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Bonsai Development Series #9: Evaluating sacrifice branches mid-season

July 24, 2018 by Jonas Dupuich

For my young trees in development, I tend to focus on a single question during the growing season: do I prune now or wait until fall?

Chinese quince – four years old from seed

The goal at this stage is to develop the trunk as fast as possible. Because the sacrifice branches are well-positioned, I’ll let them continue growing and revisit the tree in fall.

The tree below is similar, if more vigorous.

Young quince

Trunk detail

Like the first tree, the above tree has good curves and the sacrifice branches are well-positioned. I’ll let it grow until fall.

The tree below looks the same from across the room, but up close it’s easy to see an awkward branch division.

Young quince

Awkward branch division

The first branch on the right side of the tree emerges vertically and is as thick as the trunk. To avoid this area from swelling in the future, I removed the vertical section.

After removing the vertical section of the branch

Looking closely at this branch, the base still looked awkward so I removed the whole thing. Based on the size of the stub that came off with the branch, I’m glad I made the cut.

The stub at the base of the branch

After removing the the first branch on the right

Further up the trunk, I found three branches that emerged fairly close to each other. I removed the center branch to avoid swelling in this area.

Three branches growing close to each other

After removing the center branch

The fourth quince I looked at looked like the others, but up close I found an even more pronounced slingshot-like branch division.

Young quince

“Goalpost” or “slingshot”-like branch division

By cutting this branch now, I can avoid swelling in this area and let the tree can begin to heal sooner rather than later.

After removing the branch on the right

Just beyond this area, the trunk splits into four branches. Two are small.

Two small branches

And two are relatively large.

The two larger branches

Because the two larger branches are too corse to bend, I’ll leave them alone for now so they can help the trunk thicken but plan to remove them later. Either of the two thinner branches will make a good new leader so I wired them both. I’ll decide which to keep when I revisit the tree in fall.

After wiring the thinner branches

I can follow this basic routine above for the rest of my quince.

  1. If the sacrifice branches look good, I’ll let them grow.
  2. If there are significant flaws in the branching, I’ll remove the offending branches.
  3. If I need to develop a new section of trunk, I’ll wire available branches, if any, to set curves before the branches thicken.

It’s also a good time to apply more fertilizer as these trees typically grow through summer and into fall.

Related Post

Fall cutback on young Chinese quince

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Filed Under: Bonsai Development Tagged With: BDS, Chinese Quince

Previous Post: « Can you see the signs? Identifying weak roots by checking the foliage
Next Post: Defoliation follow-up: refining a Korean hornbeam »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. karen says

    July 25, 2018 at 10:51 pm

    This should make a very nice bonsai!

    • Jonas Dupuich says

      July 26, 2018 at 7:22 am

      Thanks, Karen!

  2. Lars Grimm says

    July 26, 2018 at 7:17 am

    Hi Jonas,

    Great post as usual. Do you ever wire your sacrificial branches to be vertical and thus presumably grow faster?

    Thanks,
    Lars

    • Jonas Dupuich says

      July 26, 2018 at 7:26 am

      Good question Lars – I sometimes wire sacrifice branches upwards but more often leave them alone. When the tree is young, like the examples here, I rarely wire sacrifice branches upwards. Sounds like a good topic for a future post: when and how to wire sacrifice branches. Thanks for the question!

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