Bonsai Basics: What role does each season's pruning play for stump bonsai?

Bonsai enthusiasts know that a well-pruned stump bonsai needs pruning in all four seasons, but do you know the effects of seasonal pruning?

Spring pruning

Spring pruning can effectively stimulate budding on leafless, branchless dry stems, with buds emerging after the three seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter. It grows faster and produces branches and fruiting branches. Heavier pruning of stumps and bonsai should be done in spring, with repotting in early spring.

Summer pruning

Summer pruning can make new branches take too long to lignify and gives a good tree structure. Evergreen trees can also be stimulated to produce summer and autumn shoots. In the past, it could not form flower branches and fruiting branches, but could only produce vegetative branches, and formed flower branches after the second year.

Autumn pruning

Spring pruning is a shaping pruning and also a restrictive pruning. After cuttings, evergreen trees can sprout, and autumn leaves become shorter due to sunlight. When temperatures drop, the leaves tend to be smaller than spring leaves and summer leaves. Early autumn requires suppression; late autumn shoots cannot lignify, nutrient reserves are low, overwintering is relatively hard, and the treetop is prone to freezing and fruiting. Autumn shoots are short, but they can sprout on New Year's Eve to compensate for shoots without branches.

Winter pruning

In summer, pruning is not allowed for a short time, but it can increase the tree's consumption and help it through winter. Deciduous stump bonsai is best suited to summer pruning; when branches are exposed, pruning and thinning are the best pruning, and for deciduous stump bonsai the best pruning and unrefined rewards.