Advice on Azalea chop

Esolin

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Here’s my thoughts. If it were me, I’d mark the specific area the “variation” sport is, then, once blooming is complete, take cuttings of the new branches emanating from this area once these get about 3” or more long with multiple leaves and put into water out of the sun. Leave two new branches horizontally located, if possible. (You can cut these back to two leaves if needed to keep the outline) Doing this, if the cuttings fail, you still should have the variation on your azalea to try again later.

Excellent idea!!! I am very curious whether the variation sector sport will persist, or if it's a one season fluke. I will mark the branches and observe them again next year (they're really too thin/weak to try and propagate cuttings from yet). If they persist next year, I'll take cuttings per your (nicely detailed) instructions and see if I can produce new plants with this trait. :D
 

shinmai

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Peter Chan of Heron’s Bonsai has an excellent tutorial on YouTube regarding propagation of azaleas from cuttings. He essentially uses all the clippings from when he prunes [waste not, want not, as they say].
 

Esolin

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The azalea has been taking its sweet time blooming this year with the blossoms opening in waves. The extended bloom has been nice, but the weather has recently taken an early turn toward Summer, and in the interest of giving it more recovery time before Summer dormancy, I decided to go ahead and repot today. While inspecting the blooms, I found another sectored sport in the same general area as the first, which has me quite excited that it might actually be a persistent mutation on that branch. I will take multiple cuttings at a later date, but so far I've sucked at propagating via cuttings, so I'm leary of taking the material now, lest I lose it all.

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The roots actually weren't too bad. A few circling ones, and the surface roots were a bit of a dense mat, but otherwise, they looked healthy.

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I'm not %100 sure of the front. The two best candidates either feature an eyepoker or sub-par nebari. And I need to keep working on closing that blasted 'bulls eye' scar too. I'll rewound the callous in a few weeks.

Front 1:

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Front 2:

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Top view of the branch spread:

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Can anyone point me to a good resource on how to ramify azaleas and reduce internodes to create pads? I don't know if I should favor the weak growth when selecting branches, or wire the long spindly runners, let them thicken for a few seasons, then chop them. I want to learn more about the best methods before I clean out all the tiny branches in case I actually need those.
 

Deep Sea Diver

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A couple things come to mind.

First off, I would figure out the primary structure you can make out of the satsuki now and chop to it right away, that's the easiest scenario. Then create your choice of secondary, then tertiary branches. from there on its good selection, chop and grow, prune and grow in that order. That is generally the easiest way IMO. But you aren't me, so....

Most 'available' books with sections on this topic
Kennedy, Floral Treasures of Japan. I have 1997 ed and it does a good explanation on the basics. Check out Bonsai Outlet etc
Watanable, Japanese Satsuki Bonsai. Shows building work on a nice trunk etc. Look for it on Bonsai Tonight website.

A couple periodical articles that could really help ...
Bonsai Focus BF 3.2018 Satsuki Creating the Myogi Style from a full grown satsuki
Bonsai Europe BE 3.2007 Hiruharu Kobayashi restyles an Azalea
International Bonsai IB 2008 No. 1 Training Informal Upright Style Satsuki Azalea Bonsai Bill V may have this edition, see IB site

Youtube... You can check out Peter Warren's website, yet there is John Geanangel's Youtube videos (He's a member of BNut) ..... Here's a starter....

Good luck and keep us posted!
DSD sends
 

Shibui

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One great characteristic of azalea is the ability to bud. Every leaf leaves a dormant bud. You can see how close together the leaves grow so every shoot has potential to produce lots of new shoots. Even older wood has hundreds of potential growth sites waiting to sprout so I now chop old branches fearlessly in the early development to remove straight, untapered sections and get better ramification.
Ramification is simply a case of trimming new shoots. New shoots will try to grow long with no taper and no leaves. Cut long new shoots short ruthlessly and new ones will grow along the part you leave behind. I find I actually need to thin out shoots because so many start on healthy azaleas after pruning.
Early development can be as simple as hedge pruning but at some stage you do need to go in and thin to maintain good structure.
Azaleas are known as basal dominant and actually grow faster and more down low where most trees are apical dominant and grow faster near the top. Lower branches may need more trimming than upper sections to maintain overall even strength.
 

Esolin

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A couple things come to mind.
Terrific list! Thank you so much! I'll track some of these down and do some reading up on how to best proceed with choosing the best foundation branches. I do need to sit down and study the tree for a while now that it's partially thinned and see if I can envision a 'plan' for its shape.

Ramification is simply a case of trimming new shoots. New shoots will try to grow long with no taper and no leaves. Cut long new shoots short ruthlessly and new ones will grow along the part you leave behind.
So even the skinniest branches will sprout new growth if I chop the end off? That's one thing I wasn't sure of. I worried that chopping them before they'd thickened up for a couple seasons would cause the whole young branch to dieback in favor of new shoots off the trunk, since yes, they do backbud readily!

Or...do you mean 'pinching' the growing end of the shoots (just the leafy bit) of the extending branches to force ramification once they've reached the desired length internode? That would make sense actually, but it'll mean I need to be more diligent with watching and pruning at the right time. A lot of the slender growth is too long already if that's the best method.

In any case, I'll do my research and see if I can learn more about how the pros do it. Thanks everyone for the great input!
 

Shibui

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So even the skinniest branches will sprout new growth if I chop the end off? That's one thing I wasn't sure of. I worried that chopping them before they'd thickened up for a couple seasons would cause the whole young branch to dieback in favor of new shoots off the trunk, since yes, they do backbud readily!
No problem. As mentioned I often just hedge prune those new shoots and get good back budding on them. New shoots tend to emerge closer to the cut ends so it the shoot is long and bare and you want new growth closer to the base you should cut them short. I can see some of the really long shoots from last season on your tree. They can be chopped no problem.

Down here it does not seem to matter when they are pruned. Straight after flowering is usual because it removes spent flowers and shortens any remaining long bits from previous growth but cutting new shoots also promotes similar response.

Flower buds begin to form at the ends of new shoots sometime in late summer even though they are too small to see then. If you are just building branches and structure you can keep pruning all year but if you do want flowers in spring pruning must cease some time in late summer/early fall.
 

Forsoothe!

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Down here it does not seem to matter when they are pruned. Straight after flowering is usual because it removes spent flowers and shortens any remaining long bits from previous growth but cutting new shoots also promotes similar response.
Yes, the further out of the native zone an Azalea is grown, the more important this is. They need a long season of growth to mature flower buds for the following year, so that's a whole growing season at the outside edges of their natural zone. Maturing seeds slows down the process, so removing the seed-heads is very important, or you can get flowers only every-other-year.
 

Esolin

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Well, I watched a few videos, and ordered a couple books (not arrived yet) but I went ahead and bit the bullet with a harder chop. I probably still didn't go short enough, but I want to see where it buds lower on the branches to refine some of the length choices. A few spots are still very long due to the sports. I planted some cuttings from other parts of the tree in a sort of halfhearted manner just to see what ratio would survive. If most do, I'll be more confident in hacking the sports off.

I tried to research the parentage of S. Indicum 'Pink Lace'. Nuccio's website claims it's a sport of Duc De Rohan, which makes sense after seeing the reversion sport. Duc De Rohan seems to be something of a 'Sporty McSportster' too, as there's also a 'White Lace' and an orangey-pink version of Duc De Rohan. So it seems more prone to producing genetic anomalies.


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ChefB

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Thanks for the like, but how is the tree?
 

Esolin

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Thanks for asking. Sadly, it succumbed to a mysterious and rapid fungal issue along with three other of my trees during last summer's heat. I was quite heartbroken because it had such lovely nebari and potential.
 
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