Lemon Tree Bonsai, June 2017

Hello everyone, I'm Nigel Saunders and today we're going to work on my

lemon

tree

. It has been just over two and a half years since this

tree

was transplanted. Today I will work on the top structure of the tree and then transplant. I want to grow the tree for the summer but I also want to keep the vertical trunks in balance so that one trunk doesn't become too thick compared to the others. The first operation I will do today is defoliate the tree. Some new growth is starting to appear and in quite a few places on the tree, so another growth spurt is necessary, so it's a good time to prune the tree again and then allow that new growth to reach all the leaves on the tree. now.

They are large indoor leaves and you can see they are almost the size of my hand. If you remove all the leaves and new leaves grow, they will be much smaller, so here I go, I'm going to defoliate the tree, it always smells good. When you are pruning, leaf pruning like this should only be done on a healthy tree, otherwise it could cause the tree to die after defoliation. You can see it looks more like a tree without those big big leaves you'll notice. my vertical logs have a dominant log here and then I have a medium thick log here and then a very thin one here, so I want to try to equalize them a little more, they don't have to be exactly the same size, but I don't want them with that much difference I have I have to get vigor out of the thicker trunk so I prune hard my medium trunk I will prune it a little and my smaller trunk I won't prune it at all and that will help balance the thickness of the vertical branch structure when I am pruning this thicker trunk towards below I'm looking for leaf nodes to prune the tree again because this growth is still green if it was a thick woody growth I could prune it anywhere and it would sprout new branches I'm going to remove this main trunk right here there's a leaf scar here so I'm going to prune it right on top like this on the other side of the main trunk I'm just going to prune them again at about the same height I don't see many good scars on the leaves there's one there I'll have to take it back to here and there's one maybe here , they are a little higher than I want them, but there is not much development below. that I can prune it again I could come back to here maybe I should go back to here and the other one there was a scar on the back that I could prune it to and I think I will take it back to here too so it will be a pretty tough pruning in the thickest trunk of the medium thickness trunk.

I'm going to prune it back up to here on the smaller trunk. I'm just going to prune these longer branches back to leaves. scar slightly up there here's a photo of the tree all pruned now I'm going to do a little clean up work on some of these bits left over from previous pruning. I had to mix up a new batch of soil to transplant the

lemon

tree. I didn't have pine bark or composted peel bark, so I'm just going to use half perlite and half sod. All materials are sifted through a screen to remove fine particles, so this is my soil that I have left over, the first step to transplanting will be to remove all this beautiful moss from the surface, but don't worry, it will come back grow as you remove it.

I see a lot of ants and a lot of surface roots growing in the moss, so the tree definitely needs to be transplanted next. I'm going to go around the edges of the pot, loosen them up and try to remove the tree that's very tight here, like I said it's been two and a half years in this pot or just over two and a half years so it's definitely necessary a transplant and it gives me a good opportunity to work on the roots, balance them, select the good roots and eliminate the ones I don't like, so here we go, let's take it out of the pot now there we go, lots of roots everywhere I'm going to start now combing the surface roots I will have to decide if I want to keep it in the same pot or repot it maybe the roots will help me decide if I think it needs more room for the roots, I will put it in a bigger pot if go okay, we'll keep it as it is while raking it, you'll notice I'm raking the junction. routes and keeping the radials intact and that's an important part of combing the roots - you're going to damage them, you're going to tear all the roots that are crossing and the roots that are tangled, but in the end you're going to get a nice base of radial roots, that's all. neat and looks really miniature on a tree that you want to dry to go from the ground level curve to the trunk and up the tree to the branches, so that's the top combed pretty nicely.

I'm going to flip it over now and start At the bottom, the roots are actually not too tight here, they're actually at a good level, you can see, I can comb them easily, they're not stuck, so I have to use a saw or whatever thing to loosen them, only you. You know, raking gently with the broken roots to loosen them and flow. One thing you won't catch in the video is the pleasant smell, that citrus smell that I'm smelling right now, which adds to the enjoyment of pruning your lemon

bonsai

. I'm going to wash the roots now that I've washed them and now it's time to comb them thoroughly, detangle and rake them.

You can see that some roots have lengthened quite a bit and, you know, they've grown a lot. of vigor, so we want to balance the root system just as we balance the top of the tree, pruning our thicker roots hard and letting the finer ones grow. The roots are quite pretty flattened radials. I think we did a good job pruning the roots of this tree last time. I'm going to start pruning the roots at the bottom. There are many roots that have grown down and along the center of the root base that can be pruned this way and that way and I am only pruning them from time to time. we'll go in and clean everything out and another thick one here a big long root any roots that grow down from the base of the tree that I want to remove I want all my surface roots to do all the work feeding the tree and that's how you get a good widening of the trunk, there are still some congested areas here that I have to fix, let's remove all the downward facing roots, keeping our nice radial roots, getting a flat root base at the bottom and the top will curve gently towards the ground. comb our roots again from the top, okay, so the rough root pruning is done, now we need to go in and do all our detailed work, give it water and make sure they stay nice and moist, okay, here I go now with detailed work.

Let's start with this root that comes out of the trunk, that snakes around and has a root that grows in and across here that I'm going to remove, there we go, I have another root that's next to it here. It kind of grows underneath, so we definitely want to encourage it to grow on this side, I'm just going to untangle all of this there, they're growing pretty well, there's a root growing up here, I don't like it here, I'm going to remove it. so I want these roots to flow into the ground, so I don't want anything sticking out too high.

This root here is starting to get a little thick on the end. I remember the last root pruning, I removed a good chunk. the side here and that is healing very well there is a root here that I can remove eventually I want this root base to comply with the rule of one root that splits into two and I have one that splits into a bunch here this root certainly is quite long could be trimmed so we can subdivide it earlier at the root base, it sinks in a little bit here so we can prune it there and get rid of this whole long section here just to see what it would look like, yeah it would look better in the future , possibly this route looks pretty good because it has mature bark, maybe I should keep it.

I think it's hard to get roots with mature bark like that. I'd be embarrassed to prune it and you know, grow roots closer to the trunk. but we have to think about what is good for the future of the tree. I think I'll have to cut it. Yeah, okay, I'll do it, so here I go. I'm going to have to do it. I want this to flow. eventually, I'm going to cut it here like this, so we'll grow a bunch of new radial roots that will come out of here and flow into the soil better. You could prune this root as well. becoming a problem, I have bumps at the end and I have a root back here, so this taproot is going to split into two.

Here I could remove it completely and I think I will, so here goes, come on, that will help the roots. Flows better into the ground. I think the rest of the roots are not so bad. This one sticks out a little high, but it's not too bad compared to these. It is in a good root plane. I think I'll just prune around the outside. to balance it a little bit and that will be it so let me do it by pruning the outside so the roots that have grown outward are pruned a little bit harder and the ones that are developing inside are not touched at all so it helps balance the root system that looks pretty good.

I'll have to test how it fits in the pot and see how it fits before planting the tree. I want to rotate it to check for alternating fronts, something that looks better and I like this as the front of the tree, it has the thicker trunk in the front which is nice, the back branches, their trunks fan out nicely, this was the front here and, I don't know, it's also okay, uh, tough decision, but I think I'll plant it in this direction. I think it's a better front for now, so let's start planting. If this is the new front of the tree, it will have to go in a pod like this, so I'll have to do it a little bit.

Trimming the front and back and a little bit more on the back here, that looks good. Now I'm checking the position of the tree in the pot because most of the mass is leaning to the left side. I want to move the tree slightly towards Okay, so I'll do that, so we'll change it a little bit, maybe up there, let's take a look at that, yeah, that's not bad. I like that it is off-center from the main trunk, but the balance of the tree is almost in the center. the height in the pot seems a little low, so I'm going to raise it a little bit so we can see a little bit of the surface roots, that's pretty good, I like it, okay, let's fill it with soil with this nice dry soil. it just flows really well around the roots so I'm getting rid of any air pockets there.

The tree is firming up in the pot. I have the trees established very well in the pot. Now it's nice and firm there, so now there it is. It's time to give it a good watering here we go there we go I'll show you the roots in the back where I cut them severely so you can see how they go into the soil. I can pile on a little more dirt. there so we have some good roots going down into the ground, just put a pile here, come on, then I'll water, that will help those roots heal, there will be new roots growing into the ground from the cut. points and one day everything will look quite natural, so going back to the front of the tree, that's all the work I'm going to do on the lemon tree today.

I will take good care of it so that it recovers well and starts growing again. I hope you can see that it's starting to look a little more like a tree, it's not just a stick anymore, it has a bit of a canopy now, so I think once the smaller leaves grow it will start to look like this. maybe a tree for the first time in its life, it's time for today's update. Today's update is my tiger bark ficus and it is spreading new growth and doing well so I thought I would show you that this little tree was severely root and crown pruned. pruned to get a short, stubby trunk and we'll grow a nice canopy of branches here so it has a nice nice line up to the trunk, it just needs to develop now it's time to see our viewers' picks.

Today's images come from Mark. Belgium has an interesting variety of tropical trees, so thanks Mark for sending those photos. That's all for today. I'm Nigel Saunders, thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.