Coastal Redwood Informal Upright (Bob Shimon Tree)

[eeeealmo]

Last year at the REBS show in Oakland, CA, I bought this Coastal Redwood from Bob. Here is how it looked when i bought it (Feb 2019) :



I cleaned it up a bit and removed some excess growth and branches I knew i wouldn't use (with potential front) :



I fed it heavily during the year (2019) and let it grow relatively unrestricted (for a redwood). I might have pinched 2-3 times. Here is the result (July 2019) :



Now that it is late winter / early spring here in the Bay Area, I finally got to prune, wire, and repot. Here is the result (Jan 2020) :



Next season I will be far more diligent about pinching to improve ramification and hopefully produce some more branches at the trunk. I'm debating turning the top 1/4 of the tree into a jin since it's not that interesting, but we'll see what it does the rest of the year. Thanks for reading! Would love to hear thoughts.

 

[MrWunderful]

I was at Bobs a year or so ago and had my eye on that one! Glad you picked it up. I have a few from him.

From what Ive found with redwoods, is once repotted (I use 3:1:1) start the branching from scratch unless the branching is unusually perfect. If you remove all the branches to just a trunk, the trunk will explode with new growth.

I cut off all the branches, let it grow all year while cutting the “keep” branches once to start development. Usually its the bottom third of branches. I then remove the 2nd third and 3rd third.
The next year, I let the “keep” branches still grow all year while pruning once- along with the 2nd third. And so on and so on until you have your primary branching set up the tree.