When developing primary branches on bonsai with large trunks, it’s common to create them with sacrifice branches that grow freely until they reach the desired thickness. Once the branch is big enough, it’s time to reduce it. Here’s what this looks like on a medium sized coast redwood. Coast redwood Reducing the sacrifice branch (thanks, […]
Redwood
Setting up redwoods for bonsai work: step 0
Before getting to the pruning, wiring, and styling steps, I like to get trees healthy before working on them. For coast redwoods, this usually means repotting and giving them a year or two to regain vigor before going any further. That was the case for a batch of small redwoods I picked up from Bob […]
Coast redwood development update
Three years ago, I wired a shoot on a coast redwood to create a new trunk on a multi-trunk composition (see “Coast redwood cutback” for details). The shoot grew well, and it’s now time to cut it back. Coast redwood – before cutback After cutback – 31″ to the top of the cone-shaped trunk The […]
Creating redwood bonsai: step 2
The first step when creating branches from scratch on coast redwood pre-bonsai is to stimulate lots of new shoots. Once this new growth appears, the next step is to trim the shoots on the upper portions of the trunk to begin developing compact branches (aka short internodes). (See “Step one” for details about starting the […]
Creating redwood bonsai: step 1
A common first step in creating redwood bonsai is to remove most (or all) of the branches. Removing the branches makes it possible to develop new branches with short internodes, and with short internodes, we have much more flexibility with how dense the resulting tree can become. For the tree to respond well to initial […]