Satsuki Azalea After-Flowering Maintenance, Part 2 – Back Budding Results

In my last post, I discussed the basics of how to prune back azalea to two shoots and two leaves after removing the flowers.  In this post, I will show back budding results from those cut-backs.

This Wakaebisu has been under development for about 10 years from a nursery stock.  Although it has a good trunk base and nebari, I decided to train it into a meika azalea to enjoy the flowers instead of a shorter moyogi style bonsai.

This is a 2018 photo. I did not take one this year.

The after-flowering maintenance was done on May 22.  By June 10, a lot of buds have popped up from where the shoots were pruned to two leaves and on some hardwood branches.