Stewartia summer pruning

Stewartia 1 Minute

Stewartia is a hearty grower, and this one has been trimmed back several times already this season. However, simply pruning around the profile seems to create some coarse whorls and shoots that will need to be removed later anyway. So this time (mid-July) I went through the tree, branch by branch, and reduced shoots to pairs of leaves throughout the tree, and removed those shoots that were too coarse to use in the design. In essence, I did a winter pruning in mid-summer.

Before
A shot showing a branch after pruning. Note how branch transitions are not coarse, and all shoots have 2 buds, pruned to an outward-facing bud.
After pruning, the tree is still pretty dense, but well-balanced, top to bottom.
The money shot
The base and bark is beautiful!

Published by Brian VF

I have been studying bonsai since 1994, in an ever-increasing obsessive fashion. In our last 5 years prior to moving from Iowa to Alabama pursuing a career in the foodservice industry, my bonsai collection was limited to a few varieties that could survive brutal winters outside, or winters under dim light in the dank basement of our humble duplex...my wife puts up with a lot. Including the trailer hitch I put on our brown 1983 Chrysler New Yorker to pull a U-Haul full of trees to Nashville for a 3-month stop along the career path that led us to Alabama. 12 years later, we no longer have the New Yorker; and not a single one of those trees remain on my bench, having given the last holdout to a new club member this summer. I prefer collecting native trees and buying the classical species used in Japan, feeding organic, and reading everything I can get my hands on.

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