Why it's important to keep your hand on a tree

[gerald randall]

This Chinese Maple I bought from a commercial nursery about 24 years ago in a bag. I never really grafted with the tree and basically I fertilized it, trimmed it from time to time and watered it. About 8 years ago I wanted to start training the tree and could not bend a single branch. They had become so hard that they were not budging without breaking. Wasted tree, so to speak. What I am now forced to do is to shorten the branches to the first leaves and start building branches with some movement from scratch. Difficult to do, but I am airlayering what branches I can and making Shohin or mame bonsai from them.

Here is the tree, which clearly needs some significant work done on it.

Lesson is that best to do the work early as not to waste two decades and still not have the tree you want. This tree has very little taper and as a formal upright is still not likely to become anything significant. Possibly the only thing I will get out of it are the mame bonsai.

The mame bonsai on this post was potted in the small Japanese pot (15cm) this season. Many years of work to follow. At the moment I am merely wanting to establish it in the pot.

[Josh]

I hear you Gerald. I hear a lot of comments on here about putting the tree in the ground or a grow box and just let it grow. Even trees growing on still need to be worked on to make them great trees. I guess you learnt a lesson from not touching this tree for so long so the last decade wasn't a total waste lol. Good luck with the trees development now.

Josh.

[kcpoole]

I concur.
A tree in the ground or "just growing on" Still needs to be developed during the process. I have trees in the ground with wire on, and others in large grow pots that have been trunk chopped and wired.

Ken

[EdwardH]

Spot on. If it helps, I'll send you my teenage son with his football - they will break most of your straight branches
As you can probably guess he "helps" to prune my trees.

[gerald randall]

Edward

I know what you mean. Had a kids party a couple of weeks ago at our place. Wasn't paying attention. Found two trees totally dislodged from their pots and two others with branches broken. I was less than impressed. I do pay more attention now, and no more playing with balls near my trees for the kids. Spend years growing a branch for kids to break it off in a few seconds.

Well, all the trees are fine now. Kids, not so much.