How to Prune Japanese Maples and Why

Summary

In this video from HortTube, Jim Putnam explores the art of pruning Japanese maples with the help of Lynn and Jim Swanson, experts in the field. The trio not only demonstrates various pruning techniques but also discusses why these techniques are essential for the health and aesthetic of the trees. They emphasize the importance of pruning during dormancy to shape the maples and prevent damage from dense growth and competing limbs. They also share nuances like tool choices, understanding tree types, and the value of slow, thoughtful training for achieving beautiful, natural-looking trees.

Highlights

• Jim Putnam collaborates with Lynn and Jim Swanson, experts in pruning Japanese maples 🌿.
• They showcase a variety of tools necessary for pruning, including specialized saws and loppers 🔧.
• Pruning during the dormancy period is highlighted as the ideal time to make significant cuts 🗓️.
• The team demonstrates techniques to manage growth, such as removing competing leaders and addressing weeping branches 🌳.
• They stress understanding each tree's natural form before pruning to enhance its beauty 🌻.

Key Takeaways

• Pruning Japanese maples can enhance their health and visual appeal 🌳.
• It's best to prune these trees during their dormancy period 🌬️.
• Choosing the right tools is essential for effective pruning 🔧.
• Understanding the natural growth pattern of the tree guides pruning decisions 🌱.
• Early pruning helps avoid major cuts later on, allowing for healthier growth 🌿.

Overview

In an informative session on HortTube, Jim Putnam dives into the world of pruning Japanese maples with expert assistance from Lynn and Jim Swanson. These seasoned horticulturists guide viewers through the intricate process of shaping and nurturing Japanese maples to ensure their longevity and aesthetic appeal. 🌿

Lynn Swanson introduces a variety of tools crucial for effective pruning, such as specialized saws and loppers. She emphasizes the importance of understanding each tree's natural growth patterns and the role of pruning during dormancy. These insights are invaluable for those looking to maintain beautifully structured maples. 🌳

The video also offers practical demonstrations, revealing how careful pruning can prevent disease, improve air circulation, and support healthier trees. With a focus on both artistry and functionality, the team shares tips for achieving vibrant, well-shaped maples that stand out in any garden setting. 🍁

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction and Overview In this chapter, Jim Puton from Hort Tube expresses his excitement about creating content on pruning trees, specifically focusing on Japanese maples. Despite his extensive experience in horticulture and fearlessness in pruning shrubs, this is his first foray into filming tree pruning. He introduces Lyn Swanson and her husband, who will be part of the video, noting that the audience has not met them before.
• 01:00 - 03:00: Pruning Tools Introduction In this chapter, Jim Swanson introduces himself and his connection to Japanese maples. He acknowledges Lynn as the expert, while he helps with tasks related to maples. Jim is involved in managing an impressive collection of Japanese maples at home and participates actively in the Maple Society of North America. Together with Lynn, they are responsible for pruning maples at the Roston Arboretum.
• 03:00 - 05:00: Pruning Techniques for Japanese Maples The Roston Arboretum features numerous Japanese maples, inspired by JC's vision of having them visible from every angle of the site. Consequently, the maintenance and pruning of these maples are crucial. This chapter introduces the tools used for pruning Japanese maples and includes a practical demonstration of the pruning process.
• 05:00 - 08:00: Explanation of Specific Pruning Decisions The chapter discusses various tools used for pruning in the yard, highlighting their effectiveness for different tasks. It describes an extended pole tool with anvils for guiding small branches and extraordinary loppers that provide leverage and reach.
• 08:00 - 10:00: Seasonal Timing and Pruning Considerations The chapter discusses different types of pruning tools used in gardening, specifically loppers and saws. The speaker mentions carrying a smaller traditional lopper, a typical lopper, and various saws including a California-made saw with a handle for extended reach. Additionally, a larger saw is cited, noted for its limited usage on Japanese maples, but more commonly used in an arboretum setting.
• 10:00 - 15:00: Weeping Japanese Maples Pruning The chapter discusses the importance of pruning Weeping Japanese Maples. It mentions that similar tools are available at the Arboretum and introduces pruning tools, including Felco, a well-known brand. Furthermore, the Japanese version and its Chinese knockoffs, which are a third of the price, are compared. The speaker also expresses admiration for the tools, indicating a personal preference.
• 15:00 - 20:00: Artistic Pruning Techniques This chapter introduces 'Artistic Pruning Techniques' with a focus on the tools and principles used in the process. It highlights the use of Japanese saws, particularly a folding saw from Silky, which is portrayed as highly effective and portable due to its holster compatibility. The chapter sets the stage for exploring various pruning principles and the rationale behind using these techniques, starting with the treatment of extreme branches.
• 20:00 - 24:00: Considerations for Different Japanese Maple Varieties This chapter discusses the maintenance and pruning considerations for a particular Japanese Maple variety that tends to develop multiple leaders, or main branches. The focus is on reducing the tree to a single leader, which should ideally be done when the tree is younger. The speaker notes the importance of regular visits to the Maples to manage their growth effectively and to ensure that they develop into the desired shape. This approach helps in promoting a healthier and more aesthetically pleasing tree structure.
• 24:00 - 31:00: Conclusion and Upcoming Events The chapter discusses the importance of having a definite leader or dominant branch in a tree to ensure better growth and appearance. The speaker suggests pruning to favor the dominant leader and shares a method for choosing which branch to remove by observing the crotch angle and alignment with the main trunk. The focus is on ensuring the tree's healthy development.

How to Prune Japanese Maples and Why Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 welcome to Hort tube my name is Jim puton I'm super excited for this video I've wanted to I spent a lot of time in horiculture growing shrubs and some small trees at my Nursery but my background is mostly in I'll prune any shrub and it fearlessly prune any shrub but I wanted to get some video content on pruning some trees and specifically in this video it's going to be Japanese maples which everybody everybody loves and I've brought back a star uh Lyn Swanson over here and her husband there go introduce yourself cuz you audience hasn't met you
• 00:30 - 01:00 yet uh I'm Jim Swanson Jim Swanson and uh I just take orders from Lynn because she's she's the big knowledge person oh I know a few things about Japanese maples yes so you have a incredible collection here in your home and Raley and then you're on the the board for the national ly is board for the um Maple Society of North America okay gotcha and then together we prune the maples at the Roston arum okay and so the r Arboretum
• 01:00 - 01:30 the actual emblem for the Roston Arboretum is a Japanese maple leaf and JC's Vision was that every angle at the Roston you'd be able to see a Japanese maple so there's no place at the roson you can where you can't see one in a line of sight somewhere so there's a lot of Japanese maples at the Roston that they're in charge of pruning so we're going to learn a few tools here that they use for this and then we're going to jump right in and prune a few Maples they're going to demonstrate um some Japanese maple pruning so uh you want to jump in yes I'm going to come over here
• 01:30 - 02:00 uh I've got a lineup of tools and we're not going to talk about all of them you can kind of view them two that we use a lot in our yard this is a long uh an extended pole it can get small branches it has little anvils that can hold the branch and direct it where you wanted to drop it oh wow and then these loppers are quite extraordinary uh you get a lot of Leverage and a lot of reach with these and of course
• 02:00 - 02:30 there's traditional loppers we have I carry around a smaller one and then this this is typical Lopper that you've seen um and then saws um this is a nice saw it's made in California and it's with a handle you can reach quite a ways and then a monster saw here um we don't use it much on our Japanese maples here but we've used it at the arborium cuz they have this tool and we've also used a pole
• 02:30 - 03:00 thing that at the Arboretum we have one of those and of course these these uh little things you can't go get by without these Lyn show holding a couple different kinds felco is well known and this is a Japanese one although the Chinese knockoffs look exactly like it and they're about the third of the price doesn't mean that I don't know what that means so um and then uh I love these
• 03:00 - 03:30 Japanese saws uh silky made this one and this is a great folding one that actually re you can reach quite a wayte with this thing so I this I carry my little holster and toolkit and we uh can uh do a lot of damage all right so we're going to go through some of the principles and the reasons why we would do that we're going to start with a fairly extreme Branch
• 03:30 - 04:00 taking off a PR extreme Branch so what this this particular Japanese Maple and I think folks can maybe see up here it has two liters uh from about I'm 6 feet so just over 6 feet here this thing takes off with two liters it's got another six or seven feet up there why do you want to get that down to one liter well um we try to visit our Maples every year and if we'd seen this at a younger age we would have done it then and probably would have been better off to do it then but this obviously is a tree wants to go up and it wants to go
• 04:00 - 04:30 tall right and it's uh really competing for the same airspace there we don't want that to continue we think it'll develop a better prettier Crown if there's one definite leader so our choice would be to shorten this one or just take it off and there's a clear choice right here um at this crotch angle of favoring one and so what we're going to do is stand back and it looks like this one is more in line with the Trump we want this straightest one got
• 04:30 - 05:00 so we're going to choose that one and get rid of the other okay so we're the timing here we're February 28th today right so why is this is this the best time of year for a major cut like this it is while it's dormant before it's trying to put out leaves or drop its leaves or do other things you can prune other times of year but for major Cuts you really want to do them in the winter okay gotch you so if you have a and I've said this many times if you got a crazy limb on something go cut it you know or or limb that's in po going to damage the
• 05:00 - 05:30 plant in some way yes you're helping it from whatever but this kind of cut we want to do when it's when it's dormant and again you also said this is addressing these things very early on matter so when you if you buy a Japanese maple in a one or two gallon container cuz they can be expensive if you're buying them in larger containers addressing them when they're smaller is better cuz we're this is going to be a fairly significant cut uh that's that's coming off of here uh and then uh one thing is like this is a there are a lot
• 05:30 - 06:00 of different types of Japanese maples so this is a very upright yes grower and and whenever you start pruning that's the first thing you need to know what is the shape of this tree is it upright does it look like it'll have multiple um stems going up with a crown is it upright and vase shaped is it upright with a canopy or is it a weeper and walking up to the tree knowing what it is natural uh inclination is the best way to start print we just want to get that started so it does not split yeah
• 06:00 - 06:30 split yeah and you always want to make the smallest cut you can so you don't want to cut down into the main bark of the tree so you want to that that best angle you can get there for you I know we don't want to hit the camera woman okay so this is a Acer Pudo sanum variety Tas it's a Korean Maple but um
• 06:30 - 07:00 close in nature to a Japanese maple right there's a lot of that and there's a lot of hybridizing between between different types of Maples that we all classify as Japanese maples so he initially made a back cut on there and I've shown this three cut method uh on the channel before about making a back cut so when that limb dropped off and we had to stop filming there for a second cuz the limb was about to drop on where stuff was sitting here filming so he made a back cut here uh and then cut cut
• 07:00 - 07:30 from the top and that way the thing drops off without PE cuz what will happen is on a limb that's that heavy if you don't make that back cut when this limb drops it could peel the bark right down the side so that's the reason you're making that back cut if it's a large limb that back cut is super super important um because otherwise again it could do significant significant damage this look like a you know this is a fairly tough this seems like tough love right it does t
• 07:30 - 08:00 trees are tough yes yeah but trees are tough like he just said over there Tre trees trees are very tough and uh now you will have prevent potentially prevented ice yes we're in an ice area here in Raleigh we get we've had two although two snows this year TP more typical is for us to get an ice storm ice and so we have kind of have to guard against that with trees of how you know and prune them appropriately yeah and people are afraid to cut their Japanese maples and there's reason for that if you take it off it
• 08:00 - 08:30 won't come back but um but they do respond well to pruning yeah really do so we use Japanese maples a lot of times as understory trees but that can make them vulnerable to damage from the larger trees so you had a limb drop on this one this AUM what what variety is Su a silhouette this a mouthful okay and it broke a limb off peeled it back here and then you gave it an opportunity to make a decision on what if it could figure out a way to rebalance tree and
• 08:30 - 09:00 now it's just become obvious that this is a danger to the tree right so you want to take you you're going to take this off and leave that leader yes this one is supposed to be narrow so we we might have liked this being branched out lower down but yeah that's an invitation to bacteria we could probably take it there and it might be okay but why not just give it a road to good health and take a clean cut and that would it just be kind of a cloy looking Branch yes you know right so you're just going to take you're just going to take this one down
• 09:00 - 09:30 to here yes and this one's small enough that we don't need the saw yes one thing I'll say back on that saw is all of these pruning saws are pull saws and you may have noticed that while he was I meant to say that while he was pruning that over there they they don't cut on the push they cut on the pull and if you as long as you're not fighting it they're really easy if you're just just let it pull real easy and it it went right through it okay like Japanese woodworking tools do the same thing clean Sharp Tools Clean Cuts ready
• 09:30 - 10:00 yes and that might be a little more of a stump than I would prefer but it was as close as I could get my loppers in there without doing any additional damage and um you know on Maple sometimes it's hard to tell where the branch collar is but right you you get it as close as you can that's where the cells of the tree want to help he you see the bran Branch collar yeah again yeah a lot of trees will tell you know you can really see where the branch collar is this one is much much lower and you want to cut all
• 10:00 - 10:30 the way down to to there yeah you know and it used to be in pruning they they use a pruning the tar type stuff that nobody uses that anymore it's not recommended at all I remember my father used putting that on cuz that's what people did but I don't even know if you can buy it anymore we sold it at the Garden Center when I was a kid but this is more about keeping your tools in good shape and making angled cuts and making sure it sheds water and the thing's able to heal itself we're pruning at the right time
• 10:30 - 11:00 a lot of trees there are you know Japanese maples are not example of that but there are trees we would not prune this time of year there map trees that bleed this time of year like River Birches and that kind of thing so they' have a different time of year to be pruning them but this is we're doing it at the appropriate time with a sharp tool another reason on the pruning timing might be that you can't see inside of it right correct yeah that's uh cuz this time of year even now though some of these Maples tend to hold their leaves uh through the winter as you know um H how do you get in here and really
• 11:00 - 11:30 see this yeah well especially with these weepers it's just seems to be the habit and a lot of people don't like this about these and this tree always needs lots of cleaning up not heavy pruning but just but just get a pair of gloves and just strip these off and just do that yeah that's first step and the next step is say you find a lot of dead small branches maybe even large and snap
• 11:30 - 12:00 them off because that'll give you a clear clear that stuff out then you can make decisions of what you want to take out right uh and this just this tree has a lot of spiky things and it takes a while to clean it up it's a wonderful tree though um so but on the upright ones we can definitely see the structure it's easy to figure out what to prune it's winter time we can see right in them but this thing even now it's hard to see so it's hard to identify where
• 12:00 - 12:30 the crossing branches are if I until you get in here clean it up so so so we're not going to touch it here uh for the video but we're going to go to another weeper that's that has no leaves it has no leaves and it's it's one that we're working on developing its shape um so this is a weeper if a lot of people have one or two Japanese maples it's commonly what we would call a weeper which means it gets wider than tall and so um the typical um Horticultural rules apply first want to look for anything damaged
• 12:30 - 13:00 or dead anything touching you're going to have to make a decision and then after that it gets a little more fun a little more um choice but you can see uh this this has a nice round form but there's some things just going way up or going across Center um this Branch here it it's competing with this Branch it really has nowhere to go I'm going to take it right there so when I'm looking for this kind of tree each quadrant flows and I want it to flow out I don't want
• 13:00 - 13:30 it to flow on top of itself unless I'm choosing a main stem that I want to curve and be a permanent feature otherwise I'm going to take things off that are like headed in just really the wrong direction or some like this this is a great example I have a branch coming here I have a branch coming here this one forks I don't really want this one going over to compete with its neighbor so I'm going to let it flow this way by the same token this one's coming getting in the way um
• 13:30 - 14:00 so I just want it to have the best version of itself we prune to make things look kind of natural it's not the highly artistic pruning that you will see some people do with Japanese Mapes it's just helping the tree look like the best version of itself so and some some things you might not be clear where they're headed and you can leave it for a year you can always come back the following year but we just want it to
• 14:00 - 14:30 get a little more organized here this one's coming up to compete this one is touching see there'd be nothing wrong with this but they are they are starting to get in the same airspace so I have a choice do I want one this layer or do I want this guy coming across I'm going to favor this one but you could have gone either way on that decision
• 14:30 - 15:00 and when it leavs out you will never know that it had all these little branches taken off it will get light into the center of the tree which is a good thing and it will it will put out some more branches as well ah back here you'll often have really odd little things come out of the main trunk
• 15:00 - 15:30 I'm just going through making oh and the other thing you can do is head back a branch let me show you if um if you come here anywhere you cut along this you're going to encourage new branches to come out and you can even look at what are the direction of those buds this one's going to have an up and down this is going to have a side to side so you can even make a choice where you cut it if
• 15:30 - 16:00 you want to head back some branches and bring the length in a little bit and help it to get a little shrub beer you can head back and some of these are getting so close to the ground that I want to do that anyway I don't want it dragging on the ground and some of these if they're Crossing airspace I might just head it back for this year and give give it some more branches to come next year and then
• 16:00 - 16:30 I might take one of them off this one another thing you can do is prune to the young Branch this is headed to the ground it's on this main branch that has been cut but you have a nice Branch developing here going in the direction I want it to flow so in this case I'm going to prune to the younger branch and I'm going to let this nice fresh one take
• 16:30 - 17:00 over ah there's a real wild one this one's trying to go around the bend so we'll and again see this teeny tiny one this is going the direction I want it you kind of have to use your mind's eye of where things are headed
• 17:00 - 17:30 when I have a weeper I want remember the Habit is out and down so I don't want anything going way up like that this is a real wild one and you'll have this I want to live on the other side of the
• 17:30 - 18:00 tree you mention about changing directions yes um occasionally you do want one of the beauties of a weeper as it gets older is that you you you have them coming up and it builds on itself and some of the beauty of that is the
• 18:00 - 18:30 way branches do change so like this one starts over here and it comes this direction if that was a young Branch Crossing um it might be something I'd correct but occasionally you want to allow some of the twists and turns of a Japanese maple generally for most trees you don't want them Crossing Center if you keep in mind the center of your tree you don't um Crossing too wildly but allowing some Twist and Turn is part of
• 18:30 - 19:00 the beauty of a maple it may have been hard to keep up with a lot of that it's wearing this underst story and it's shadowy in here so it maybe in the leaf background is probably hard to see but it hardly looks like you made any cuts on it really other than the fact that I can now see that everything has a purpose MH you know that's what you did you reorganized it in a way without really uh this could be intimidating right it could people are afraid to cut these precious things but especially on these finer branches
• 19:00 - 19:30 you're not going to get in much trouble it will gr more yeah and I've said uh frequently on the channel you're in charge you know when we're pruning things you know like you did here you can look at how these buds are arranged on these stems and when you're cutting back to one of those you can see the direction that that next branch is going to take yes and select that that's the direction I want this thing to go and if it doesn't do it this year for me I'll do it again next year yeah right I make one go this way so you really are in
• 19:30 - 20:00 charge and it's not uh it's hard to make a mistake unless you again you're using poor tools and MH you know yes sharp clean tools yeah yeah yeah yeah and it'll recover from it we talked about Kind of Rescue pruning a little bit and making sure things aren't Crossing dead or diseased things old stems but then there's the art of Japanese maples right which is and that can be in the eye of the beholder so what we're about to do may not be for
• 20:00 - 20:30 everyone but you you want to take this tree and get these lower limbs off of it and then maybe in the future do a little bit of top printing so you can create kind of a a shrubby top to this you know to to to and have a single trunk going up yes uh so this is again this is the artistic form of of Japanese maple pring so tell us what you're going to do here okay we're we're going to go dramatic on this tree um this is Acer pum cryi it's
• 20:30 - 21:00 never going to be a huge tree and it's really fine the way it is yeah but we were looking at that and I hope your viewers in their Mind's Eye can imagine the tree as it is versus if we took off all the smaller lower branches now we have a long clear trunk with a smaller top canopy yeah um if it was my only tree would I do it no since we have lots of them we're g to we're going to um create this sassy little top tree okay but you were talking about the other
• 21:00 - 21:30 thing here about standing back you can pull these limbs down and the other person can stand back yes and vision like do we want to do that right yeah yeah yeah one person stands back and looks and then the other person stands back and looks and then and then you think it through would there be so here's a question this tree is now this height uh so I know in the Bonsai world of pruning they will leave branches for several years that they know they're eventually going to take off because it the pl buildy so there's some argument
• 21:30 - 22:00 and then but then that gets to a point where it's like really kind of you know I would probably get it while it's easy to take yes and but you you bring up a great point we have a um butterfly and that's a little more tender plant and so it we we like things that are going to be treated to have somewhat of a clear trunk but that one we left a lower Branch for quite a while so it could make plenty of food and get strong and then we did take that branch off and it's thriving okay so there's an
• 22:00 - 22:30 argument for leaving them for a while viewed from the house discussed this from the house we can see this tree and we could pick out the future tree and think yeah let's go for it and there's another thing with ornamental tree look cuz this is you know we we started with a very large growing Korean but Japanese maple yes and then we we we did a a weep you know weeping Japanese maple this one's kind of a middleof the road ornamental tree and my thought on a lot of these is when they're branched really low they actually take away some of the
• 22:30 - 23:00 rest of your garden you know what I mean if this thing gets this wide and it's limbed this low then I can't see anything back there so yeah this is another reason you would look and and its neighbors we have Rising Sun right behind you that is going to be a big tree and we're going to let it be a big tree right and then this one is in a much smaller setting with um a path right next to it we don't want this to get in the path gotcha gotcha okay well here we go okay here we go all right bring this let's start with
• 23:00 - 23:30 the and then this happens the getting the one with the tag on it yeah you want to try to take the tag out well no just go ahead and here I'll let me get it out of your way okay you have tags on all of them when you have 250 you better keep up here you go you want hold yes get around
• 23:30 - 24:00 yeah go further in I think there you go all right that is a pretty radical change huh that is a pretty radical change right put back would you potentially ever stake something like this or just let it be because it is has a slight clean but got direction to me
• 24:00 - 24:30 it's character I don't I I think so and it seems pretty hardened the way it is so what we might do in future pruning it's also really heavy on the side right so we might it's had enough done to it today but but we might start to work on this uh on the sides at the top and and that you know we will probably keep this one now small but it's not trying to be a 25 ft tree right when you want to keep a tree down to 6 ft if you keep one that it's nature is to be an 8T tree you're
• 24:30 - 25:00 great but yeah so how how many named how many named I mean there there're literally hundreds and hundreds and maybe thousands of named cultivars so if you're looking for a Japanese maple for a space finding one that kind of fits the space is super important just not going and buying the random Japanese maple off the you know that may get 25 ft tall or you know blood good is an example of that it's a tree I mean it actually can become quite a large tree it's the most common Japanese maple
• 25:00 - 25:30 still on the market it always has been it's a vigorous grower and all those kinds of things but probably it get big yeah it's going to be a big tree so it needs to be placed appropriately yes all right so what I want to point out here is that the type of pruning that you did on that the dwarf the newer younger weeping Japanese maple look how look at the form of this one and you know when I see most of these they're crowded you know cross ing branches everywhere but if you start early and
• 25:30 - 26:00 you focused all of these branches coming outward and you focus them where you wanted them this thing is just so interesting and it's just as interesting in the winter mhm I love it in the winter yeah as it's going to be in the spring and you've allowed these layered pieces to come up and you see that training this I mean imagine you got started on this one we did this one we've had a long time and started training it early yeah yeah yeah and I mean all of these weeping Japanese maples are interesting and have you know with with or without but when you really
• 26:00 - 26:30 get in here and do and think about what the shape of it's going to be in the future you can really turn it into something where it's not hurting itself and it's super super interesting um and and it's finding its correct shape and you kind of do use your mind's eye what airspace is this Branch going to take right yeah yeah yeah as it as it's coming out so um there's an event for the uh Maple Society coming up in Raleigh yes the maple Society of North America is a great organization for Maple lovers and we usually have one
• 26:30 - 27:00 fall annual meeting but we've developed Regional groups and so the Southeast Regional group is going to be here in April April 11th through 13th so okay got people could go on the maple Society website and find out all about that they're touring your garden and Jay York who's been on our Channel we we've did a video at Jay York so they going to going to the Ron we're going to Jim's going to lead a tour of the maples in Ralston okay go to Cheryl Cheryl kar's Home Guard Garden okay got and go out to a couple of nurseries so it'll be a fun
• 27:00 - 27:30 weekend so how many do you have in your Raleigh Garden here we have 25ish Maples and uh at least 200 of those are the species that are considered Japanese some of the others are other species Maples gotcha or C or hybrids yes right yes so again about selecting a maple for the space that it's going in because you can have weeping ones you can have very were fish upright ones and then upright ones that
• 27:30 - 28:00 are just Flatout trees I mean they can get up into the canopy with the rest of the uh with the rest of the trees so then once you know that then you can kind of see either for through photography or other places what that tree is kind of supposed to look like a little bit uh and then come in and address yes yeah and so you look at your trees from all angles and when we look at this one it's uh it's taking a vase shape at the top which is lovely but this one branch is
• 28:00 - 28:30 is is changing that look so you have a choice you could just start to prune out some of these that are really heading out or you could follow it back to the main branch which is what we're going to do here but sometimes if you hesitate you can go well I'll take these this year and then I'll think about it next year about whether to do more or do a little bit at a time yes and we could do that and keep standing back and coming back and looking and keep looking did I these might be you know is that enough you could do that much and go is that
• 28:30 - 29:00 enough and then decide yes or come in as we're going to do and take it to there right and you're basically just trying you want to be able to walk around this one keep it in a vas shape and be able to walk around okay I got you so I'm coming right in here and do one quick clean cut there you go there you go and what looked cruel has put the thing back in kind of a vase shape and there may be something else over here at some point cuz it's you coming out you know when you're talking about a vase shap we want
• 29:00 - 29:30 most of the leaves branches to be going not this not this but somewhere here and then getting off the horizontal pieces that kind of fight against that yes yeah another thing we may be pruning for is stem color so a lot of these Maples are including my favorite be whoo which you have one out by the road yes um are are grown for stem color yes which hope we will be showing up in this video but it's it's it's so shadowy out here so tell us about that so this is a tree called Redwood it's a small coral bark
• 29:30 - 30:00 meaning in the winter the younger stems go bright red right so um we've shown you that we allow it to grow in the late fall cuz we want to see all that beautiful red color right this tree we half pruned before the video started so that you could see where we will be taking it taking off those young stems because we want to keep this tree in this small Streamside Garden on the petite side right but you you're just a sometime during the season you're just allowing these stems to extend then you can enjoy them through the winter cut
• 30:00 - 30:30 them back again and that the best color is in that juvenile growth yes exactly okay from the end of the season so he going to demonstrate the tool of these are the I got to get one of these this thing holds the limb cuts it and then you can and then brings it down you see that and this and then and it's extendable and so these are great for you know people bringing in for flow arrang for flower arrangements red yeah is probably a good good one for that
• 30:30 - 31:00 okay so and he's going to take the rest of them down so another thing people love other than stem color and all the great you know the structure of Japanese maples is obviously when they Leaf out in the spring they are beautiful it's almost like flowers some of them are so pretty and they come out sometimes a different color than they're going to be for the summer months right so it's the fresh foliage is just the best so we're going to come back up here in April your which is your favorite time of the year so would you pick Spring Leaf out over
• 31:00 - 31:30 fall color I would especially in the Southeast that's what I say cuz we don't necessarily get the fall color yes and they're a little stressed sometimes from our summer right okay so we're going to come back in April and we're going to go through some of your favorites when they're when they're leafing out so thank you so much guys Lyn and Jim thank you so much uh for being in the video and thanks for watching guys