AusBonsai

Congrats you’ve got it to a recovery stage after the repotting.
These things are beasts and really are quite hard to kill, but it’s always good to get personally familiar with just what they can take.

I like your vert. I’d probably go for a bit more of a balanced canopy rather than the semi windswept look. Simply because the leaves can’t really be reduced so it can be a bit hard to do anything particularly detailed with the foliage. You also might want to extend the canopy out quite wide and show a lot of the branching complexity these can display as they start to ramify under clip and grow. Saying that you’re likely going to always have more activity/density on the left hand side given the structure. With a few solid years of ramification in front of you, there’s plenty of opportunity to tweak the design - particularly as the tree starts to put in a few requests itself around what it would like to do.

If you haven’t gone to the link above provided by Nigel, definantly take the chance to do so before mucking in. Great resource on design ideas and species specific horticultural requirements and techniques. “Directional Pruning” is going to be your new mantra as you build ramification. Keep the wire for occasional uses were you need to guy-wire a decent diameter branch into a better position and get pruning. Grow shoot out for 8 to 10 leaves, cut back to second leaf - rinse and repeat. In Perth you might get 4 prune-back cycles through the growing period. I used to get that many in Sydney, now in Canberra it’s back to 3

Should be a fun journey with this one given its great starting trunkline. Enjoy!!

Steve B wrote:Congrats you’ve got it to a recovery stage after the repotting.
These things are beasts and really are quite hard to kill, but it’s always good to get personally familiar with just what they can take.

I like your vert. I’d probably go for a bit more of a balanced canopy rather than the semi windswept look. Simply because the leaves can’t really be reduced so it can be a bit hard to do anything particularly detailed with the foliage. You also might want to extend the canopy out quite wide and show a lot of the branching complexity these can display as they start to ramify under clip and grow. Saying that you’re likely going to always have more activity/density on the left hand side given the structure. With a few solid years of ramification in front of you, there’s plenty of opportunity to tweak the design - particularly as the tree starts to put in a few requests itself around what it would like to do.

If you haven’t gone to the link above provided by Nigel, definantly take the chance to do so before mucking in. Great resource on design ideas and species specific horticultural requirements and techniques. “Directional Pruning” is going to be your new mantra as you build ramification. Keep the wire for occasional uses were you need to guy-wire a decent diameter branch into a better position and get pruning. Grow shoot out for 8 to 10 leaves, cut back to second leaf - rinse and repeat. In Perth you might get 4 prune-back cycles through the growing period. I used to get that many in Sydney, now in Canberra it’s back to 3

Should be a fun journey with this one given its great starting trunkline. Enjoy!!

Thanks for the response Steve...the current virt was decided based on the direction of the trunks and current new shoots its throwing out, but after a browse through the galleries on the fuku bonsai site i see exactly what you mean about the wide balanced canopy. Obviously anything resembling a finished tree is still several years away so plenty of time to let the tree make a few decisions for me, and im sure the design will evolve significantly as time passes. iv still only 'styled' maybe 5 or 6 trees (mainly junipers), and nothing coming close to the scale of this one so i think my vision will definitely change as the tree grows.. i also just bought a very large and well developed chinese elm so i think you are bang on in regards to the directional pruning comment, the next year is going to be much different to the last.

cheers
Bryce

after almost 20 months of recovery and back budding i gave this little guy a hard prune on the weekend.
just removed or shortened all long straight and unwanted branches.
although its developing very slowly im pretty happy with the progress so far.

probably should have taken a before photo, and should have taken the after photo once i finished mowing the lawn.. dont judge

Well on the way, congrats!!