SerSwanky
Yamadori
I was inspired by @ShadyStump in his post: https://www.bonsainut.com/threads/took-out-some-nervous-energy-on-my-new-boxwood.56340/ as I see them everywhere here in Washington at Lowes and Walmart. I've been trying not to love my other trees to death so I picked this one up for $24 at Walmart to distract myself. I know it's not an ideal time to repot a tree in the middle of the summer but....yolo dead trees?
Anyways usually the ones I see are all bean poles but I found one with a bit of movement in the lower trunk. I could use some advise on pruning the foliage. I know it's still too dense, I cleared up the lower half of it. I'm just not sure how much to trim off on the upper half. I want it to get sufficient interior light, most of the show boxwoods I looked up have canopy's that are full and aren't broken up into pads like on conifers so I didn't want to chop off too much yet without some input. Especially with it being mid summer and having read that boxwood are a bit like junipers needing their foliage.
Here's what it looked like to start. It looked pretty healthy, lots of green foliage, the flowers(?) fruits(?) had fallen turned brown and fallen off for the most part already but the roots were healthy and starting to circle the gallon pot. I trimmed off about a inch of the circling roots and picked up a quarter of the dirt. I left most of the dirt as you see in the picture, exposed more the trunk line, put it back in its plastic pot and filled it in with 50% pumice / 50% lava. I know the main trunk and branches are pretty straight after the initial movement of the trunk so its not ideal. But it should be good practice.
Next I started trimming off some of the branches to expose the trunk line. I figured the four branches converging in the center would cause some inverse taper down the line so I chopped the two branches on the left off, put them in some rooting hormone and potted them in 100% pumice to see if they take. So it's a mother-in-law now.
So here is where it stands currently. I ordered some cut paste to seal the cuts on some of the bigger branches. It arrives in a few days.
In the next post I'll show some of the interior of the foliage.
Anyways usually the ones I see are all bean poles but I found one with a bit of movement in the lower trunk. I could use some advise on pruning the foliage. I know it's still too dense, I cleared up the lower half of it. I'm just not sure how much to trim off on the upper half. I want it to get sufficient interior light, most of the show boxwoods I looked up have canopy's that are full and aren't broken up into pads like on conifers so I didn't want to chop off too much yet without some input. Especially with it being mid summer and having read that boxwood are a bit like junipers needing their foliage.
Here's what it looked like to start. It looked pretty healthy, lots of green foliage, the flowers(?) fruits(?) had fallen turned brown and fallen off for the most part already but the roots were healthy and starting to circle the gallon pot. I trimmed off about a inch of the circling roots and picked up a quarter of the dirt. I left most of the dirt as you see in the picture, exposed more the trunk line, put it back in its plastic pot and filled it in with 50% pumice / 50% lava. I know the main trunk and branches are pretty straight after the initial movement of the trunk so its not ideal. But it should be good practice.
Next I started trimming off some of the branches to expose the trunk line. I figured the four branches converging in the center would cause some inverse taper down the line so I chopped the two branches on the left off, put them in some rooting hormone and potted them in 100% pumice to see if they take. So it's a mother-in-law now.
So here is where it stands currently. I ordered some cut paste to seal the cuts on some of the bigger branches. It arrives in a few days.
In the next post I'll show some of the interior of the foliage.
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THAT'S where it got away from me.
