Wake up sleepy crab apple!

[jozaeh]

Hey everyone!
I've been having some peculiar behaviour going on with my crab apple. I first bought the stock from red dragon bonsai at currumbin in august 2009 (it was the biggest and most expensive stock i've ever made my cringing wallet pay for! so i was very excited), My brother and i both bought sister crab apples and set to seeing what kind of nebari and roots were under the hiding soil. And boy was I was giddy with the amount of roots and nebari i found! I do now know that i need to cut some of the finger-like roots away, and work on the base of the tree, but that's another story.



So as you can see by the photos, after a good root prune and pot up, the crab bounced to life with new growth really well just two weeks later in august 2009. and i spent a summer of wiring and shaping of the new shoots (amidst battling hungry possums who would seemingly wait until a shoot was just getting to a good length and then they'd munch it back to nothing, GRRRR!).



Winter time 2010 came, the crab dropped 80% of it's leaves and new buds formed. all was going well. I gave her a good cut back to buds before spring hit, and she flushed into the bright red new leaf buds. I swear i love the week that the buds pop out red, it's almost as pretty as the flowering stage.





I had been potashing the crab all the way up to winter and before spring, to help encourage flowering in spring. but new leaves turned green and no flowers came. and now onto my main situation: my crab apple has not send out new shoots from the leaf buds like it did the first year. all she has done is send out the bunches of leaves, and nothing more. the leaves seem to be fine and healthy (aside from tiny grasshopper munching holes), so i'm not sure what has happened. I was really looking forward to getting some more ramification this growing season.







I seek any advice you wonderful people can give me. My only idea is that i didn't give the crab a root prune this spring, nor a re-pot. Could this be a reason why she didn't send out shoots?

thanks!
Jozaeh

[Handy Mick]

Sounds the same as mine this year!
Lets see what people say.

[Petra]

Hi Jozaeh,
you' ve hit the nail on the head. If still growing your tree, you need to plant it in the ground or grow box. That pot you have your tree in atm is restricting it from growing. You will have to wait another season to do that.
Only when your tree is finished growing then you place it in its final pot. cheers!

[jozaeh]

Hi Jozaeh,
you' ve hit the nail on the head. If still growing your tree, you need to plant it in the ground or grow box. That pot you have your tree in atm is restricting it from growing. You will have to wait another season to do that.
Only when your tree is finished growing then you place it in its final pot. cheers!

Thanks so much Petra!
I thought as much. When I first potted the crab, i do remember not wanting to shock it too much, so I possibly only left 2 inches around the root ball and the edge of the inside of the pot for roots to grow. So I guess the little lady has already filled up that space! And that sounds good, i'll wait till next season to trim her roots again and let her thrive.

thanks again,
Jozaeh

ps: and there we go handy mick, does that sound like it's the same as your crab?

[Watto]

Hi Jozaeh,
In my experience apples and crab apples do not like to be root pruned and/or re-potted often, probably every three years for a tree like yours. Be careful with your Autumn prunning as you can easily cut all your prospective flower buds off. I fertilise with a product called "bloom booster" which I get from the local nursery, and I use it from about now to when all the leaves have fallen. It is said that fruit trees flower (and fruit) well one season and then have the next one where the flowering and fruiting is not as prolific. This is a natural habit but it can be overcome with appropriate fertiliser and watering program (they like to be kept moist) but as this is a young bonsai, it will improve over time.
Cheers
Watto

[jozaeh]

Hi Jozaeh,
In my experience apples and crab apples do not like to be root pruned and/or re-potted often, probably every three years for a tree like yours. Be careful with your Autumn prunning as you can easily cut all your prospective flower buds off. I fertilise with a product called "bloom booster" which I get from the local nursery, and I use it from about now to when all the leaves have fallen. It is said that fruit trees flower (and fruit) well one season and then have the next one where the flowering and fruiting is not as prolific. This is a natural habit but it can be overcome with appropriate fertiliser and watering program (they like to be kept moist) but as this is a young bonsai, it will improve over time.
Cheers
Watto

Well even though i tried to purposely leave flowers buds on her when i trimmed her in autumn, but maybe i stuffed it up!? Oh well, but your season-on/season off for prolific flowering and fruiting sounds like it makes sense. And thanks for the root prune/repot timing tip as well.Ii would leave her for three years, but it seems like the one year she's had in the pot has had her fill up the soil with roots already. So I think I need to give her a repot next spring and then leave her for 3 years.

And that bloom booster sounds great, I bought this tree purely cause i love the flowers, so i'll be getting onto that regiment with ya so next spring is a firework show of flowers!

thanks again,
Jozaeh

[astroboy76]

Hi,

You have plenty of flowering spurs on the tree. I have a crab that does the same. All the branchhes on it flower but no growth. I guess when there are so many flowering spurs, the leaves on these spurs create anough food and the plant (having growth restricted in a bonsai pot) doesnt shoot out much fresh growth.

as for why your's didnt flower this year, well, as previously mentioned most fruit trees have a rest year so it could be that. it could also be that the tempertaure just didnt get cold enough for long enough. this will stop flowering on quite a lot of fruiting trees.

i find flowering spurs easier to obtain than growth buds on crabapples os when my last crab acted liek this i cut it back hard in winter, removing the flowering spurs and potted it up in a foam box. it went bananas the following spring. Once you get the branch structure ur after, then focus on flowering spurs.

[jozaeh]

Hi,

You have plenty of flowering spurs on the tree. I have a crab that does the same. All the branchhes on it flower but no growth. I guess when there are so many flowering spurs, the leaves on these spurs create anough food and the plant (having growth restricted in a bonsai pot) doesnt shoot out much fresh growth.

as for why your's didnt flower this year, well, as previously mentioned most fruit trees have a rest year so it could be that. it could also be that the tempertaure just didnt get cold enough for long enough. this will stop flowering on quite a lot of fruiting trees.

i find flowering spurs easier to obtain than growth buds on crabapples os when my last crab acted liek this i cut it back hard in winter, removing the flowering spurs and potted it up in a foam box. it went bananas the following spring. Once you get the branch structure ur after, then focus on flowering spurs.

Hey it's my vietnam mate astroboy76!
Thanks for the feedback hey, I really appreciate it. That's great to hear that i have plenty of flowering spurs, I really am not sure what i'm looking at with the crabs, whether they're flowering spears or shooting buds and how to tell the difference. I've tried to find photos online of the crab growing process but didn't have any specific luck. And that makes sense, the old girl was getting enough food to be happy, so she didn't need to exert herself (also thanks to the bonsai pot room).

And as you said I, suspect that it might also be that the cold didn't snap as much in qld last winter. I might look at renting a snow blower machine to keep her colder this winter to ensure some good flowers. ha!

and i'm totally fine to focus on growth instead of flowers on this tree for a while yet, so i might hook in with that winter hard cut back to get the bananas spring energy.

thanks again astro,

Jozaeh

[astroboy76]

once u know what ur looking for its quite easy to spot the fruiting spurs. the leaf shape helps determine this. on new crabapple growth, the leaves have three points. as the branch matures the leaves get a single point. when you see a short spur (little thick branch) with small single pointed leaves growing from the tip of it,thats a fruiting spur. these can range from half a cm to a good inch in my experience. they can also appear at the end of a branch. usually, if a branch is growing and u dont want it to flower, u let it grow un pruned until winter. once you prune a growing branch, espeically if its a secondary branch growing out of a mature branch, ur likely to turn it into a flowering spur. the practice that i do is prun once straight after bud burst. cut back to two nodes then allow all growth after that to grow until winter. this first cut is to keep the internodes small. then in winter, you should get two branches growing from the two nodes. follow this process and u will get some nice curvature in the branches and with a little luck devlop sxome nice ramification. once thats a acheived getting mature fruiting spurs should be easy.

its seems most the growth you have is on fruiting spurs.

how was nam my friend?

[jozaeh]

Oh man, thanks SO much for the tips on how to spot the fruiting spurs vs growth buds. The leaf shapes was definately something I was noticing differently on the tree, so now I finally know what the ol girl is doing! And your information on the pruning of a secondary branch causing fruiting spurs sounds exactly like what happened this spring. All of the branches I pruned before spring would have been secondary ones from the previous season, hence the abundance of fruiting spurs on the tree. But thanks for the prune after bud burst tip, i'll try that out, cause i'm hunting for ramification for sure over anything.

and nam. oh nam!! it was fantastic hey. No wonder you love it, the street food galore, renting the moto's each day and zooming around on my own in the beautiful chaotic traffic with the locals was my favourite aspect of the whole trip. My teensy bit of "quick! learn it on the plane!" vietnamese went a long way over there, and the people I came into contact with were just so unique, sweet and welcoming. I had to fight myself wanting to buy a ticket to go back just 2 weeks later. so i'll definately be visiting again.

thanks again for the crab tips,
jozaeh

[astroboy76]

hows this crab coming on now mate?

[jozaeh]

hows this crab coming on now mate?

Ahh good memory! My crab is going ok, she's sent out a few little flowers in the past weekish, and i'll be re-potting her in a week or two. I think i'll just wait for her to bud swell to make sure i don't disturb her roots too early. I have faith that she'll bounce back well.

Jozaeh

[Jamie]

gday champ

mate if you are looking at planting it out in a grow box or ground then I wouldnt do any root pruning at all, all I would do is slip it out of the pot it is in (which is a really nice pot too, I had one like that and loved it), slip it out, tease out some of the outer roots without disturbing it to much, then put it in a bigger grow pot/box or ground.
going up in pot size isnt a problem for a grow on tree. going down will slow development. another thing there is some great merit to slow growing your trees. it may take longer but can give a much better result.

jamie

[jozaeh]

hows this crab coming on now mate?

Well I bit the bullet and cut off all of the flowering spurs, i'll transplant the ol girl into a bigger pot/box and hopefully she'll shoot out like mad. it was SO hard cutting off all of the flowering spurs!! There were like 45 of them, she was going to look SO pretty in a couple weeks! But alas, I know the need to sacrifice now for better return later on.

thanks again Astro
Jozaeh

[jozaeh]

gday champ

mate if you are looking at planting it out in a grow box or ground then I wouldnt do any root pruning at all, all I would do is slip it out of the pot it is in (which is a really nice pot too, I had one like that and loved it), slip it out, tease out some of the outer roots without disturbing it to much, then put it in a bigger grow pot/box or ground.
going up in pot size isnt a problem for a grow on tree. going down will slow development. another thing there is some great merit to slow growing your trees. it may take longer but can give a much better result.

jamie

Hey Jamie, ahh cool, good tip with the non-root pruning. I think that's what i'll be doing in a few weeks' time. I think i'll be getting a bigger pot, simply because i like bringing her inside for my coffee table every now and then. And i hear ya with the slow development, it's a good option to keep in mind.

thanks again for the help!
Jozaeh