Developing Firs

r/Bonsai - MaciekA (NW Oregon 8b)

Preventing/Treating Scar:

  • To close a scar like this I cut the stump into a concave or bowl-shaped region with as smooth of a surface as I can manage with my spherical cutter. Then I explore (carefully cut away with a sharp razor) the edges of the wound until I have found the live vein on all sides. Then I seal the entire thing up. Sometimes I use paste, sometimes I just use glue.

  • Depends on the timeline of the tree. The live edges will move inwards into the bowl, and the hope is that the circle closes up as the live edge crawls across the "terrain" of the bowl. This is why it is good to have that live edge facing a flat-ish field (from its point of view). The easier it is for it to roll across that terrain, the better.

Proportions/budding/etc:

  • [When] your fir is in an adolescent form,.. proportions may look odd, but that's always the case in the development stage. You come to accept the coarse form in the early stages over time.

  • In my experience (out of firs I have only collected/grown abies lasiocarpa), pretty much everything in Pinaceae can bud on old wood to some degree, however, this is always the result of some hard requirements:

1. ⁠Strong vigor in the tree + expanding roots into air-breathing soil -- the roots must breathe air in a highly-drainable soil and have some expansion room for the next 12 to 24 months. Time accumulated in root colonization mode is what makes a conifer blast out buds, so it doesn't happen in the first year. This is always a "second or third year in the good setup" thing, so if I repotted a pine/fir/spruce/dougfir into a grow-hard setup, I might not see the resulting vigor until the second or third year in that setup.

2. ⁠Wiring/styling -- branches need to be wired down so that the exterior/vigorous parts of those branches are physically lower than the interior/weak parts of the branches, and so that the interior parts see the sun better.

If I am an interior bud, I am more likely to emerge/start growing if:

• ⁠I am on a strong tree

• ⁠I am on a strong branch (with at least one leader that has been allowed to run without pruning)

• ⁠I am physically higher than the exterior growth on my branch

• ⁠I am upward-facing and can see the sun directly (not self-shaded)

This also applies to any existing growth on a branch which is interior (close to the trunk) and which I want to "win out" over the exterior growth. In all conifers I grow, I am trying to promote some interior growth to eventually replace exterior growth, but I don't prune back to that interior growth it until it is strong enough to take over. And if I don't have any growth yet, I don't expect (in pinaceae) that I will get buds through a hard prune. That is possible in some species / genetics / conditions, but not always, and never without needles.

  • ⁠Wire/re-wire branches down and out of each others way for minimal self-shading

  • ⁠During development years make sure roots are in coarser air-breathing media and in expansion mode

  • ⁠Cut junctions of 3+ down to 2 (shoot select) in either late autumn / early winter / early spring (pre-push)

  • ⁠Clean crotches

  • Check wound-closing progress and re-score the live vein if it has slowed its inward expansion.

  • BonsaiNut/Rschlfer collects firs. “I have gotten them to bud back quite well. I pinch them in the spring and then in the fall knock off any terminal buds. I have also found that branches with no buds usually die.”

Michael Wei