This is the progression of the Siberian Elm bonsai that I collected earlier that you can see here.
I’ve been happy with how this elm pushed out growth after its collection. It is time for the summer haircut. Siberian elm bonsai are well known for branches dying back from water sprouts taking over and from letting the growth become too vigorous without regular cutback. This is the first of several summer pruning sessions on this tree.
Here are a few photos of the tree before I began:
These next two photos show branches that are considered ‘water spouts’ or branches that grow from the base of other branches that take resources from the rest of the branch. Water spouts happen because they are typically growing more vertical or towards the sun better than the other branches. If allowed to grow unchecked, they can cause dieback in the remaining branch. This is common in aggressively growing species such as Siberian Elm, Chinese Elm, Zelkova, Tamarisk, Birch, Willow, Cottonwoods, etc.
Another major reason for summer pruning is to allow light and air penetration through the tree. This top branch blocks a lot of light penetration, and therefore has to be dealt with.
I still need plenty of growth on the upper canopy, so I decided to remove every other branch to give it a more airy feel while still leaving plenty of foliage for growth and thickening.
Found me a little Black Widow killer in the process.
While searching the rest of the tree I found a few more sections of dieback from water spout branches.
As you can see, these are all over and need to be regularly removed.
While not beautiful due to lack of wire, you can see the difference between what we started with and what we now have.
There will be more updates on this tree as it progresses through this year.
