bonsaiTALK Community - View Single Post - Larch

Hello Jerry,

I think your larch also shows good potential.

Feel that it needs a chop below the triple apex and a new apex branch wiring up.

The 2 big stubs can come off as there are branches there to replace them.

I've ticked branches that can stay imo and it looks like there's shoots close to the trunk at the beginning of that long branch wired down across the front down to the left.( most of which I've eliminated in the virt). Leave these to develop. Shown by the bright green dot in the virt.

You can cut back to the first set of buds. However, I usually do this just as the buds start to swell and colour up in early spring and am not sure how it would react now.

It might be better to wait until it is growing strongly in mid summer to do any major pruning now but someone may have better advice.

I use Vaseline to seal larch cuts.

Am also attaching a sequence of my larch that has been in development for just over 2 years. This was field grown for bonsai at a nursery in Dorset and chopped 3 times before I aquired it. I chopped it again to try and start developing a powerful shohin tree. Its about 25cm tall atm from about 40cm.

I have used the branch cutback technique on this extensively as the pictures show.

Hope this helps.

Rgds

TimR