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Deciduous species that grow continuously throughout the growing season (vigorous deciduous) include hornbeams, some types of maple, and the little autumn olive trees I enjoy working with, Elaeagnus umbellata. I discussed one of these recently in this post, and wanted to briefly show you the pruning process.

This shohin size tree had some wire applied in the dormant season and has been growing well since. You can see the new growth has extended significantly (see the nearly white stems?) and the leaves are over-sized.

To bring something this small back into shape, I need to prune back to just two leaves on each new branch to encourage ramification (more complex branching) and remove the leaves to force a new, hopefully smaller flush of growth.

In the photo above, you can clearly see where the whitish growth emerges from the older, gray-brown stem right at the tip of my middle finger. I have already cut it back to the two leaves that remain.

Then I cut off each leaf leaving just a tiny triangle of surface area as a sort of insurance policy. That tiny remaining leaf bit will provide a little energy while the tree starts a whole new set of leaves.

Once most of the leaves have been removed you can see the wire that has been in place since the spring. Removing that wire is much easier with no leaves, so I will do that now.

One branch was left a little crazy. The lowest branch on the left is a replacement branch to one that had become too thick. I have left a few leaves at the end and will continue to allow it to thicken up a bit. Those leaves really illustrate the scale we are working with.

A closely cropped image gives a better idea of how this little guy is developing.

With some luck I will get a new branch at each of the two leaf stems that was left at each tip and have twice as many twiggy branches next time.