New Olive bonsai - shaping the apex

Dear Doc,
I have acquired a small 9 inch olive tree. My problem is I can find no direct info on wiring. I know the bark is soft and care is needed. The tree is now outdoors but the chance of frost is increasing and I will need to bring it in soon but we are having very warm periods too. It is growing very strongly. The basic shape of the tree is very promising, comprising 3 strong branches. I took
a chance when I bought it and trimmed back the top growth, fine. ( 8 weeks ago ). Trouble is I now have very vigorous top growth
which either needs removing or wiring.

Please offer some advice. I can send a piccy if you like.

Thanks
Colin

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Dr.Bonsai

Hi Colin,

At the bottom of this message is some general information about wiring. Most folks who start out learning to wire prefer to use aluminum wire because it is more forgiving. It also doesn't hold nearly as well as copper, but the fact is that well applied aluminum wire beats badly applied copper any day of the week.

Please do post a picture of your tree. It will help the forum give a more direct response.

In general, shaping the apex is a combination of pruning and wiring. The apex is where most trees like to push growth, especially young ones, so it can get a little out of control in a very short time. Here are some ways you can control this
[*]Escape branch. An escape branch, or "sacrifice branch" is a branch growing lower on the trunk of the tree that is allowed unrestricted growth with the intention of removing it later. The tree diverts a lot of its growth resources to the escape branch because it understands it to be the true apex of the tree.
[*]Structure. The apex of your tree should be developed from a number of branches, not just a single branch. Young trees do often have a single apical branch, but as they mature, several branches will form at the top and slightly soften the structure of the crown. This gives the tree the appearance of maturity, even though it may be relatively young.
[*]Pruning. As the tree grows, the apex will need continuous refinement. Cutting away branches that have thickened too much and replacing them with younger and more shapely ones is a continuing process. By doing this branches can be given an apparent taper. The base of the branch may be nearly as old as the trunk, but as you move along a branch in a mature bonsai, you pass through points and inflections that were created by pruning over the years, resulting in a tapering appearance, with movement and increasingly finer branch structure.
[*]Pinching. The new growing tips on the apices of branches can be pinched with the fingertips while they are still tender. The growth that reforms at these points will be weaker, often with smaller leaves, and the auxins that are generated by pruning and pinching often induce back-budding along the branches and trunk.

Keep in mind that trees like olive are notorious back budders, which is both good and bad. It is good from the standpoint that you will have a lot of growth to work with, but it is bad from the standpoint that you will need to frequently rub off new buds that develop in the "wrong places," like within existing branch forks or at the base of branches and along the lower portion of the trunk.

I hope these ideas have given you some information about controlling and directing growth. The articles on wiring below will give you some information about technique, but do not contain a lot of detail about shaping with wire, which should be coming soon. One thing to keep in mind with your olive is that the wood is hard, so you will need to wire branches early to achieve your goals down the road.

Wiring Overview with links to Related Articles: Applying Wire, Removing Wire, Wire Gauges, Creating Turnbuckles, Wiring
Related Products: Wire Pliers, Wire Cutters, Wire

Bonsainut

Colin,
I love to work with olive. The thing about them is they have alternating sets of leaves. You can use clip and grow methods to grow this tree easily. If you have a set of leaves that go up and down the next set will be side to side (horizontal). As you prune use this basic knowledge to direct the new growth. Wherever you prune, the next set of branches will grow in the direction the last set of leaves are pointing. So always cut a branch back to a horizontal pair to build a layered branch.
When it comes to the apex just alow several buds to form a rounded top and continue directional pruning to fill in bare spots! It takes time but if you wire extensively you will be unhappy with the wire scars.

__________________
Keep growing,---'Nut



Lethal Use of Farce

jencol28

I hope this is of use to my friends. It shows how my olive is at present

TreeBay

Hi Colin,

I think the challenge at this point is not to reshape the apex but to bring the tree into scale with the trunk.

Luckily, olive buds back very readily. Early in the spring I would suggest that you cut the tree back hard, somewhat as shown below. Then it will bud back and you will have the opportunity to cut it again if it does not bud quite low enough.

This will allow you to bring the branching down in close. You could try to develop a larger tree, but there really isn't a lot of interest in the trunkline, as it is straight and basically without taper. I see this tree as a [i:d3b4828925]shohin[/i:d3b4828925] size bonsai

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Bonsainut

Colin,
I agree with Treebay. Just remember to leave some green leaves when you cut back or certain death will follow! You have a long time project here. Go slow, have fun!

__________________
Keep growing,---'Nut



Lethal Use of Farce

TreeBay

Hi Colin,

I thought it would be a good idea to clarify my comments concerning the drastic pruning of the olive that I advocated earlier.

I'm in California in a climate pretty close to Mediterranean, home of the olive. This "tree" is basically a shrub. We get shoots coming up out of the field wherever an olive has been collected. Midori has a club member here named Doug Philips who collects Olive with 6" trunks and treats them as cuttings. See the picture below and look at the shoots.

[img:48db5b8d43]http://www.lost-oasis.com/bonsai/bonsai/Gallery/roy_dougolive.jpg[/img:48db5b8d43]

They are old 30-50 year old trees and they're absolutely covered with shoots from tip to rootbase a few weeks later. I don't think you will have any problem if you wait until the danger of frost has passed. I think even on fairly mature olives the trunk is greenish and capable of photosynthesis. The tree Doug's holding has been topped at the time it was collected, but see all the shoots and even the new roots are throwing up suckers. There aren't a lot of trees that have that can match the regenerative capacity of shrubs like azalea and all the hedging plants: holly, olive, privet. Redwood has it, as does Bald Cypress, and elm, oak and wilow to some extent. If I think of more I'll add them here.

I wouldn't recommend drastic cutting like this with most other trees, but we are talking about olives. If you are concerned about it some susceptibility in your climate, you can always cut at a higher point, where there are leaves, to stimulate adventitious buds on the trunk. Then you can cut back again later. It will only set you back one season at most.

Here are some comments on olive pruning that I pulled from the web.

"Pruning: Proper pruning is important for the olive... The trees can withstand radical pruning, so it is relatively easy to keep them at a desired height."

http://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/olive.html

Pruning and Shaping

"Olive has a bad reputation with regard to pruning. When a substantial stem is cut back the new growth is coarse and vigorous at the cut...[Olive] grows slowly, but strong; and can achieve great age, as it can resprout from its trunk, even if you cut or burn it. "

http://www.evergreengardenworks.com/olive.htm

called " the immortal tree " because the wild olive trees restart infinitely their tree stump...

Burned, mowed, or cut plants will resprout vigorously. ...
burn the
cut stems because the plants resprout from fragments)...

I even found a few web page dedicated to trying to kill russian olive, which is considered a weed in some areas.

CONTROL RECOMMENDATIONS

Cutting the plant off at the main stem and applying herbicide to the stump has been effective in killing root systems and preventing resprouting. Roundup herbicide (a formulation of glyphosate) has been effective in controlling autumn olive when used as a 10-20% solution and applied directly to the cut stump

http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/edu/VMG/autolive.html

Best regards,

Matt Chroust

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bonsaial1

That animated tree do-hicky is the coolest. I watched that thing for an hour last night waiting to see if maybe olives would push out? How much time does it take to do an animation? I would be interested in the technique and the software. if I have the foto's can you put it together if needed, I would like to do something on Suiseki dai construction or stand construction.

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KZitzewitz

I used to have a gif animator, and if I ever get to put a zip disk on my old computer and put it on this one, I could probably used a winzip file and squench it down, the one I have I think was only 10 megs and works well, every picture has to be a gif, so I also have a picture transformer, I can make a psd photo a bitmap in about 3 seconds without a psd running program. , they are easy to make, I would try doing a search for some on the internet, you might find some cheap, or free ones. Sorry by the way about getting off topic, I went to new orleans at the city park they have and they have a garden place, there was some ficus there that they had pictures of (just benjimina) that were big 14 inch trunks that had now grown leaves, and too bad they weren't for sale, I had about 1000 I could have spent there if they would have sold them.

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