This one is pretty well developed, but needs some tidying up every year to keep it in balance. here is a shot from before work started. Branches getting relatively too thick for their position on the tree, congested branches, and raising branches all need to be addressed. Look below and see which ones jump out… Continue reading Chishio Japanese Maple maintenance

Oh my… I neglected this tree for almost 3 years and just let it do it’s thing in a corner in the garden. But damn, am I glad I did that!

Previous posts about this Acer Buergerianum trunk fusion project can be found here.

I needed a shovel to get the wooden growbox off the ground since the roots grew right through the wood that had slowly decayed over the last 3 years.
The whole thing was about 2,5 metres or 8ft high.

After cutting back the branches I moved the tree to the work table.

The wooden growbox was so rotten that I could literally peel it off (with a little help from some tools since the roots grew in the wood).

A very dense rootball appeared together with some big long roots.

After almost an hour of combing out the roots and cutting back the big roots the result looked like this :

As you might have noticed, only 3 of the 4 trunks that the tree had 3 years ago are left, I cut off the 4th a few months after I made the previous post.

Anyway, time to put the tree back in a pot. No more wooden growbox this time but a regular plastic training pot. After putting some wire on a few branches to point them to the right direction I was done for the time being.

Because I let the tree grow out for 3 years it completely closed all it’s big wounds. Ofcourse I made some new big wounds but they will also heal eventually. That’s what trident maple bonsai do.

The photo below shows a big wound that has closed completely with another big wound above where I just cut off a branch.

Now let’s try to get some more branches on this sucker