by Frank Ruckman

This article appeared in the July 2005 Evansville Bonsai Society Newsletter and is used with permission of the author. Dave Bogan, the editor of that newsletter has many times recommended to his readers the need for routine trimming to increase ramification - ED.

For several years, Dave Bogan has been telling me to pinch the new shoots off my trees to improve ramification and to reduce the leaf size. Like most people, I just nodded and agreed with him, but never got around to doing it. I thought I needed to set aside a block of time and pinch the entire tree all at once. My usual system was to let the tree grow until it looked too wild and shaggy then cut all the new growth off.

Dave was at my house in late April, and was looking at my shaggy maples. The maples and elms seem to add inches every day, and a monthly pruning just barely keeps them in check. Once again Dave started singing his pinching song, but this time he showed me what he was talking about. He just snatched the new sprouts right off the end of the limb fast as he could go. In just a minute the tree was done. As I started making excuses for not having the time to do all the trees, he said the key words, "just pinch a few sprouts on each tree, every day, while you are watering".

I'm slow but I like to think I'm not stupid, and I know Dave's trees look a lot more mature than any of mine, so I gave it a shot. It took a week or so to get caught up, but after that it was pretty easy. I mostly ignored my Siberian elm, and the winged elm, and concentrated on all my maples and bald cypress. The results were nothing short of amazing. About three weeks latter, I called Dave and told him, "I sure wish you had got me pinching a couple years ago so I would have very nice trees now". He laughed and suggested I write a short article for the newsletter to try to convince everyone else to try pinching. Pinching the new shoots adds about 5 minutes per day to my watering. I don't get every shoot on every tree, but I do get most of them. In a week's time, I get all the trees done pretty well. Since most of my maples really get a drenching when I water, I usually have the water turned down and coming out slow, while pinching with just one hand. During the early growth spurt season, every place I pinch grows two or more small leaves in a few days. It is hard for me to find the time to spend 30 minutes or more, per tree to trim them, but 5 minutes per day to do all my trees, I can find pretty easily.

Take a look at the pictures to see the difference in leaf density and leaf size of two trident groves. These two groves are roughly the same age. The biggest difference between them is the fact that one got pinched daily from late April until early June when the pictures were taken.

The picture of the Bald Cypress shows different but equally good results. Each branch tip grew a small star burst of new compound leaves. This looks a lot better than my usual trimmed stub stuck on the end of each branch. If you are not a pincher now, please try it. Start next spring and by late May, your trees may look a 100% better.