AusBonsai

I was at a demo the other night and it was mentioned that there is no difference in heavy bending a tree that's dry or wet. It was always taught to me that letting a tree dry out makes heavy bending easier. What are the thoughts of people here about this topic? And what is your method?

this is interesting.
for bending my juniper... i realize it is more elastic when it is wet.
and my c. myrtle wet or dry.. it is hard to bend. so i choose to clip and grow..
maybe different trees will be different.

With azaleas they definitely snap more easily when wet.

nealweb wrote:With azaleas they definitely snap more easily when wet.

Azaleas snap easilly at any time as well, wet or dry.

I don't overly attempt to dry out the trees before bending.

Grant

Its the whole turgidity of the cells thing. If they are plump and tight full of water there is no room for them to distort a bit with the pressure of bending. Stretch on the outside of the bend, compress on the inside. Do the experiment yourself - grab a fresh new juicy carrot and see it snap in half when you bend it then get the old dried out one thats been in the fridge for a fortnight and bend it around like a piece of rubber.

Thanks Neal, that was always the information I was given, how ever this was backed up by some very well known Melbourne growers.

Hi Jarrod,
Like you I was present at the time and must admit I was also surprised. It was mentioned that it was sensible to dry out azaleas a bit, but made little difference to other species. I thought it was best to dry out most species especially junipers.

Have you ever seen the chinese burn method

the chinese burn method, is that like when you inflict pain on someones arm?

Yes one hand twists the skin one way and the other twists the skin the other !

yowzers

Bretts wrote:Have you ever seen the chinese burn method

Yep. My old man used this method to bend live bamboo very successfully. He used candles to heat the section needed to be bend then bend it and deep it in cold water. The result is permanent and almost instant. I'm not sure if it can be used on other types of trees.

Jarrod wrote:Thanks Neal, that was always the information I was given, how ever this was backed up by some very well known Melbourne growers.

Well thats the mechanics of how the cells rupture anyhow, and then i assume once the cells lose their integrity snaps become likely. Maybe as azaleas are relatively soft wooded and as you have all said prone to snapping it is more important with them and perhaps with other relatively harder wooded species it doesn't make as much difference. Maybe with HEAVY bending you are probably going to be wrapping the branch in compression bandages of rubber or raffia to hold it all together anyhow. I don't know. All i know is with my azaleas at home if i want to do a big bend i am more successful if i really dry the tree out first

By the way, whats the chinese burn stuff about?????

EDIT - ah i see, sounds amazing. Has anyone ever tried this (chinese burn) on their bonsai???

Drying out trees I think does help with bending, not all Trees but on some it does help.
I like to think of it like this:
if you take a fresh price of celery its full of water so it's very stiff and crisp, which easily snaps if you try to bend it. But if you leave it out in the fridge for a while it losses it's moisture and becomes very floppy and you can litterally tie knots with it.
This would I think apply to trees aswell, some more then others though.

Hugh