Crepe Myrtle Double Trunk - Chop Advise

[SU2]

I've got a new stock one that reminds me a bit of your left picture. It's time to put it in a pot and start hacking away and chopping shit off it. Again, I extend my offer to bring a tree to my home and we'll work it. I'm just a man, not a for-profit-bonsai-man if you catch my drift, nothing for sale.

It's rather hard to recommend a true chop point (often because it's multiple) and a pic is in 2D.

Wire crapes out/down/whatever first. The branches shouldnt really grow "up" unless you are just thickening it, in which case you'd still do it sideways then up like making a L with your elbow. Of course an apex grows up, but you grow those in a week, we're talking lowers and the branches people look at.

Come on over man, only a 70 minute drive. And I still have brown hair, too.

Ok so I'm not erring by having a third of the branches angled-outward with guy-wires (I've got like 10 anchor-screws around the box's perimeter, in fact I'm planning to do another session today because of all the branching-growth that's happened since the shoots stopped lengthening) So, basically just setting the stage for what'll eventually be thicker 'primaries', presumably a 'broomstick' style is the only style I can do with a trunk like this, am open to ideas but it's all I can picture! And I commute by bike so it's not a 70min drive unfortunately Would go to another serious bonsai'ist's in a heartbeat if I were able and would particularly love seeing your setup!!

Alrighty time to go do some more wiring on this guy, am just getting into wiring so things still come out pretty funny-looking, it's already goofy because I've got multiple types of tie-downs on the main branches but I'll be using yet a different color when I wire (didn't use any copper on the tie-downs, used galvanized steel and fishing line lol, I did put padding between those and the branches of course!) so this should be interesting! Am picturing this being one of, maybe the, last times I'll be 'working it outward', right? Or would you envision a series of expanding the canopy as you go upward? I've been keenly observing the most natural crapes in my area (not 'crape-murdered' stuff) and they tend to form either as almost bushes if in bad areas (roadsides where they planted small beginner specimen) or, more commonly, an inverse-tapered broom-shape coming from the primaries - I feel like I may just be able to work this thing into a squished-down version of that, it'd be true-to-form although probably still funny looking as far as 'real bonsai', but once developed and flowering it'll still be a sight!!!

Oh and I meant to ask you- can I successfully thwart flowering (so I can keep it growing/developing) by just removing the tip of a shoot when it's starting to flower? It seems the growth pattern is to send out shoots, stop lengthening them while simultaneously lengthening radial shoots of the branch and developing several new tips at the top of the branch (which I suspect will become flowering-bodies, if not then I've got branches that are ready to put out 4 new shoots from the same couple nodes!)

 

[SU2]

Wire crapes out/down/whatever first. The branches shouldnt really grow "up" unless you are just thickening it, in which case you'd still do it sideways then up like making a L with your elbow. Of course an apex grows up, but you grow those in a week, we're talking lowers and the branches people look at.

I want to iron-out a wrinkle I'm seeing in this- for my blocky guy, I've intentionally left a handful of central shoots to go straight upward, figuring this would give a better 'broom' structuring ie I'll have my extremely-bent (sideways) primaries, my less-bent, and then in the center, some uprights - figured this would, down the road, leave that area between trunk-block and canopy with a much more 'evenly spread' branching for broom-form (again though, if you think I'm wrong in envisioning broom-form only I would love being corrected! I just can't see much else for this one but to make an exaggerated broom-style!)

 

[SU2]

@bonsai-ben - am I right in thinking I should not allow new shoots to grow from the trunk? Like, where I've already got my 8mo-old primary branches? Because I've been hesitant to prune-off anything below that upper-silhouette level you spoke of / trimming-to-height, but with all the shoots originating low I feel like it'll be 50+ branches leaving the trunk which'll look messy as heck!!

Thank again for the tips, have spent a ton of time wiring this thing in the past week, almost everything is wired and all primaries are guy-wired to S-hooks I put every few inches along the edge of its wooden box, it was tall with all its new growth and is now squat, the secondary / radial shoots coming from the new growth are growing upward, will soon have a wide & tall bush A spider took up residency and made a web which is nice because ants/aphids have been getting on this tree a lot lately so it's nice to have natural pest control (though am still considering whether I should roll out the systemics, probably a good time-of-year!!)

 

[SU2]

[here's an album I just updated, fully chronological & curated, hopefully you can tell me if I'm on-point here, both what I've done and plan to do - finding help w/ crapes has proven more difficult than you'd originally let-on ;D album

@bonsai-ben I was hoping to see if I'm on-course with what you'd suggested, I didn't trim-to-form just yet because the bottom branch-structure just doesn't have the thickness & taper to start letting all the base shoots grow at the same thickness (will end up with poles, these shoots can get so vigorous they're quickly reach the girth of the branch they protrude from!) so, after it grew-in from its early-spring hard-prune and halted (they always halt at ~2.5-3' branches, presumably for flowering?), I did a 2nd hard-prune and cut-off a lot more of the redundant shoots in the canopy (going to have to do so again soon, have a feeling this will be a part of maintaining this thing forever), it's now grown-back as quite the bush and once again halted (for flowers I imagine, they set spring buds for summer flowers...), I didn't want more branching any lower so to spurt growth I cut the top 2 nodes off all the shoots (have found this to work on other crapes to get a shoot growing when it halts, if you pinch just the tip sometimes you only get 1 branch in return but pinch to the 2nd node down and you almost always get 2 strong new shoots to re-start that halted-branch's growth!)

So, now it's a bush with a bunch of cut tips, soon it'll grow-in a bunch more shoots at the top where I made those tip-cuts and all those primaries will just keep getting fatter, am thinking it may be best to leave it be and let that happen, let it grow its newest top and let it flower (or at least develop flowers for a little bit!) and then do a hard-prune in mid-summer at that point, concurrently doing the carving of the flat-top while I've got the space and also re-boxing it (it's out-grown its box and would benefit from the substrate I use now over what I used when originally boxing this!)

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated, am tempted to start wiring some of these vigorous shoots but - what would the point be? I defoliated their bottoms today to get a good glance at the bases, they're still too scrawny so expect I'll have to do another (maybe 2-3 more) real hard cut-backs to bare branches in this thing's future....think I'll wire some branches just to help sun-flow but otherwise what do you think, am I basically on-point here? Thanks a ton man, am doing something similar w/ the other medium-sized crape only I haven't done a 2nd hard-prune I've just kept doing the tip-prunes and have branches that leave the trunk and ultimately support close to 10 apical tips

 

[SU2]

I just went and defoliated the bottom several nodes of all the branches to give myself a better idea of the structure going on, I made a good album and w/ the bottoms defoliated this album is as good a representation of the cuts I've made as I can present! album of crape on may 22nd after minor defoliation

 

[bonsai-ben]

I made a video for you yesterday, thank you for reminding me to upload it. Give me twenty minutes.

 

[bonsai-ben]

Here ya go

 

[SU2]

Thanks a ton for making this!! Very appreciated (Wish my download worked, for some reason my youtube-dl rip isn't performing well but it streams just fine ) Glad to hear re flowers, my larger/blocky crape has half its shoots setting flower-buds, I was going to let them run a bit longer (perhaps even bloom) but after watching this I'm not so sure, what do you think about this do you think it's ready (and, if so, I'd basically be cutting off as little as possible, just enough to remove the flowering, right?)
My blocky guy right now:

Since it only flowers once annually I figured I'd let it go, still on the fence....I very very much expect it has the reserves for another strong push but, w/ it being 1x annually and having already done 2 hard-prunes, am tempted to let the stronger shoots (the buds are preferentially on stronger shoots I've noticed) just bloom a bit while the others catch-up!


Hearing the owner* mention Irma having them at the curb...wish I'd seen that in my area, only found some bougies (which I took and rooted, one was a 5" wide truncheon lol ), crapes w/ thick trunks are hard for me to find but mine's almost reminiscent of the bottom half of yours in a way (it's worse for sure I just mean the girth/straightness), right now it's finished pushing its second flush of growth after a hard-prune and subsequent tip-pinching to force an extra ~6"-->1' out of the branches, and is now setting flower buds on half its shoots....really unsure whether to let it go a while longer or cut off the flowers as my other crape didn't bounce-back as strongly from the hard-prune as my bigger one (it's not as mature though so there's that..)

(*am guessing the context of that video and I'm presuming that's you that's talking/holding the camera and that's your crape, but is that jason schley helping you? If not the guy bears quite a resemblance and sounds similar lol, have watched every schley video actually every FL video that I know of!)

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After giving both of my larger crapes a 2nd pruning and only the blocky(mature) one came back strong, was hesitant to do anything and was going to let it bloom, am unsure whether I should let it at least start flowering and then go for it, just don't want to get a weak flush after pruning like on this guy:
(btw- would you consider separating these? I'm not planning to but the idea crossed my mindn recently...guess I'm picturing them together w/ a shared-but-separate canopy ie overlapping canopies from each side)

^that growth is good&strong (that pic is ~1wk old), however upon taking that pic I did a round of tip-pinching to keep the growth going (had started slowing, my blocky one responded well to this pinch treatment), and all the new growth I got from those tip-pinches was weak, many spots only gave 1 new shoot instead of 2 at the pinch-site...this guy was collected while quasi-dormant in Jan with a good root-ball but still it's not as mature as the blocky one that's ~1yr in that same box now (and would benefit greatly from a new container- would you root-prune and use same container or up-size? I don'nt want too-large a root-mass but want to push growth, guess those are kinda diametrically opposed aren't they? ;p )


Thanks a ton for that video it's incredibly appreciated!! And just for the help in general, I may've pushed the 'cavernous crape' a bit too-far but surely it'l be fine in a week or two, and the blocky one is basically tied w/ a bald cypress for fastest-growing tree in my entire collection!! Have switched fertilizer regimens, am now using ~80% slow-release osmocote and ~20% miracle-gro instant-release (every ~5-10d schedule, but highly dependent upon conditions ie if we've got 3 really sunny days coming I'm going to do a high N miracle-gro application to capitalize on that growth, I expect the instant-release is basically close to done working by the 3-5th time you've watered the container afterward, at least if you've got real well-draining / relatively-low CEC substrate like most mixes!)

 

[Living Tribunal]

This is where you lose me....if I go outside right now and pinch *any* bougie shoot, or clip any bougie branch, I'll get multiple buds starting to swell beneath it quickly - on the other hand, in the picture I posted up-thread with my crape from last summer, I cut those hardened-off shoots back to 2 nodes and it responded by giving me (mostly) just 1 new shoot (from the top node) on most of last year's growths....some branches did give me 2 new shoots but most didn't - should I have cut lower than the first node and hoped for epicormic buds to activate? Do you happen to have any progression-series of any you could share? I spent a bit googling 'bonsai crape myrtle' yesterday and am getting cold feet about their use in bonsai at least insofar as a traditional style (I can see the 'dense bush on a stump' look being ok for my thick one, it's probably all that can ever be made into anyways since it's such poor stock, but the one on the right-side of my pic is smaller and I wanted to be able to get ramification on a small-scale which, if they'll only back-bud from nodes, isn't going to happen - you'd really need to give-up on any small/medium sized crape bonsai and just do medium-large stuff where you can get the trunk // branching somewhat in-scale w/ each other!)

Maybe I've just pruned wrong, or at the wrong time? Last year when my fat one (the left-side one) was growing-out its shoots, I clipped a couple of them (expecting bougie-like behavior ie that I'd quickly have 2 growing tips where I'd once had 1) and the clipped ones just did *nothing*, they didn't back-bud or continue to grow, they just kept their leaves til fall and into dormancy.... I'm starting to experiment now, the smaller (right-side) one from my pic has 1 shoot that I pinched the tip off, and another that I pruned back to a couple nodes, just to see how it responds (thinking maybe it'll behave differently now than last year....don't have a lot of hope though)

Would be real eager to hear any specifics you can give me on how & when to prune, I can grow them out but just having trouble seeing how I'll get any decent ramification on a smaller specimen...really *any* specifics you'd be willing to share would be greatly appreciated!!

So a few things. Ramification is indeed very easy with crepe myrtles but waiting for the first flush of growth to slightly lignify is paramount to decreasing leaf size. If you cut back, even to two leaves, on growth that's just a month old you will get shoots that are the same diameter and leaves just about the same size. They also grow so bloody fast that shoots on developed branches can overgrow rather fast.

However, I've also noticed that cutting too late on newly lignified wood is indeed a bit tougher to get predictable back budding from within that season. I wait until the first flush of growth has hints of brown and then chop it back depending on where I am with development of the tree. They also have a tendency to alternate buds when you left more than 3 series of leaves on the shoot.

Here are a few pictures of crepe myrtles I started development on this season, all were acquired and potted in March.
This is the first shoot of a siren red semi-dwarf crepe:


And then a few months after the lignification process began, notice the color of the initial shoot:


Here's a comparison in leaf size of an untouched shoot and the one above that's been cut:


Here's a dwarf pocomoke (ignore the perlite and the hidden nebari I luckily found haha):


Large leaves after the first flush (you can see them on the right branch):


And the difference in leaf size between a newly cut shoot vs an untouched one (notice the color in the shoot on the left):


And lastly a full size crepe:

Here's a bad cut (lignified now but was cut way too early, this is my play around tree for the season ):


And a good cut:


When developing crepe myrtles honestly the best way to go about them while developing initial branches/branch structure is to aim for 1 set of branches per year for the first 2-3 years then cutting all the way back after summer to get better taper.

 

[SU2]

So a few things. Ramification is indeed very easy with crepe myrtles but waiting for the first flush of growth to slightly lignify is paramount to decreasing leaf size. If you cut back, even to two leaves, on growth that's just a month old you will get shoots that are the same diameter and leaves just about the same size. They also grow so bloody fast that shoots on developed branches can overgrow rather fast.

However, I've also noticed that cutting too late on newly lignified wood is indeed a bit tougher to get predictable back budding from within that season. I wait until the first flush of growth has hints of brown and then chop it back depending on where I am with development of the tree. They also have a tendency to alternate buds when you left more than 3 series of leaves on the shoot.

Here are a few pictures of crepe myrtles I started development on this season, all were acquired and potted in March.
This is the first shoot of a siren red semi-dwarf crepe:

And then a few months after the lignification process began, notice the color of the initial shoot:

Here's a comparison in leaf size of an untouched shoot and the one above that's been cut:

Here's a dwarf pocomoke (ignore the perlite and the hidden nebari I luckily found haha):

Large leaves after the first flush (you can see them on the right branch):

And the difference in leaf size between a newly cut shoot vs an untouched one (notice the color in the shoot on the left):

And lastly a full size crepe:

Here's a bad cut (lignified now but was cut way too early, this is my play around tree for the season ):

And a good cut:

When developing crepe myrtles honestly the best way to go about them while developing initial branches/branch structure is to aim for 1 set of branches per year for the first 2-3 years then cutting all the way back after summer to get better taper.

Thanks again for this, I'd come here to re-read some things and realized I had only 'liked' instead of replying I did take-on and, kind-of, learned from the "cut-too-soon" idea and think I've got that down (I just err on the side of letting things grow longer now, I figure at worst I'm wasting a little time but at least it'll increase staggered-girths/taper in the branching!

Re the 'trial crepe' I'm glad I'm not the only one ROFL! I have a handful of specimen that I do things like that on, it's certainly a valuable learning-experience to be able to push things and see what happens!

Re my "flowering problem" on my two larger crapes, I removed the 2nd flowering-flush on both of them and, for whatever reason, one of them went for a third (!) flowering push while the other went mostly-vegetative (literally 2 or 3 single flowers on the thing, am guessing they were buds I missed when removing the prior flush) So for the one that went back to vegetative, things are were great from right-after that 2nd flush's flowers were removed (this pic is like 1mo old now, it's just been vegging since )




The other, my "cavernous crape" lol, has just been fighting me and is only now starting to give-up the fight, it'd just keep trying to push more flowers so I'd just actively remove flower-buds anytime they occurred and did nothing else (except normal husbandry) and through that I did get another good veg flush to the point I had that "branch-girth-disparity" to go for 1 last session for this season (gotta love FL ;D )

[wires were getting a bit tight!]


Sadly though, I can be a moron and still will think "I know I'm in a rush right now but I know I can be careful in wiring this!" and broke 2 branches while doing its last intervention of '18 (BTW, I'd love your opinion on which side should be 'front' for this specimen, am pretty sure I know which is best in my eyes but want to be sure others see it! Here's both sides, right after the last works of '18:


And the other side:



[it's pretty obscured by the substrate, but in the last pic here ^, on the right-side trunking, where it slopes into the ground/nebari, that's actually a big fat surface root that goes almost to the side of the box, will be real nice when I can 'display' that ]

I use lots of guy-wires on my 2 crapes "to fight apical dominance"....I'm picturing the final canopy's shape and it just seems smartest to get many of the primaries into a more horizontal orientation, am figuring that filling-in the interior of the canopy will be pretty simple but that the bottom-spread of it kind of has to be formed in this type of broad/spread manner to be the 'base'/structure for secondary/tertiary branching to fill-in the crown here!

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These are my only 2 collected crapes, the rest are just cuttings that I don't really expect much out of as they're not dwarfs and I just started with ~1"+ thick branches, but have ~5 specimen I'm working like this guy:


Going to up-pot that today, had taken it out of its plastic cup (I use styro&plastic cups, 1oz and 8oz sized, for propagation...I propagate a lot ) and the root system was small-enough that I erred and figured it was a suitable size for the rest of the summer- this pic is weeks old now and the root-mat in there is so darn tight&dense that it's squeezing the substrate from the walls, like there's a 1mm-minimum gap between the entire perimeter of the substrate/root mass and the inside-lip of the container! Getting a re-pot next soon, probably today if I get to it (have ~10+ similar propagates that need up-potting, mostly bougies but a few more crapes too!)


Your dwarf pocomoke is just awesome!! Gotta say though, am a bit confused that you 'found' nebari- am guessing this was a nursery plant that you converted to bonsai? And what's wrong w/ perlite? Love the stuff! It's obviously not a great aesthetic but that's really only relevant, IMO, much further down "the development-road"! When still growing-out stuff, perlite is just such a great aggregate for many types of blends (IMO!), I probably use it at 15-20% minimum in pretty much any blend I make ;D

 

[Living Tribunal]

Thanks again for this, I'd come here to re-read some things and realized I had only 'liked' instead of replying I did take-on and, kind-of, learned from the "cut-too-soon" idea and think I've got that down (I just err on the side of letting things grow longer now, I figure at worst I'm wasting a little time but at least it'll increase staggered-girths/taper in the branching!

Re the 'trial crepe' I'm glad I'm not the only one ROFL! I have a handful of specimen that I do things like that on, it's certainly a valuable learning-experience to be able to push things and see what happens!

Your dwarf pocomoke is just awesome!! Gotta say though, am a bit confused that you 'found' nebari- am guessing this was a nursery plant that you converted to bonsai? And what's wrong w/ perlite? Love the stuff! It's obviously not a great aesthetic but that's really only relevant, IMO, much further down "the development-road"! When still growing-out stuff, perlite is just such a great aggregate for many types of blends (IMO!), I probably use it at 15-20% minimum in pretty much any blend I make ;D

I apologize myself for missing your posts last year. Given that it's late March and things are starting to shoot I'm happy I saw your reply.

I'm SUPER envious of some of the crepes you got there, fantastic trunks. I'd love to see some winter shots if you have any pics with their clothes off!

I used to be heavily into bonsai for about 7 years before I moved to San Francisco for a few years. Last year was my first season back and I basically loaded up on the tree I knew best.... crepes. So in terms of my material they were all trials haha. Developing branch structure and taper on deciduous trees is kind of a skill the requires a little bit of constant practice so I thought I'd get some good ones to beat up on for the year.

The one thing I've learned about crepes is they are a bit goofy and have a mind of their own. They'll come out and grow like crazy but oftentimes can be hard to get predictable branch placement. Sometimes they want to grow straight up (most all of the time) but sometimes they want to shoot sideways like they're coming in for a hug. You prune the snot out of them but then they want to flower. It's kind of just best to go with the flow on crepes. Also, wiring crepes is always such a nervewrecking matter, they lignify so quick and are so brittle.

Let me send over initial styling, growing season progression, and winter shots tomorrow so you can see some of the crappy starter material I had a blast with in my first season back. Aside from the crepes, I was able to get my hands on a bunch of very old (20-25 year old azaleas). I remember how much fun trees that are in their second year of development can be and I think I have about 13-15 decent trees to work with this year.

Send me updates on your crepes soon!