Most excellent Peter Tea blog post about summer work on Maples!

[papymandarin]

As i said, i know it's counterintuitive, i was also only half confident when i first tried it, i actually tried it to see if it would really work. Again i doubt speaking/arguing will convince anyone not inclined to believe it, untill they try and see with their own eyes what happens.

 

[Davidlpf]

Do anybody have seen this other Peter's blog entrance click,click?

I think it is very graphic

The more length, the more leaves, the more leaves, the more growth, the more growth, the more thicken, it is not so difficult to understand, IMHO

When you defoliated all but the very tips of the side branches, your send the energy to that point, and the branche gain vigour, and can elongate MORE that others parts of the tree, but you must let the tree fill with leaves after, if you want the tree get strenght, and thicken.
No leaves, no strenght, no matter if they are in the branch or in side branches, ABOVE the part you want get bigger.

cheers

 

[MichaelS]

Do anybody have seen this other Peter's blog entrance click,click?

I think it is very graphic

The more length, the more leaves, the more leaves, the more growth, the more growth, the more thicken, it is not so difficult to understand, IMHO

When you defoliated all but the very tips of the side branches, your send the energy to that point, and the branche gain vigour, and can elongate MORE that others parts of the tree, but you must let the tree fill with leaves after, if you want the tree get strenght, and thicken.
No leaves, no strenght, no matter if they are in the branch or in side branches, ABOVE the part you want get bigger.

cheers

 

[MichaelS]

The more length, the more leaves, the more leaves, the more growth, the more growth, the more thicken, it is not so difficult to understand, IMHO

When you defoliated all but the very tips of the side branches, your send the energy to that point, and the branche gain vigour, and can elongate MORE that others parts of the tree, but you must let the tree fill with leaves after, if you want the tree get strenght, and thicken.
No leaves, no strenght, no matter if they are in the branch or in side branches, ABOVE the part you want get bigger.

cheers

Exactly.... Except for one point....You said... ''When you defoliated all but the very tips of the side branches, your send the energy to that point, and the branche gain vigour, and can elongate MORE that others parts of the tree''.

The branch does not gain vigour, the tip of the branch does. The reason the sides are removed is so you can keep the branch extending and gaining mass over a long period. After that, the only reason you would prune the sides is if they are in your way. If they aren't in the way and you leave them, then the branch will thicken more quickly.

 

[MichaelS]

As i said, i know it's counterintuitive, i was also only half confident when i first tried it, i actually tried it to see if it would really work. Again i doubt speaking/arguing will convince anyone not inclined to believe it, untill they try and see with their own eyes what happens.

You still are missing the point that it is not the removal of the side branches/leaves that increases the thickening rate, it is the subsequent growth. And it's not the subsequent growth you get because you pruned the sides, it's just the subsequent growth.

 

[River's Edge]

You still are missing the point that it is not the removal of the side branches/leaves that increases the thickening rate, it is the subsequent growth. And it's not the subsequent growth you get because you pruned the sides, it's just the subsequent growth.

Actually you are missing the point, the focus of terminal bud growth is what causes the elongation, additional growth and additional thickening. The extra growth is switched on by specific growth hormone imbalance caused by the specific type of pruning.check out the information contained in Larry morton's recent publication. " Modern Bonsai Practice" published 2016.
Cheers

 

[Lorax7]

Actually you are missing the point, the focus of terminal bud growth is what causes the elongation, additional growth and additional thickening. The extra growth is switched on by specific growth hormone imbalance caused by the specific type of pruning.check out the information contained in Larry morton's recent publication. " Modern Bonsai Practice" published 2016.
Cheers

Do you happen to recall the page number? I have that book and would like to re-read what it said on the topic.

 

[River's Edge]

The section on keeping branches happy is part of the detail. Pages 97-115. The style of presentation in the book is segmented information, so key statements are found in other areas as well. Page 76 for example.
Contribution of various parts to the overall. And page 101 " switching systems". Page 102 on vertically oriented branches. Page 103 on the role of the apical bud. Page 113 on branch thickness and the terminal bud. The two highlighted summary statements on page 115 are also notable.
The work of botanists have helped in the understanding of why some Bonsai techniques work. Suppressing some areas and encouraging other areas for balance and refinement. The key is not what happens in the laboratory, but rather what techniques in combination create the desired response.

 

[MichaelS]

Here is a pine which is about 6 feet tall. Most of the active growth is around the apex. There is not much further down. The diameter of the trunk base is basically the same as it was when the tree was 12 inches high several years ago. The total mass of foliage is also more or less the same as it was when the tree was 12 inches tall. It has lost just as much as it has gained in 10 years or so.
Extension alone does not add much wood.








Just over one inch thick and 6' high










Here you can see that the part of the trunk below the one and only branch is very slightly thicker than the rest. This is the result of the combination of the two leaders. ie: the more mass of foliage the thicker the stem. If that extra stem was not there, the trunk would be thinner not thicker.








Here are 2 tridents which were not touched all summer. Their diameters were the same last winter. One has a very high single shoot (apart from some minor ones). The other has shorter shoots but more of them. The total mass of the smaller shoots is greater than that of the single stem specimen but only slightly. As a very rough guess I would say maybe 10 or 15% greater.





The trunk of the multi stem plant has thickened faster. It's not the length but the weight, or mass or whatever you want to call it.

 

[MichaelS]

So I read the Peter Tea blog linked by David above (https://peterteabonsai.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/the-trident-maple/)
The pics 15 and 16 and the accompanying text shows what we are talking about clearly. He says that leaving the shoots will slow down the thickening of the branch base. If we take this further, we can say that the more we leave the slower the thickening. I simply cannot agree with this. I might concede that there may be a temporary slowing down of the thickening as the new branches use resources but this must only be temporary. Sooner or later the rate will increase beyond what it would have after pruning. It can't be otherwise IMO. I still must call bogus on this one.

And speaking of bogus. Why on earth can't we go back and edit our posts after a few minutes?? Particularly when someone else's picture mysteriously appears in your post instead of your own!!!!

 

[MichaelS]

I don't know why but this picture seems to come and go as it pleases to be replaced by another one.
It belongs in post 109

 

[papymandarin]

The problem here is that those plants were not trimmed so it's difficult to relate their growth with what the technique will do. What is missing in your reasoning is that the tree ability to grow is limited in a pot (isn't that the very reason why bonsai are grown in pots?) unless you have some kind of device providing unlimited amounts of water and nutrients continuously (and even then remains the volume limitation of the pot which restricts physically the growth of roots at some point) which only few people can provide you will agree with this i hope.
So at some point the growth of a tree in a pot will slow then stop when the tree reaches the limit of what the roots can feed. If you trim the tree you not only trigger a regrowth but you also ALLOW the tree to regrow it all by removing the stress on the roots. Look at Peter Tea's trees, they are trimmed 2 or 3 times and regrow everything in between. An untrimmed tree will push a secondary growth and soon stop because it has all this growth to provide with water. Look at Peter trident in the first picture, i doubt that if left to it's own device it will have doubled-tripled the volume it had in the beginning during the rest of the season, being trimmed allowed it to regrow 2-3 time this amount and the differential trimming concentrates the regrowth in the shoot to thicken, and at the end of the season the shoot will have grown more than if left untouched, that's how i understand it at least.

 

[M. Frary]

This must be for trident only I'm thinking.
I don't have those.
I have elms,which thicken branches when there's more leaves.
Tamaracks too.
If you want thicker branches with taper you just keep trimming them back. The more foliage the faster they thicken up.
No need to waste time doing weird things like described here.
Of course if I could grow tridemts I would be going over everything Al Keppler has ever put out on the subject.
I wouldn't even give Peter Tea (could I have fun with him and that name) a thought.

 

[papymandarin]

i did that on pines, maples (japanese and tridents), elms, ....of course the more growth abilities the tree has the sooner the results are seen. At least when you are open mind enough to give it a try.

 

[Anthony]

Interesting the trident example above is the typical, big trunk
small branches convention out of Japan.
That thing has so many feeder tubes, it can do what it wants.

Get the same with a willow ficus.
Good Day
Anthony

 

[atlarsenal]

This must be for trident only I'm thinking.
I don't have those.
I have elms,which thicken branches when there's more leaves.
Tamaracks too.
If you want thicker branches with taper you just keep trimming them back. The more foliage the faster they thicken up.
No need to waste time doing weird things like described here.
Of course if I could grow tridemts I would be going over everything Al Keppler has ever put out on the subject.
I wouldn't even give Peter Tea (could I have fun with him and that name) a thought.

No thanks, I wouldn’t care for any peter tea. Lmfao!

 

[M. Frary]

i did that on pines, maples (japanese and tridents), elms, ....of course the more growth abilities the tree has the sooner the results are seen. At least when you

No thanks, I wouldn’t care for any peter tea. Lmfao!

It doesn't sound good.

 

[atlarsenal]

Heard it’s got quite a wang to it.

 

[M. Frary]

Heard it’s got quite a wang to it.

Only after a period of "elongation"

 

[atlarsenal]

Only after a period of "elongation"

Yeah, when it hardens off.