Dawn Redwood question

[Shaw81]

I have a question about my dawn redwoods. I have 2 dawn redwoods that are currently in nursery pots. This is the second winter they are spending outside with me as the owner. Last spring before they broke bud I gave them a good prune and wired them. This year I would like to give another good prune and get them into training pot. My question is will they be able to handle a hard root prune and a good shape prune? Or should I just get them into training pots and wait on another hard prune until next spring? I’m in NJ USDA zone 6b.

 

[sorce]

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Sorce

 

[Forsoothe!]

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DR respond to pruning with vigorous growth. Too vigorous in a lot of cases. I do major work in autumn and tweaking (removing individual buds from clusters) in spring. I do not touch them at other times, especially I do not tip prune in summer. They respond to that by immediately putting out more clusters of foliage from the trunk, the base of branches, and at internodes. That makes for lots (too many) buds at internodes creating dogbone shaped internodes which I hate. The clusters of foliage look like little palm trees with foliage growing in all directions. That is what I tweak in spring when you can see the buds and trim them according to the rules of bonsai: remove those that point straight up or down and keep those that point sideways (horizontal). The less pruning done, the more controllable the growth. Of course, I don't practice chop & grow. I do major trimming for general style once and then tweak forever. So this may or may not be helpful if you are a chop & grow adherent.

 

[WNC Bonsai]

These are very vigorous plants and will send out shoots with little encouragement as Forsoothe said. As long as your trees responded well last year and grew well they should take another prune easily.

 

[Shibui]

I regularly prune/chop and repot dawn redwood in the same operation. They grow just as well after so you should also be able to repot and prune this spring.

 

[LittleDingus]

I have a question about my dawn redwoods. I have 2 dawn redwoods that are currently in nursery pots. This is the second winter they are spending outside with me as the owner. Last spring before they broke bud I gave them a good prune and wired them. This year I would like to give another good prune and get them into training pot. My question is will they be able to handle a hard root prune and a good shape prune? Or should I just get them into training pots and wait on another hard prune until next spring? I’m in NJ USDA zone 6b.

No pictures and you don't mention their size...or the timing of the work.

My experience is that if they are larger or very bushy and in leaf, trimming the top along with the bottom is beneficial. Trim too much root while in leaf and the top can die back because the tree can't hydrate the foliage enough until roots grow back. Do roots and foliage at the same time...or do the roots before bud break and there's less chance of die back.

You may infer from my comments that I work on mine pretty much year round: the darn things grow like weeds for me I've got younger trees that I've repotted multiple times a year because I didn't like how things were working out!

Less/no root work and more water in the heat though. Drying out too much is about the only thing I've done that has killed them dead