Thanks for the advice.... I did both.
I cut 2 of them last night and the other 2 I will leave alone.
This weekend I'll put one of the cut and uncut in the ground.

Steve
P.S. I'm in central Texas


"Jim Lewis" wrote in message
news:004b01c2e251$151dd460$92102cc7@pavilion...
I would cut them all to five inches. I wouldn't worry about a
branch. They
bud from anywhere.


Billy is right they bud back as well as any tree anywhere and
much better than most.

HOWEVER, even for me, 3/16 inch is pretty tiny. If these were my
trees, I'd plant tham in the ground (preferred) or in the bottom
1/3 of a cut-down 10-gallon pot and just let them grow, doing
absolutely NOTHING to them for another 2 years.

Then, cut them back to about 1/3 of whatever length they've
reached, let them grow another year, cut the new growth back by
2/3 and let it grow one more year, then ditto. Always let side
branches grow with no pruning, etc. By then, you should have a
tree with the start of some taper, with bases of 1/2 to 1 inch.
It will take another 2-3 years for the three cut sites to blend
into the taper, but you could have trees that will be developable
into nice flat-top style bonsai, with a large number of nice side
branches to form into jin and shari.

This will be a bit slower if you're in a real cold climate. I
don't recall that you said.


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