Anyone work with almonds?

[GailC]

Last year I got a few nuts from a reliable almond which is actually a cross of a almond and peach.
They are often used as root stock or landscaping as they have pretty pink flowers and are cold hardy.

I got one to germinate this spring, been trying for more but no luck as of yet.

Wondering if anyone has tried working with a almond? Any tip or tricks with these guy? I'll be ground growing after this spring.

 

[BonjourBonsai]

I haven't worked with them as bonsai but I have looked after a few as a commercial crop. There is nothing better than their fragrant flowers in the spring! And the fruit is pretty good too.

These comments come from working big trees to maximize fruit production so not sure how they translate to bonsai, but maybe you'll find them helpful:

Prune after fruit harvest in late summer.

The tree will send up new shoots from the area pruned.

The trees I took care of did not respond well to hard pruning so I don't think a maple-style trunk chop would work.

They also send up water shoots from way down on the trunk.

Water a lot during flowering.

Not sure about root pruning.

They are weather hardy like olive trees and grow side by side but I don't think they are as vigorous.

The leaves are like peach leaves and are not the prettiest. I'm not sure if they will reduce.

Hope that helps.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

I have a grafted almond tree on the balcony.
Not a bonsai, but I found it to die back a lot at random and to have a very slow and unrewarding growth pattern.
I have prunus specimens with prettier flowers, and also better growth.

 

[GailC]

@BonjourBonsai that is helpful, thanks. It.give me a place to start if I can get more germinated.

@Wires_Guy_wires what prunus species do you like best?

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

I have a 'ben chi dori' cultivar, that one is pretty awesome. Behaves a lot like a regular cherry, it air layers easily and it seems to be quite indestructible. The flowers are amazing, vivid pink blossoms.
I also do like the wildtype cerasifera with the white flowers, they grow all over my village. They have a more rugged bark than most cherries, not as smooth. Walter Pall has some very nice specimens. I tried to grow them from seed but the mice took roughly 200 seeds from their sowing bed within a week.

 

[GailC]

That ume is stunning, unfortunately they won't do well here with the long cold winters.
I have a regular eating apricot in the ground but I don't know what the blooms are like, probably white.
I need to get a air layer off it, finding a apricot that survives here is uncommon.

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

The peach-almond hybrid is probably good for bonsai. Pretty much follow all the training suggestions for Ume, even though it is not the Ume species.

The advantage of using the peach-almond hybrid is that it is hardy in your brutal winters. Like Ume, the leaves will be large, the tree will usually be rather ugly except when in bloom. The leaves will never reduce as much as would be ideal for bonsai, so it is pretty much only shown when in bud or bloom, rather than in leaf.