Cotoneaster Progression

Hbhaska

Chumono
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Being early in this hobby, I don't have many trees that I can say are mine as far as styling goes. Most of my stuff is pre-bonsai I've picked up here and there. The most dramatic progression thread I can show would be this Cotoneaster "Coral Beauty" I picked up for 9 bucks Fall of 2017 - one of my first purchases.

As purchased:
View attachment 239923

Shortly after purchase, I butchered it. Had no real vision in mind, just wanted to work a tree. Turns out Cotoneaster is tough and had no issues with this treatment.
View attachment 239924

So as you can all see, I tried to start a Cascade. I was just trying to get the foliage into a triangle shape at this point. I hoped it would fill in. Turns out it did.
View attachment 239926

Summer of last year and I'm still trying to find a front.
View attachment 239925

Once it started waking up for spring I decided eh, fuck it, I'm going to put it in a pot. I picked something not much smaller than the nursery pot. It's too big but I do like it better and this thing may fill in this year and look relatively ok. I also put a bit of wire on it, probably wouldn't wire and repot at the same time but this thing has proven tough.
View attachment 239929

Here it is today. Even has some flowers!

View attachment 239927

I'm going to continue building the canopy up on top while defining pads and bring the Cascade around.
Nice work!
 
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How'd this guy fill in through the rest of summer?

It's been doing great. Let it grow out and get healthy again after this pic and did another pruning after the worst of the summer heat was done. As usual with this species, it got a little wild haha.

Here is the first grow out after the initial styling in this thread:

JULY.jpg

..And then after a late summer prune

JULYSTYLE.jpg

After that, I have let it run again to build up strength before dormancy. Here it is as of this morning. I'll likely give it another trim and pull off the trunk buds and suckers I don't want before putting it up for the winter, but we will see.

Cotoneaster 9_17.jpg

I'm trying to pull the bottom branch from the top down a little bit to create a little space below what will be the apex of the tree. I'm going to keep the pad at the bottom rear of the tree and try to coax it around a bit toward the front to give the illusion of a branch coming right out of that bottom curve. I have two branches to choose from further up at the next bend, one coming from the front of the bend and one coming from the rear. I'll sort that out next year. Still debating on whether I want to put it into a more appropriate sized pot for the material next year, or keep it in this big one and work on ramifying the main branches. Ultimately, I look forward to having nice little pads perfect for the white flowers they put out in spring and the red berries they put out in fall. This one will likely see neither anytime soon because I have removed the flowers every spring to give it more strength for branching and development.
 

thatguy

Mame
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It's looking excellent! Pad development is going well. Love the directions you're taking with the branches. I picked out two Tom Thumb cotoneasters from HD this morning. One has a nice trunk line amidst the craze of branches. The other is pretty interesting as it is self developing into a nice raft. Two low long branches on either side have rooted slightly already.

Any tips or hints? I figure I will leave the majority of the foliage rather than prune back hard so close to dormancy? Leave them in their containers until spring for a repot. Or perhaps even wait a whole nother year?
 
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It's looking excellent! Pad development is going well. Love the directions you're taking with the branches. I picked out two Tom Thumb cotoneasters from HD this morning. One has a nice trunk line amidst the craze of branches. The other is pretty interesting as it is self developing into a nice raft. Two low long branches on either side have rooted slightly already.

Any tips or hints? I figure I will leave the majority of the foliage rather than prune back hard so close to dormancy? Leave them in their containers until spring for a repot. Or perhaps even wait a whole nother year?

Yeah I'd say don't do much pruning going into dormancy. When you Repot, I wouldn't take more than half the roots off if you're trying to go smaller. Too much root work is the only thing I've done that seems to kill these guys.
 

thatguy

Mame
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Yeah I'd say don't do much pruning going into dormancy. When you Repot, I wouldn't take more than half the roots off if you're trying to go smaller. Too much root work is the only thing I've done that seems to kill these guys.

Cool cool those were my thoughts too. I figured I'd work to get them down into their "final" containers over the course of maybe 2-3 repots.
 

Wonker

Seed
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Really enjoyed reading this. Thank you. How’s the tree looking now?
 
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