Submit-bloom clean-up on wisteria – Bonsai Tonight

Often my Chinese language wisteria sends out leaves and flowers on the similar time. This yr it was all flowers.

Chinese language wisteria ‘Caroline’

After having fun with the bloom, it’s time to take away the flower stems. This protects the tree from producing seed pods and permits the brand new leaves to obtain extra mild.

When many of the blooms have fallen away, I carry the tree into the workshop and begin slicing.

Any guesses what number of flower stems I eliminated?

Earlier than clean-up

After eradicating the flowers, 32″

If I had guessed I’d have been method off. It turns on the market had been 388 racemes on the tree! Not all had totally elongated, however that’s what number of cuts I made to cut back the racemes to the small leaf buds rising on the base of every stem.

Though I’ll miss the colour within the backyard, there’s at all times an opportunity I’ll see a couple of flowers in summer time. Within the meantime, I’ll let the tree develop freely till the leaves harden off and the tree turns into dense. At that time I’ll prune and scale back the leaves (see “Leaf pruning Chinese language wisteria” for particulars).