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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.

Beautyberry is a great deciduous shrub known for its purple fruit in fall and winter. This show of color makes it a popular choice for shohin as it provides contrast and color to multi-tree displays.

After pruning broadleaf evergreens in summer, you may see lots of small shoots emerging close to the places that were cut. I usually let these grow a bit before thinning them in fall, but this year I’m removing all of the buds that I don’t plan to use and shortening the buds that are already too long.

When healthy satsuki finish blooming, it’s a great time to thin trees that have grown dense.

To determine if a decandled pine needs fertilizer in summer, I check to see how the summer buds look. If they’re strong, I hold off on the fertilizer until later in the growing season (usually September or October). If the buds are modest or small, I consider whether or not the pine looks good in fall.

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.

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.

Fall and winter are my favorite times to wire black pines. The trees are relatively dormant, the foliage is mature, and I have a long time before spring to get the work done.

Decandling season is a good time to do cutback on black pines. Although we can’t cut past green needles and expect buds to pop on old wood, we can cut anywhere else as long as there is healthy foliage on the branch. (See “A cutback decandling technique” for details.)

Almost twenty years ago I made my first exhibit catalog – a retrospective featuring trees from Bay Island Bonsai’s first five exhibits.