Summer is a good time to prune olive bonsai. By pruning when the weather is warm, I can expect olives to produce new growth until the weather cools in fall. For two small shohin, cutback consisted of reducing long shoots and pruning to silhouette. Here’s what this looked like. Shohin olive – before pruning After […]
Olive
Repotting an olive bonsai
I could have guessed that an olive I took home a few years ago had a trunk that extended below the soil. It was potted in a deep container and was far heavier than I’d expected. I confirmed this was the case the first time I repotted the tree. There wasn’t much to do about […]
Basic refinement on olive bonsai
I started working on an olive bonsai last summer. After taking the tree home and letting new shoots grow out, I wired the ones I needed and removed the rest. One year later, I’m doing the same thing. Olive bonsai – one year in training The idea is to establish the main branches. Once they […]
Wiring an olive
After repotting a new olive this past spring, some long shoots are starting to develop. Olive As the tree is growing strongly, I wired some of the primary future branches and removed extraneous shoots. After cutback and wiring These branches will have to thicken considerably to ease the transition from the large trunk so I’ll let […]
Developing olive bonsai from scratch
I’ve been working with the stump of a small olive this year. After removing most of the trunk in winter, I now have plenty of shoots from which to select new branches. While there’s not too much to this work, it’s important in that it sets the structure for the tree’s future. Olive – front […]