Fruiting/flowering bonsai hedge cutting method?

[Beng]

I've read through Walter Palls article about training deciduous trees several times. If you haven't read it here's the link. It sounds like he uses this method for most broad leaf trees.

http://walter-pall-bonsai.blogspot.com/2013/02/refurbishing-japanese-maple-hedge.html

I've never trimmed like this, typically with my fruiting/flowering trees I cut back everything to one to two sets of leaves once spring growth has hardened off. This usually causes back budding throughout. Then I prune back to one to two shots again on new growth that came from spring trimming in summer. I don't defoliate my fruiting or flowering trees. Fruiting trees grow fast and can put on 1-2 foot long shoots and long internodes by summer without pruning back and controlling the leaders. I'm not sure I see the benefit in that kind of long growth other then to quickly fill bare rooted trees pot with roots or build up trunk girth.

I realize this is a relatively new article he wrote but have any of you used Walters method on established flowering and fruiting bonsai which already have good trunk girth and taper? I thought there was another similar thread to this but couldn't find it.

 

[Poink88]

There is indeed another thread about this.

I too doesn't trim this way but then again, I savor and plan each cut but I guess if you have so much to do and do not have enough time, this would work. To each his own I guess.

 

[jk_lewis]

It's all in how you like to work -- and, I suspect, the size of your collection. I really doubt that the tree gives a d . . . hoot. The idea is that you snip a branch and the tree's "survival instincts" cause buds to form deeper inside the foliage.

Whether you whack or snip doesn't matter, but if you have many hundreds of trees to care for like Walter, whacking may have its benefits -- if only from a time standpoint.

Physiologically, however, the tree will react the same way.

Just because one of the Bonsai Gods says he does it "this" way, doesn't mean we all need to do it that way, too. Figure out how (and why) trees react as they do and find the way that works for you.

 

[catfish chapstick]

just took another look at his crab apple and somehow i doubt he does it with that particular tree.