Hello everybody! how was your weekend? We continue with our future bonsai project, this time learning about dry root and branch pruning. We are in the middle of the spring season, and in many areas we are already beginning to notice until the summer, although we are not the only ones: the plants are growing in such a way that their need for water is increasing. But we’ll talk about that later.
This time it’s time to do small pruning. For this we only need a few scissors that we will have disinfected with pharmacy alcohol. Shall we start?
Root pruning
In many arboreal species the roots can grow in an inappropriate place on the trunk, taking into account the design we want to give it. In bonsai everything must be in order: both branches and roots, so we can’t let the root that goes to the opposite side grow either. When we find ourselves with this situation we can do two things: either prune, or cover with porous substrate such as akadama and kyriuzuna (or volcanic clay and vermiculite) at 70 and 30% respectively. As a Chinese elm is being worked, and it is a very resistant species, it has been chosen to prune.
Very important: we will only remove those roots that, as in this case, have sprouted from the same trunk. And we will only do it when the tree is in perfect health.
Once we have cut those two roots that bothered us for the style we want to give it, we have been like this:
Finally we have to put healing paste on it to avoid the appearance of fungi.
Branch pruning
Do you see that twig that has no leaves that I touch with my hand? By this time you should have, at least, sprouts awake. But the truth is that it has a slightly different color to that of the other branches: it does not look very good. For aesthetics, it is pruned with scissors. We will do the same with every dry twig we see.
And for the moment we leave it here. Next month, as we said at the beginning of the article, We will learn everything about irrigation in summer for trees in formation. Are you going to miss it?
