needrain said:Your previous thread comments led me to go to Google Images to look for 'jade bonsai'. They were there and those led me to watch a couple of YouTube videos, though the two I watched were using Portulacaria instead of a jade. What kind of wire do they use for training? Does it have to be taken off and redone regularly? Looks like it would strangle the stem as the plant grows unless the wires are flexible and will expand somehow.
Looking forward to seeing the plants you've done. At least one of the videos cut a huge plant back leaving only about half a dozen leaves. Scraped away a lot of upper roots, too, to expose the upper part of the root system. Unfortunately it didn't show how the plant looked a year or so later after the operation took place.
Hey!! Yeah honestly Portulacaria afra make much better bonsai than jade probably due to their small leaves and more flexible branching, and you can develop branch pads more easily than with Jade. I'd love to get my hands on a decent one and train it into a tree form.
Bonsai wire is copper or a softer variety with I forgot what it's name is, I use the softer ones for Jade. You typically leave the wire on for around 6 month and then take it off and rewire it if needed. You wrap the wire not super tight, because if you do you will get scaring on the stems. I wrap mine a little looser on my jades than I would on an actual tree. Then allow it to start to thicken in that wired position, then remove it.
Some of my jades I have trained them in the Clip-and-grow method where I prune them hard to develop branching that splits in two so to ass get denser branching structure instead of longer shoot growth. It can seem kinda extreme but I works well. I have been doing this around every Six months to a year depending on how it grew out. That usually allows it enough time to re establish and fill back out.
