The most consistent fall color in my garden each year can be found on a red maple forest planting that was started by a friend’s father back in the early 80s.
Once most of the leaves turn color, I remove them all and do fall pruning. Here’s the tree before I removed the leaves.
Red maple forest
And here’s the tree after removing the leaves.
After removing leaves
Once I could see the branch structure, I reduced long branches, crossing branches, and branches that extended beyond the desired silhouette. I also added a few guy wires to reposition a few of the trunks.
After pruning and repositioning the trunks
If you’d like to following along as I do this work (including plucking all of the leaves), check out the video.
News & Updates
- Spots are still available for the Shohin School’s Winter Seminar on January 27-8 in Milwaukie, Oregon. Learn more here.
- We’ve received this year’s shipment of soil for the upcoming repotting season. You can shop for akadama, kanuma, and pumice (which will be back in stock soon!) here. (Learn more about wholesale orders.)
- Are you looking for a new home for any of your show-quality medium-sized bonsai? I’m on the lookout for a few clients so feel free to write if you know of any leads from Portland to Los Angeles.
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Leigh Blake says
Thank you!!
I was looking at all my maples and reading the best time to start work on their branching and repositioning…and I thought “they” inferred that we should start closer to the “leaf out” timing. BUT after reading this I will start today …rain is slowing down…and we are not getting any freezes here in Southern Oregon,
I really appreciate your work!!!
Doug Zeeff says
Jonas, does removing the leaves prior to their falling off naturally deprive the root system of any of the energy that is provided by the leaves?
Jonas Dupuich says
It likely deprives the leaves of a small amount of resources, but not enough in this case that I’d expect to notice the difference.