bonsaiTALK Community - View Single Post

Let A Tree Be A Tree

It has been mentioned in many articles that one should cut back foliage after collecting in order to “balance” the foliage to the recently cut root mass. I believe that there is absolutely no way that we can guess the amount, if any, to cut back to achive this balance.

While it is true that trees have an inbuilt need for balance and that they will go to great lengths to achieve it, I have found that some of the current practices are detrimental to the survival and development of the tree.

You see when we slightly cut back the roots on a collected tree we create an unbalance in the tree that the tree is genetically programmed to over come. The excess foliage (in comparison to the freshly trimmed root mass) causes a water loss in the tree by the water diffusing out of the stomata as carbon dioxide diffuses in for photosynthesis and that the smaller root mass can not supply.

The solution to this problem is not cutting back the foliage because we can never know how much. Too little and you still have an unbalanced system, too much and you now have another completely different unbalance in the tree.

Instead the solution is to let the tree be a tree. The tree will respond to a light trimming of the roots and the resulting unbalance by creating more roots! Yes, exactly what we want and all we have to do is leave it alone. When there are too many leaves on a tree and not enough roots, water stress will increase, leaf growth will stop and root growth will continue until balance is once again achieved.

A tree has built in feedback controls hardwired between the foliage and the roots designed so that the tree stays in balance. We see examples of this all the time; in fact often we use it to our advantage, I wonder why we so often go against what we see with our own eyes?

Below are some pictures of the freshly planted Jack Pine that I mentioned above. You can see from the pictures that none of the foliage has been cut back at all. I will not cut any back until very early spring. At this point I will be using the trees natural balance again but in reverse for another reason. Once the roots have balanced themselves with the foliage, I will then cut back the foliage. The tree will once again respond to keep balance but this time it will be trying to balance the pruned foliage with the roots, forcing out new growth on branches and also new buds on old wood. This technique has allowed me to successfully obtain back budding on older pines.

Will Heath