3 Important Things to Keep in Mind when Pruning your Tea Tree
The Flowering Tea Tree bonsai is one of the most popular types of bonsai due to its ease of training. The clip-and-grow method is ideal for training the tea tree bonsai. However, make sure to keep these three important things in mind when pruning your tea tree. If you get too ahead of yourself in pruning, you may have to wait another season for growth before you can develop better pad layers and branch ramification.
1. Look for Woody Growth in the Branch
When pruning your tree, check the color of the branches or stems. Typically with a new flush of growth, you will see a lighter green shoot form first. As the branch grows, the color of the stem will begin to change to brown. The brown color indicates that wood is starting to form in the branch.
Why is this important? If you decide to prune the branch while the stem is too young or green in color, you may not develop buds on that branch. Without buds forming, you will not be able to develop additional branches from the one branch and you will need to wait an additional growing season to try the process again.
So remember, keep yourself from pruning those longer stems and wait until you see a change in the color of the branch before cutting. As a general rule, the color will start to change after about 5-8 pairs of leaves have formed on the single branch. You can make the cut at that point after the 5-8 pairs have grown out.
As a general rule, the color will start to change after about 5-8 pairs of leaves have formed on the single branch. Make the cut at that point."
2. Cut Upward Growth First
Since we're always trying to create the appearance of age on a bonsai, we want to develop the branches going down. The easiest branches to remove first will be the branches that are growing straight upward. By removing the branches that grow up, you'll be able to direct energy to the branches going outwards and down. This will also help to create pad layers that are more level and pointing downward.
3. Don't forget, branches grow from the leaves.
Remember, additional branches grow from the leaves. As the tree begins to grow, the new stems and branches will emerge from the base of the leaves outward in the direction that the leaf is pointing. By keeping this mind, you'll be able to figure out which leaves to leave untouched if you are planning on filling in an empty space with a new branch.
By removing the branches that grow up, you'll be able to direct energy to the branches going outwards and down. "