hi there nigel saunders here
today we're going to be revisiting my
norfolk island pine this will be the
second video on this clump of trees
since the last video the trees have
grown quite well
they've got a lot of multi-trunks
coming up that'll have to be sorted out
so it's time to give them a good pruning
and i think i'll repot them also
we'll start pruning one tree at a time
we'll start on this first tree here
if you'll notice it's got
twin leaders growing up that are the
same height
so we want to reduce it down to one
major leader
for the top of the tree
so we have to pick which one
so we want to pick one that has the best
flow line to the trunk
so if i move these branches out of the
way
try to
you can see
our major trunk line comes up
and this leader would be the natural one
that would follow the straight line of
the trunk
the other one here
bends off
and then
you know has multiple trunks coming out
of it actually one two three
so if we were to cut that off
we get a nice flow line to the trunk
and we wouldn't have kind of this ball
of uh
you know trunks in the one area that's
thickened this part up
so let's do that let's do a big cut on
the front
get rid of all this foliage and just
keep our single leader growing up here
a cut like this
right now
it's on the front of the tree but we
could turn the tree around so the cuts
in the back so it's less noticeable
but the important thing is to cut it off
even it was on the front of the tree the
scar would heal over eventually
so i'm trying to pick a nice flow line
here for pruning right about here
there we go
now
i'm going to try and root this as a
cutting
because it's got a nice thick base to it
and it could become a nice tree so i
don't know if they root is cuttings but
we'll try it
so here on the
main trunk you can see we've got a nice
flow line
going up to our apex
we're back to the front view of the tree
now we want to reduce it down in height
also so
we have to pick a point
um
i'm thinking here we've got a branch
each side one in the back
two down lower so enough foliage to keep
the tree healthy
so let's take it off right here
or
maybe we'll take it just a little higher
yeah right here
that way something may sprout out of
here and we can keep these branches
instead of using one as the new leader
we'll see what happens there
the next thing i want to do is i want to
shorten these branches so they're not so
long so we're just going to come in and
prune them off
shorter
and one here
like so
and this back one we're going to prune
off shorter also
there
and just the tip off this one
so there now we have a
short compact little tree
the next tree we're going to prune is
our shortest one here
so let's have a look at the branch
structure in that
i've rotated the tree around to the back
view and you can see
there is one branch here
that kind of continues the line of the
trunk going up
the rest kind of come off the side of
the trunk and bend up
so this would be our nice
leader that continues the straightness
of the trunk
i may try and keep some of them as
branches
we may try and
prune it off to a horizontal branch and
see if we can grow some branch structure
down lower
so i think we'll do that we'll start
with pruning this one
off to our first branch here
like so
the one back here will also prune off to
our first branch
we're going to shorten our leader down
i think we'll take it off to here
um
maybe to here
yeah
right here i think
and we'll see what happens in this area
of the apex
we can always continue this to be our
leader eventually
let's rotate it back to the front
so here we are we have another branch
that we're going to prune off to our
first horizontal
branch
we're going to shorten this long one
here
and also this one
the next tree i want to prune is the
tallest tree
and i've been looking at the trunk
structure on it
it doesn't really have any
trunk that stands out as a really nice
flow line they all kind of
you know bend off from the vertical
so
i think
i'm going to get rid of the
most dominant apex which is this thick
branch here
and grow this is the new apex
and then we'll treat all the other
all all the others as branches so
we'll start by removing the big tall
thickest one here
okay so here we go
we just got to get our pruners in at a
good angle here
i think right about here
there we go
again that would make a nice cutting
i'll try growing it
now we'll begin to shorten our branches
to our first
horizontal branch
i think i'm going to remove this one
leader here it's kind of duplicated by a
branch below
so we'll get rid of that one also
and then we'll shorten our branches
and our apex
i think we'll shorten our apex down to
about here
to there and then we'll shorten our
branches
shortest on the top
and getting longer as we go down
there we go
so that tree
is now pruned up
the next tree we're going to prune is
this
tall one at the back here so again we're
going to look for a leader
that flows in with the natural trunk
line
[Music]
and i think it's going to be
this one
it looks uh
quite tall and good it
just flows in nicely so let's prune off
the others as branches
got some long shoots up top here we can
prune back
we can reduce the height of our leader
down to here
and
shorten some of these branches back
again
now we do have a bit of a whirl of
branches down here
you don't want to keep all of them i
think i'm going to get rid of this one
on this side
[Music]
and
i think also this one at the back here
so then we only have two branches coming
off
the trunk here in this point
if we have three branches this bulge
here will get worse so
that's the reason we've reduced it down
to
just two branches
and then the branches
coming off our leader
our last tree that needs pruning
is this
corner one
uh we do only have one major trunk line
coming up from that tree
so we're going to prune off the others
to the first horizontal branching
and shorten that
we're going to reduce our leader down
to
i think here we're going to go fairly
low
and then we're going to reduce our
branch lengths
back to something
more reasonable
[Music]
somewhere about there looks pretty good
we've got the pruning of our little
norfolk island pines done
now they haven't been repotted for
at least two years
and
i'm a little worried about the soil in
it i think it needs changing um i'm not
even sure what soils in the
in the pot there
so i uh
i'm going to repot them
even though it's not the best time of
the year it's not also the worst because
they were fairly cold outside
and now i've brought them into the plant
room for fall and it's warm in here
and it's humid and they get lots of nice
sun
and uh
yeah i've had good luck with root growth
in the plant room here at this time of
year so
i think we're going to take it outside
now and
repot them
you can also see in this planting that
i've got
these two trees are almost in line with
each other these two trees are in line
with each other so
from the front view of this pot it looks
like there's just three trees
so we want to fix that so you can see
each trunk
now i i wanted to repot this planting
to look like it's on norfolk island
i wanted to put you know a rocky cliff
at the beach or the shore
with the trees up on the
on top of the cliff
i still want to do that but i'm not
going to do it now just because i don't
have a suitable pot
i do have rocks picked out for this
and i am going to do it eventually
but
for now i just want to repot uh to
change the soil do some root pruning
see what's going on with the roots and
try and improve the health of the trees
we're out in the greenhouse now
and i've got a pot that's kind of a nice
size for this planting but it's got a
big
piece missing out the back of it
so
i think i'm going to put some screen up
here like this
and use this pot anyway it's just you
know as the trees are in training
it'll be a good pod for them let's start
by getting the tree out of the pot
so we'll loosen up the edges here
i have no idea what these roots are
going to look like
it's been a few years
this will just be their second potting
the first one was just to get them into
a bonsai pot
okay here we go
let's push out our drainage holes here
there we go
and there's what we've got we've got
lots of roots on the bottom growing out
the drainage holes
looks good
all right let's start combing them out
we are going to separate all the trees
we definitely have some thick roots in
here you can see them in the corner here
[Music]
so i'm i'm going to work around one tree
at a time and see if i can get it
separated from the others
there is quite a matter of roots on the
bottom so it may be quite difficult
just trying to get them all separated
this one's almost out
usually we if we can get the first one
out
the others come a little easier
there's one apart
wow
some really tangled up roots in here
it's going to take a bit of root work to
get these back under control
there's another one separated
another one
another one
there we go we've got them all separated
now
let's clean up and have a look at the
roots
i've washed the roots
and you can see that our roots
aren't very good
they're you know we don't have a radial
root base
they're long
yeah they're just not very good it's
going to take
quite a bit of pruning to get these in
shape
there was one here
that last time i pruned a major thick
root off at 90 degrees
and it grew a lot of fine root hairs
around it so
you know whenever you get a new species
of tree that you're not familiar with
it's best to be cautious at first
and then as you you know see how the
tree reacts to pruning
you can do a little more
every year as your confidence builds and
you know how the tree reacts to the
pruning
so
i i'm going to use prune them quite
severely
we'll see what happens it's uh
it's always a bit of a risk but uh
without a good root base they'll never
be good bonsai trees so
here we go
um
so i want a flat radial root base
so
roots like this that are growing almost
straight down into the soil have to be
pruned off quite short
so we'll prune them off right to here
here
here
and
here
and our last route
off to here
so that's a pretty severe root pruning
it's going to be like almost planting a
cutting
in the soil
so we'll see how it how it does
let's go on to our next one
so let's do this one that has the
drainage screen fused into the roots
here
so again we're looking for flat radial
roots
not seeing a whole lot of them but there
are some so we'll prune off this one
growing straight down
that gets rid of our
drainage screen
we'll prune off these
ones shorter here
[Music]
like so
now we do have some good radial roots in
this direction so we're just gonna
trim those back
like so and i think that'll be that for
that treat
uh i will prune a bit off the bottom of
this bulbous root here
just to try and encourage some more root
growth
from our cut points
so there i've taken a slice off here and
i'm hoping we get some roots growing out
in a 90 degree pattern or radial pattern
from this cut point
so that's all for that tree
[Music]
this one
we're gonna prune this major taproot off
quite short
[Music]
and
i've got some wild roots here
pruning this one off
[Music]
and this one
[Music]
and that's about all we can do in that
tree
this next one
i remember this from last time pruning
it that it was right at the edge of the
pot and all the roots were growing in
one direction
so
we're gonna have to do some pretty
severe pruning here
we're just gonna take it right off the
bottom
[Music]
again
planting it as a large cutting and
hoping it survives
and our last tree
let's get all these roots out of here
our last tree is
quite bad the roots they kind of go down
sideways and straight down again
um
so
we're gonna do what we can
i think i'm just gonna have to take that
right off
like that
see what happens
so we're left with uh
pretty meager root systems
but if the trees survive
we'll have a good bradel root base
underway
i've got my drainage screens in place
so we're going to put a layer of soil on
the bottom
and we're going to put our screen at the
side here to hold the soil in the pot
where our big crack is
because we don't have many roots on
these trees we're going to plant them
fairly deep in the pot
and then mound the soil up around the
trees
so now we have to arrange them so
i'm going to arrange them tallest to
smallest
the tallest should be the thickest and
the smallest should be the skinniest
it's not quite the case in this uh
this
these trees we've got our tallest is a
little skinnier than our second tallest
and our
shortest is a little bit fatter
so we may rearrange these we'll make the
fatter one
on this side
and we'll take
this tallest skinniest one and
put it in this order
so we want our tallest trees in the
front and it gives kind of a forced
perspective to the planting
we have five trees so we want to arrange
them so we can see all the trunks from
the front
and we also want to put the nicest
root base on the front of the tree also
i think i'm going to pick that as the
front here
and i'm going to
put it somewhere about here
we'll try it here anyway
so i'll put some soil
mounded up around the tree
so i i think these two will go
here
beside it and then we'll have the other
two offset here
so i'm going to
pick the front of this tree
maybe here
it doesn't really matter at this stage
but
and then our next one we don't want the
same spacing between the trees so we
want it a little closer
i'm going to pick that as the front of
the tree
we want to give them all their own space
in the pot
for the roots to grow
we don't want them crowded
together too much
that may come later that we
move them in towards each other a little
more
i think something like that
with these ones back kind of here
just trying to pick the front of this
tree i think about there
somewhere there i think is pretty good
i may rearrange them as i look at it
from the front
but from now it's looking okay
and then our last tree
i think we want
i think back here
we don't want any in a line which
i don't want these three trees in a line
so i'm gonna move it over a bit more
but it's still gotta look like part of
the group so
i think somewhere about there
now i'm going to come out front and have
a look at it
so i'm looking at it from the front now
and i
i don't like it at all the the trees
look too evenly spaced um
i don't think we're
using enough of the pot either
i think my front tree could come forward
more
we could plant more uh i think we need
to move the one tree behind to give it a
little more depth
so let's try rearranging it
okay so i've done a little bit of
rearranging i think that's going to be
pretty good i think you can see all five
trees
they look randomly spaced
it kind of fills the pot nicely we've
got
kind of a
negative area over here
so i think once the trees are straight
they'll look good so let's do that let's
straighten them up get our soil in fix
the roots
and then water it
it's very important to get your trees
vertical if you want the appearance of a
tall mature forest
okay i think that's pretty good
we piled our soil up a lot higher than
we would
if they had a nice root system but
we're hoping that it grows
over the next few years
let's give it a water now
there we go
i think the roots will grow really well
in this
nice loose soil
this soil is again just half perlite
and half turfis
all ingredients are sieved to remove the
fine particles
and it's mixed together in about a 50 50
ratio
there we go
my last operation is to place some
stones around the trees
which holds them in place until the
roots get established in the soil
i've got the forest back in the plant
room
we're going to have to mist these trees
a lot
keep them in good light
and hopefully they'll recover
what i did today was a pretty severe
operation both top and bottom pruning
but you know the roots of the foundation
of the tree i would never be happy with
the bone slide if it had those
spaghetti roots underneath
uh
if these trees are ever going to be a
bonsai tree
i've got to grow a nice radial root base
and get the roots sorted out first
before we even worry about the tops too
much
so we've taken steps to do that if the
trees live
they'll be on their way to becoming a
bonsai forest
if they don't make it
well we've learned something and we can
try again i guess
that's all we can do
so nigel saunders of kw bonsai thanks
for watching
we'll see you next time