AusBonsai

Hi guys,
In spring I put these two into their first bonsai pots and cut off all their branches. Now I know my bonsai skills are not great but I wanted to make this thread as these trees have been great for me as a beginner. It is a real plus to be able to work on trees pretty much every week The fig has been cut back three times and styled once (about to get a second styling, hence the defoliation). The clerodendrum I have cut back pretty much every second week. It is really starting to get some branch structure and ramification, well compared to my other stuff anyway It unfortunately doesn't show that well in the photos

Any advice going forward is greatly appreciated. The clero has reverse taper now as I recently knocked the bark of the upper side of the trunk I am growing some cuttings that I will attempt to approach graft onto that side to give a better root structure and get back the appearance of taper from the front. There is already a cutting growing up the back of the tree that is my experiment, it will become a root at the back. With the fig I think I will layer it to get some decent nebari. At an estimate both would be about 50cm tall.

Thanks for looking

I would get a sacrifice branch growing on the clero to fatten up the base. This should fix the taper issue. Even better would be to let it root through the bottom into the ground. I have one in a nursery pot that has done this and the sacrifice branch would be about 40mm in diameter. As for the fig I would put it back into a grow box to develop the branches. It will be a long time to develop them in the bonsai pot.

The first tree, the Ficus, if you can appreciate the Style, it reminds me of this tree from the AB facebook page
httpss://www.facebook.com/AusBonsai#!/ph ... =3&theater

sort of appropriate to todays Fairy tale thread; viewtopic.php?f=27&t=17272&start=0

nice work.

Bougy Fan wrote:I would get a sacrifice branch growing on the clero to fatten up the base. This should fix the taper issue. Even better would be to let it root through the bottom into the ground. I have one in a nursery pot that has done this and the sacrifice branch would be about 40mm in diameter. As for the fig I would put it back into a grow box to develop the branches. It will be a long time to develop them in the bonsai pot.

Thanks Bougy for your reply and advice
I will try another sacrifice branch for sure. You can see the cut off branch (about halfway up to the first branch) where I tried this but I chickened out about the scar and possible loss of bark. It wasn't near 40mm though.

I will say I am surprised about the fig as it grows like crazy, wire begins to cut in within a week or two and the top scar has 1/4 healed over already. I don't have any other figs though so I guess I am not used to how truly fast it could be! I will try the grow box method but think I will just enjoy it until next spring first as compared to my other trees it looks ok (to me ) when in full leaf. Still needs the branch work though so come next spring I will grow box it

Bonsaitrees wrote:The first tree, the Ficus, if you can appreciate the Style, it reminds me of this tree from the AB facebook page
httpss://www.facebook.com/AusBonsai#!/ph ... =3&theater

1535451_701773509844869_209153607_n.jpg

sort of appropriate to todays Fairy tale thread; viewtopic.php?f=27&t=17272&start=0

nice work.

Thanks for the reply Haha certainly something to think about! That article had some truly inspiring trees in it

Just saw this new post by Walter Pall and thought it would be interesting to share and discuss. I, for one, am a fan of the style although I don't really have any trees close to this. Hopefully Walter won't mind this being shared here.