‘Kiyohime’ Japanese Maple Tip Pinching and Selective Pruning
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- čas přidán 4. 07. 2024
- We manage the spring growth to further develop this Acer palmatum ‘Kiyohime’ Japanese maple bonsai to strike a middle ground between wound healing and energy balance across the tree. We discuss our future plans for a summer defoliation.
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#bonsai #japanesemaple #acerpalmatum #momiji #bonsaiart #spring #japanesegarden #penjing #plants #紅葉
0:00 Intro
1:36 Low Branch Review
2:43 Application in Your Garden
3:14 Counting Nodes
6:52 Pinching Time Lapse
7:08 Post Pinch Discussion
8:08 Acer P's Defoliation Technique
9:33 High Angle Spin
10:13 Front View Spin
11:33 Outro - Jak na to + styl
I love watching anything on maples! In Australia we are going into Autumn, so this is all yet to come . . . Looking forward to watching the develop through this year and into the "Far future"!
Same here Rebecca! I love watching Terry Erasmus in South Africa while we’re in winter here, gets me through the gray period. 😂 (and sometimes a little Pine work 🤫)
Very interesting and informative videos. Keep doing what you do and bonsai on!
Thanks for stopping by! 🙏🏽 Please let me know if you have any questions or topics you’d like to see covered in future videos. 🪴 🍁
Very informative 👏🏼 👌 thank you!
Glad it was helpful! Thanks for tuning in! 🙏🏽 🪴 🍁
I need to do that technique to my trees too, but for now, I'm just letting them grow to develop more roots and better Nebari. Very informative video. Thank you for sharing.
The nebari is a great place to start! We still have a lot of work to do under the hood on this poor tree. 😂 We’ll lift the skirt next spring! 🙏🏽 🪴 🍁
👌👌
Thanks bro! 😎
🙏🏽 🪴 🍁
Sou fã do seu trabalho! ❤
Thank you! 🙏🏽 Please let me know if there are any specific topics you’d like me to cover in future episodes! 🪴 🍁
I can't wait to start working on my Japanese Maples 😁 I just have 2 grafted mother plants that I want to take cuttings from - an Arakawa and a Beni-Chidori that are just starting to open up... It's going to be years before I have any Japanese Maple bonsai haha 😆
I'm surprised that you don't have a juniper to be honest, considering you enjoy the pinching and everything. I just got myself a nice little Itoigawa juniper for my birthday 😁
So cool you were able to find a Beni Chidori! It’s a hard to find cultivar. As time has gone by, I appreciate starting maple bonsai young more and more. We can get some interesting movement in them before they’re hard set.
I have about 20 junipers. 😂…but I keep this channel to the maples, because I felt like there was a needed niche to fill. 🙏🏽 🪴 🍁
@@acer_p_bonsaiYeah, I was so lucky to find a Beni-Chidori!.. it's my pride and joy... even though it is a 1 year old twiggy Scion with no branches - it gets the best pot, best soil, best spot in the garden etc... 😊
And that makes sense haha 😆
😂 this is the way. 💥
nice, I let my acer all grow, I cut them back in mid-summer and defoliate them for the second growth
I like to go that route on my trees earlier in development. This tree is kind of in that middle stage: working on secondary and tertiary branching, so working to try to bring balance across the branches.
Overall, about 10-20% of these branches got cut back to 2-3 nodes due to their extreme vigor, and only 5-10% were left to run with no pinch being super weak.
I enjoy your channel. Keep it up! 🙏🏽 🪴 🍁
Great work and I love this tree. I have lots of maples but I recently bought my first kiyohime. It’s a nice tree but seems weak, flushing out poorly. My plan is to baby it back to strong growth before doing any work on it next year. I have read that unlike other maples they backbud poorly. Is this your experience and do you have any advice in this regard? Thanks a million. All the best.
Thank you for the kind feedback on my tree! 🙏🏽 I completely agree with your approach for a tree showing signs of weakness. I’m curious about the other conditions of the tree: soil type, pot size and shape, watering, light, fertilization, etc.
I have also heard the same about poor back budding with this cultivar.
For context, this tree has a very nicely applied low graft, and so has very strong roots. In a future video, I’ll show my air layer in progress that will be on its own roots. Just with this factor, we can expect variation in strength: this can affect spring growth, back budding, and defoliation effectiveness. Is your tree grafted?
Next, fertilizer. Since your tree is weak, I’m offering this advice carefully as fertilizer can be harmful for an already unhealthy tree. But, in general, I do not shy away from strong fertilizers such as Osmocote plus when working with trees in early development. Particularly when working with dwarf cultivars, with moderate use, chemical fertilizers can work well to ramp up the vigor of the tree without too much excessive shoot length, in early and mid development.) I have not had any problems with back budding on this grafted Kiyohime. The key is ramping up the growth, then cutting it back hard. We’ll see that later this summer when I defoliate this tree.
Time will tell on the non-grafted air layer, regarding back budding. In any case, if back budding is lackluster on any Japanese maple, thread grafts or approach grafts will be helpful for adding new branches.
I’d love to have a more in depth conversation and help you get your tree headed in the right direction. Feel free to DM me on Instagram, same username.
Best wishes with you Kiyohime! 🙏🏽 🪴 🍁
Oh I’m jealous! I wish my bonsais were already growing. My garden is just starting to wake up……. my Katsura maple is ALWAYS my first to wake up
Wow, what a difference in time! 😯 where are you located?
Today, March 29th, in Hampton, Virginia, my Katsura is already showing slight hints of green the orange has mostly faded to yellow.
I’m sure you’ll be enjoying your maples very soon! 🙏🏽 🪴 🍁
@@acer_p_bonsaigrowing zone 8b. I’m in the PNW, just south of Seattle WA. Spring here can sometimes start as early as mid Feb or late April (rarely). Spring in my estimation started 2 weeks ago, based off of the temps. Currently my Katsura maple is a bright orange n peach color. It’s FANTASTIC, I prefer the early color of my Katsura bonsai over the bright “fire engine” red of my Deshojo bonsai…… I’m used to being in the minority tho…….
I have question about Shishigashira maple bonsai: how “hearty” are they to sun and heat?What sort of placement should they be in a garden? Somewhere in the past, I heard that Shishigashira maples want “full” sun and are tough. But then I recently heard Peter Tea (a bonsai professional) say that he treats his Shishigashiras like they are delicate. He has his under a shade cloth. Now, I do understand that he lives in Cali and obviously has a more intense climate to my PNW climate. I feel as if ur climate, yes different to mine, but more similar than Cali.
Obviously I have mine in full sun during early spring and do until summer then I TRY to give it roughly 4-6hrs of morning sun and then dappled shade for the rest of the day. I leave for work 12hrs at a time, placement of my bonsai is a big source of stress for me! I do tend to be on the “cautious” path and maybe over protect. But my watering schedule is 3:45am (before I leave for work) and at 4:30ish pm when I get back home.
Sorry for such A LONG ASS message!! But when I discovered ur CZcams channel, I thought “AWESOMENESS!!, someone who is all about Acer P.’s for bonsai, I hit the mother load of great content!” I am grateful for your channel!!
AND “Thank you for your military service.”
And again sorry for a rambling message, I have ADD. Acer Palmatum are like hamburgers to me. My favorite cause u can a have a burger a thousand different ways and the same goes for Acers!!!! Take care and have a blessed day, brother!!
Bro, you’re speaking my language! And no apologies needed for the long message. Although I always appreciate the CZcams comments for the algorithm boost, you can also always feel free to connect on my Instagram, same username.
As for the Shishigashira, I think the mixed advice is based on how you are keeping them (and totally agree on the climate). Planted as a garden tree, they tend to be very hardy trees compared to other more delicate Acer palamtum cultivars. When it comes to bonsai the first division is grafted vs ungrafted. As you might guess, grafted shishis are a bit tougher with that strong rootstock. I’ve found the native shishi roots to be quite delicate and so I’d prefer to give them a slightly deeper container than some other cultivars. That can also help with their durability in high heat/light and long days between summer waterings.
As for the lighting, I like to keep all my maple bonsai in afternoon shade. Shishi has such a short internode, there’s no real concern about legginess from low light. 🙏🏽 🪴 🍁
How did you determine that 4 nodes was the right length for the vigor you're going for? Why not 3 or 5?
That’s a great question. Before filming I took a complete look
Over the tree and determined that “about 4 nodes” was the middle strength branches. A few of the stronger branches were about the same length as these medium 4-node branches at their 2-node length. Since I plan to do a midsummer defoliation, I knew I wanted to leave at least 2 nodes, so I can cut back to 1 and remove the leaves. There were probably less than 10% of the branches that hit the 2 node length, and there were another 10-20% that ended up being 3-nodes rather than 4, and 5-10% of the branches were cut to 5 nodes, or not cut at all for very weak branches. I probably could have explained that a little better in the video.
So the takeaway: balanced energy, with at least 2 nodes per branch, to set up for a strong defoliation response.
One final note: this is a Kiyohime, which has naturally small leaves and internodes. In a standard Acer palmatum we could get the same effect cutting back to an average 2-3 nodes.
I just got my first Kiyohime but this will be a garden tree for air-layering. I really want a kiyhomi forest in a couple of years. It needs probably two years to get back healthy because its not the best tree. It was neglected at the nursery i bought it from ... btw your tree is beautiful. Would love to have something similar.. maples are so easy to grow i Would not mind investing in some nice material. Good luck with your project. Can't wait to see all your projects in bonsai pot's down the road. They will look amazing. Your patience is off the charts.. i would have stuffed most of your trees in bonsai pot's hehehehe
That’s great, glad to hear you found a Kiyohime! Hopefully you got a good deal based on the state of the tree. It will take me a few years to develop the stock in my own maple garden, so if you can afford the investment, Ed Clark has some great pre-bonsai material like this. Haha, yeah the patience has taken a few years to learn. I guess it’s impatience, properly applied -> I want to develop my tree as efficiently as I know how. Thanks for taking the journey with me! 🙏🏽 🪴 🍁
Just curious how I can get in touch with Ed Clark or if he has a website? If that's ok. Thanks again for the video
He is on Facebook, and his place is called Round Valley Nursery, in California. For people out of CA, he does a lot of sales on fb messenger, and PayPal.
@acer_p_bonsai good information.. although I think I already liked a post you posted on his page? But you are correct he does have amazing material and will keep my eyes Peeled for some nice pr-bonsai maples. Btw I paid 120 for the kiyhomi, it has a fairly low graft with about 5 main branches that extend about two feet with pads of Foliage sparsely attached to each branch. But the color of the newly emerging leaves had me Masmerized with the lime greenish main color and redish purple outline so I forked over the cash without thinking much. slim pickings around these parts but I have hope the other main nursery in my area with have better material in the next 2 months.
Good luck! Yes, nurseries tend to stock them for Mother’s Day. 🍁
Is there anything significantly different and/or beneficial about pinching v. trimming with shears? Or is it just a matter of precision?
You got it! It’s just about the precision. In a perfect world, you want to go in every morning and pinch out the center nodes just as they begin to emerge. This allows you to stop the growth with minimal damage to the branch and minimal energy loss. The idea being, the bigger the extension you cut off, the more energy the tree “wasted” on that growth that now goes unused. The energy could have gone into other buds further back in the tree or new roots, or stayed stored in the vascular tissue to set up new buds or roots later in the year.
Although it doesn’t really apply in this tree, the last reason for pinching applies to trees in the last stage of development: refinement. In this stage, you pinch every branch, allowing only one pair of leaves to grow. This stops the growth, reducing the nutrient flow through the stem, and keeping that stem smaller in diameter, leading to that delicate “feminine” appearance we look for in refined Japanese maples. Secondly, the first internode/stem segment of growth on any new branch tends to be shorter than later internodes on that same shoot/branch extension; in a vigorous tree these longer second, third, fourth internodes will never be usable in the design, and will only serve to shade out and weaken the inner branches of the tree, and throw off the energy balance of the tree. In that final stage, we often restrict water, fertilizer, and soil mass, resulting in a very small slow spring flush of growth. Every bit of energy in the tree must be carefully managed, and directed wisely.
Unfortunately, I’m not wealthy enough to buy any trees in full refinement, but I will get there with a few in 2-3 years. 🙏🏽 🪴 🍁
Thank you! That makes sense. I may give it a go this weekend! Is there anything special about the tweezers you're using or is it just preference?
@acer_p_bonsai questions,, would the above statements apply to the tree as soon as the first leaves emerge? What if you have a tree between refinement and development would you apply the pinching techniques to parts of the tree then let Certain parts of the tree extend? Say you have a Trident maple that grows super Vigorously and you would like develop finer branching and back budding on the growth of the branches far back from the growing tips,,, and just about all the branches are pretty much in place for the main structure of the tree but would like to get finer twigging on the Interior notes and branch tips? I say trident maple but I'm referring to one of my silver maples ,,,the growth rate is very similar to trident maples and how fast they establish branching structure and root Systems is at the same pace.
@1111MDS not really, you just want a fine tip so you can get in there without damaging the lower leaves.
@mmjnice97 it sounds like you are describing partial outer canopy defoliation, which Bjorn describes in some of his videos. That is a nice technique for refinement, and can work on trident maples to develop interior fine twisting and back budding. Yes, you can also apply this technique to prt of a tree. It’s common to apply partial defoliation to the upper 1/2 to 1/3 of the tree since the apex tends to be stronger. This will encourage inner twig development as well as strengthen the growth of the lower branches.
With regard to Silver maple, I ran some trial runs with them while I lived in NY. Give it a go if you want, but in my experience, they tend to have naturally long internodes. If you have access to them, I would recommend red maple instead (Acer rubrum). I’ve had great experience with red maple, they have great fall color, and internodes and leaves reduce well. I will have future videos to cover red maple care and techniques. I also have a few sugar maples from NY, and have had moderate success getting reduction, but they can grow quite vigorously. With the sugars, multiple defoliations in a season are effective to achieve good leaf reduction.