Specialty Gardening: Trees in Containers - a Discussion, 1 by tapla

tapla wrote:
In this picture, you can see that I've wired a branch up and to the left to serve as the new top of the tree. Next spring. I will chop the trunk off just above the branches where the wire crosses the trunk. After that, the branch on the left will be allowed to fatten. We call these sacrifice branches because we let them grow long and large, never intending that they will be a part of the composition. We use them to fatten the part we're going to use, and when their job is done, we 'sacrifice' them - the same way I'll sacrifice nearly the entire trunk of the tree. This is how we build rapid taper into our trees to make them look ancient.

If you look carefully, you can see another very small branch wired back to the right coming off that branch. I'll only be using a couple of inches of the branch coming off the trunk on the left. After it gets to be 1/2-5/8" thick, I'll chop it off where the little branch comes off of it and comes back toward the right, and I'll start developing that little branch, utilizing yet another sacrifice branch.

Within 3 years, I'll have another nice fat tapering trunk I can start building branches on to make a beautiful bonsai. In 5 years I'll have it in a pot and in 6-7 years it should be nice enough to show.

Al

This message was edited Jun 19, 2010 10:22 PM