Why I hard prune my ficus and azalea, it hurts me more than it does you

We are in full summer now. I have noticed that some of my plants are pushing a flush of new growth. Among the plants pushing the hardest are Guamuchil (Pithecellobium dulce), Coastal Live Oaks, and Chinese banyan.

Regarding branches and leaves when we make bonsai most of us desire that we develop good ramification and in turn, we get leaf reduction. The challenge here is that try as hard as we may, we can only guess as to where the tree will push new buds.

I have noticed that on my Chinese banyan a new branch will grow from the lateral bud closest to the place I pruned. In a lot of trees in front of where a leaf grows, there is a place where a bud can grow. When that bud grows it is called a lateral bud. Sometimes on a Chinese banyan, only the lateral bud closest to the cut will grow. When this happens everything is for not. Why? because what the tree is doing is creating a continuation of the branch. It is replacing the section it lost. What we need is for the branch to split into two smaller branches. This splitting is what creates ramification. What happens is that the mass of the one branch is split into two. The new branches are smaller. The more you continue to do this the finer the ramification. If you replace one branch for one branch then no ramification has happened. You are actually a little behind because you have lost a lateral bud.

lateral bud growing near cut

Only one branch grew. No ramification here.

What are we to do? For ficus and azaleas at least the answer is simple. Hard prune. A hard prune is when you cut-off large portions of many branches.

Hard pruned Azalea

Have you ever pruned a tree and got it to the size and silhouette that you wanted? Then the secondary branches grew close to the edge of the cut. Your tree outgrew the silhouette without contributing ramification. You are going to have to get rid of those branches because they make the tree silhouette bigger than what you wanted.  This is where a hard prune comes in handy.

Have you ever looked at your tree and wished that it would back bud from further down the branch closer to the trunk? For ficus and Azalea, a hard prune might be the ticket.

back budding after a hard prune

Some drawbacks to this are that you do not know exactly where the tree will bud. I can live with that. The other is that you might lose a branch, or one of the branches might not bud. That's a harder pill.

This is a good way to fix those leggy ficusses and azaleas. This is a good example of what we want. Where a cut was made there are now three branches. Choose the two branches that are most parallel to the ground.

Let those branches get leggy than prune them close to the trunk. That's how you'll get the desired ramification on azaleas and ficus. Cheers.

developing refinement, the tree, me and my daughter

Last Christmas I saw some beautiful holly decorations. So, I set out to look for holly. Last week I found what to me was a holly with great potential. The pot was not priced however, and it was sitting next to 35-40 dollar plants. I went home without purchasing it. When I got home I was unloading the car when I saw a green flash against the yellowing grass (we are conserving water here in southern California). It was a $20 dollar bill. Hooray, I was going to finally buy my holly. The nursery sold me the tree for 20 dollars even. I was giddy with delight.

Some people do not like variegated plants for bonsai. They say that they are weaker than the common varieties. I was willing to experiment. This holly looked well aged yet had new growth.

For this project I was going to have My daughter whom I lovingly call Monkey do most of the work. This would be an exercise in guiding and teaching my daughter.

What we set out to do is remove unneeded branches, reduce the overall size of the tree, and set the trees skeleton by lowering the lower branches.

We chose to cut the branch at this point because it was just above a growth of younger branches. These newer branches will become the apex.

It was somewhat difficult for my daughter to cut the branch. First, the places where her hands could get leverage where directly in the path of the saw. Second the cut was at an awkward angle. It was difficult for her to get a rhythm with the saw. We lost a few of the young branches.

After, the branches were cut to size relative to the new apex.

And finally the lower branches were wired and placed where they needed to be. What will become the first or lower branch (the big one moving left) was not pruned so that it can grow relatively undisturbed. The other lowered branches were thinned a bit to promote back budding.

The stage is now set to develop this tree into a bonsai. Of course I might have been frustrated at moments, but I never said a word. The key to my daughter appreciating this hobby and maybe sharing it with me is positive reinforcement. She puts up with my eccentric hobbies because she likes spending time with me. I would not want to discourage her by micromanaging or scolding her. Like a bonsai I am trying to develop my daughter’s potential.

Well, enough about that. We’ll keep you updated on the Ilex. Cheers.


Update 06/29

Well, it's 21 days later. My daughters work is coming to fruition. The tree has a lot of new growth and plenty of back budding. All those reddish brown spots are brand new soft supple leaves.

New Growth

This is going to be the lowest branch. it was long and only had leaves all in a clump at the very top. Now many new leaves are growing from the bare branch. The Holly is next to a stone pine. That is why there are needles in the pic