How Can You Tell If Your Bonsai Tree Needs Pruned?

Pruning your bonsai is an important part of the process, but knowing when you should be doing this is even more important.

If you get this wrong it can really affect the health and progress of the tree, so it vital that you can learn to understand your tree and be able to tell when it is time to prune it. 

You can do this by looking at the tree as well as considering a couple of other factors, which I will go through below. 

Look At What The Tree Is Telling You

If you want to know if your tree is ready to be pruned, you need to look at the tree. It is going to give you a lot of information that you can work with and make your decision from.

You can look at how the tree is growing to help you understand how healthy it is, you can look at things such as how quickly it has grown, or how much it has grown, as well as the quality or thickness of that growth.

There will be subtle differences over time and it’s your job to notice this and compare it what you have seen from the tree in previous months or years. You can also look at other things such as how much water it is using or even the colour of the leaves.

All this information is going to give you an overall picture of trees health and its progress, which you can use to decide if it needs pruned or not.

Always Consider The Trees Health

Whenever it comes to pruning you need to consider the trees health. You need to look at everything I just mentioned above and decide if the tree is healthy or not.

Ideally you want your tree to healthy when you prune, as it is more likely going to bounce back extremely quickly and not be too upset with the work you have done.

Ask Yourself What Pruning The Tree Will Achieve

The information you gather about the tree is only half the equation, you also need to know what you are trying to achieve.

Just because it is ready to be pruned, doesn’t always mean that it needs to be pruned.

You may look at the tree and see that it is ready to be pruned, it may be really healthy and showing all the signs that it is ready …but if you are trying to thicken it up, then pruning it is going to be counterproductive, so it is going to make more sense to just leave it for now.

Prune When It’s The Right Time Of Year

Just because your tree is healthy and looks ready to prune, doesn’t always mean it’s the right thing to do.

Once your prune the tree, it is going to respond and try and heal itself, and really it can only do this effectively at certain times of the year. This means you do need to take the time of year into consideration as well. 

If you are pruning the tree in winter, it is not going to be actively growing, so all those wounds will not be healing and this can mean that there is a higher risk of infection.

However, late winter can be a really good time to prune as the tree is about to burst into life again very shortly. The tree will also be able to send all of the energy it had stored up into the areas that you have left alone, meaning that no energy is getting wasted in areas that you would have wanted to remove.  

Spring is not a great time to prune. Your trees are waking up and pushing out new shoots and you need to leave them alone to do this. They may look healthy, but pruning now will disrupt their energy and weaken them a lot, so it’s best to just wait. 

Summer is going to be a great time to prune. The tree will be growing and healthy and there is still plenty of time within the growing season for the tree to recover.

Autumn is a questionable time. Some trees may look ready for pruning, but winter is fast approaching and you really have to ask yourself if you think there is enough time for the tree to recover before the frost hits.

(You can read more about – What Is The Difference Between Winter Pruning And Summer Pruning On A Bonsai Tree?)

What Was The Last Work You Did On The Tree

You need to think about the last time you did any work on your tree, as this could influence what state it is in right now.

Ask yourself when you last pruned, or did any other work like repotting. Any work you did will have weakened the tree, so you need to ask if it has recovered from this.

It’s not so much how long ago it was, the time is irrelevant, it is more just acknowledging that you weakened the tree and deciding if it has recovered or not from this.

Sometimes the tree can look pretty healthy, but it can be best to just wait a few weeks to be certain. 

The last thing you want to do is start pruning the tree and making it even weaker. If in doubt, always wait. It’s better to wait and keep the tree alive, than rush things and kill your tree.

You will often see in my youtube videos that the trees look ready to work, but I just wait a little while longer, just to be sure they have fully recovered.

Prune Your Tree If It Is Overgrown

A very clear sign that your tree is ready for a prune is when it is overgrown. If your tree has shot a lot of new shoots and the tree is now getting out of shape, it’s probably time for a prune. 

As a general rule you want the shoots to actually grow a little bit before you prune them. I usually wait until there are around 6 to 8 pairs of leaves. Usually at this point the bottom of the shoot has started to harden off.

At this point the tree should be really strong and it should be able to handle being pruned again. Of course you can wait until there are more leaves, especially if you are trying to thicken things, but generally when it’s this length it should be fine.

(You can read more about – How Do You Know What Branches To Prune On A Bonsai?)   

Prune Your Bonsai When You Are Happy With Its Size

Another indicator that your tree is ready for prune is when you are happy with its size.

This is going to when you are developing the tree trying to thicken up the trunk or a branch.

This will involve just letting things grow freely for a while and it does mean it will probably look over grown like I discussed above, but you may not really be paying attention to how long the shoots are, just the thickness.

Once the tree has reached the thickness that you want, you can prune things back.  

(You can read more about – What Is The Best Way To Prune A Bonsai Tree That Has Grown Too Tall?)

Prune The Tree If The Inner Structure Isn’t Getting Enough Light

Another time when you should consider pruning the tree is when the foliage gets too dense.

Ideally you want the sun light to be able to get into the centre of the tree, which isn’t always possible when it starts to get really dense with leaves.

You want this light to reach the inner parts of the trees as it will keep the inner areas alive and it will make sure any buds in that area are kept healthy. You need these buds to remain healthy so that you can prune the tree back to them.

If you think about it, you can’t just keep letting branches grow out forever, or you will end up with a really tall or wide tree. This means that you might need to reduce the length of branches, and you will want the inner branches and buds to grow and take over as the main outer canopy.

This means that if your outer foliage gets to dense it can be a good idea to thin it out and prune some of it back. This is usually going to happen in early summer, but it will really depend on the individual tree and what it is doing.

(You can read more about – Frequently Asked Questions About – Pruning Your Bonsai)

Conclusion

Hopefully now you can look at your tree and recognise when it is ready to be pruned and when it might be best to wait.

The tree will tell you when it is ready to be worked on. It will be healthy and full of growth, it is then down to you to decide if the time of year is right and if the tree has enough time to recover from the work.

(You can read more about – How To Prune A Bonsai Tree – A Beginners Guide)