Sage's Bonsai : Cranberry Cotoneaster

Cranberry Cotoneaster (apiculatus)

Well, I found myself poking around the nursery, which was good because, I had not done this in a few years. My quest for bonsai on the cheap, has gone pretty well so far. Anyway, after the club discount this guy cost me about $35, It was a late b-day present to myself.

End of March 2019

My rationale, was to pick up a tree that could be trained and look like a 'bonsai' pretty quickly. That way I have something to contrast all the nasty stumps that currently occupy the bench.

It was pretty scraggly, and I started to clear out the suckers and branches in poor locations.

I got it cleaned up, and shortened it up. It has three trunks and a branch that could be considered a trunk... I also chose this one out of the rest at the nursery because it had some root spread that I could see/feel in the pot while the others were lacking this quality.

Taking it to three trunks would have made it pretty 2D so I left it for now.

Pot option #1

Pot option #2

Although the blue pot would complement the berries well and is in a better proportion, I went with the other one because it had more space to help the tree develop. I also wanted to be conservative with how much soil and roots I removed. I cleaned up the root pad a bit more, but not much.

At this point after cutting that one branch on the right (pic above), I was tempted to cut the all back to scale, but stayed on the safe side. I did pay for this! and want it to live. Depending on how it back-buds, I may reduce the branch on the right (below) as well. Or wait until next year and cut all the branches back and treat one trunk as the main trunk.

Front

Back

Mid may 2019

June 5, 2019

I cut back the long straight branch(better seen in the 3rd previous image) , which was about 1/2 the tree! The scale will be better as a result. This will be more of a mame size of a design. I cut all other branches back to 2-4 sets of leaves.

End of July

I cut off one lower sub-trunk that did not have any growth on it. I shortened aggressively the branches and cleared out some growth from near branch bases. No wire used.

Before