Hi John Henry , its a tedious job but someone has to do it . I had a visit from a club member a couple of weeks back and he suggested i just remove the larger leaves leaving all the smaller ones on the tree .Some trees need completely stripping as the have grow large leaves but with a mixed bag i will definitely try partial defoliation from now on
Makes sense as it takes a good day to do a few well developed trees and then a few leaves later they begin to grow larger again . I certainly like the shape of these trunks and those eggshell / crescent pots are very striking.