There is still a small stub from the trunk chop - not really where to go with this, will probably remove it. 30cm orchid pot for scale.

Maybe consider leaving the stub under the trunk chop - there is a large difference between the trunk and the resulting branches - the dead branch helps to justify that. Good luck, I hope it makes you happy.

Gavin

Definitely heading in the right direction, this is pretty much exactly how prunus are grown in Japan; ie let run like crazy then cut back extremely hard to first shoots/ no shoots at all and then hope/ expect/ know buds will reshoot on the old wood. No consideration is given at this point to having branch taper etc, in fact with prunus those rules are out the window anyway, you are really just creating a framework for flowers. It's a very different mindset to the usual approach for the classic species for sure.

You can have very short stubby branches for flowers close to the trunk along the lines of what you currently have or flowing long branches with a more whimsical/ poetic kind of feel to them and flowers out at the extremities, dramatic bends that cascade, but what you basically want to avoid at all costs is a pine-like triangle.

Great start with cutting the top off and restarting it as you have, looks to be a cracker in the future:tu: Let me know if you're going to be at the BSV meetings anytime, i joined recently.

Great improvement mate, keen to follow this one.

Cheers,
Pearcy.

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