每日吃瓜

Conditions:
Location: southwestern Sweden
Placement: apartment window with no possibility to keep plants outside
Hibiscus species: unknown

Hello!
I apologize for the novel this became, it wasn’t my intention but I have a tendency to ramble on and repeat myself. TL;DR included towards end of post.

Anyway, the following has surely been asked before. I’ve tried researching but have come to a point where the “answers” I’ve unearthed are countered by others indicating to do the opposite, so I thought — let’s just face the music and ask it once more in the forum! I’m not expecting aligning answers and I’m sure there are different ways of achieving similar results. I’m just happy if anyone could give me some pointers.

I guess I have some basic know-how in regard to pot plants but I’m a complete beginner when it comes to bonsai. I’ve read a word or two and admired beautiful trees over the years but have never really tried it out. The many rules and views as to what constitutes a bonsai tree has, like for many others, scared me but lately I’ve been trying to scratch the surface a bit with some of my plants. These are experiments for fun to evaluate if I can handle/utilize some bonsai or bonsai-adjacent techniques at all.

Because of laziness and procrastination, I’d like to do two fairly “big” jobs at once: repotting/root pruning and hard pruning of branches. Yet, I’m unsure of the impact it will entail? As mentioned, I know this has been asked before but to me it seems some folks say it’s best to do one major job at a time so as not to put too much stress on the tree. Others suggest it’s an actual necessity to trim the canopy at the same time for root-to-foliage balance? I realize it may be more stressful for the tree to cut or even saw off bigger branches as opposed to trimming back smaller ones and/or cut only leaves, but seemingly the differing viewpoints sometimes don’t include such detail and rather adhere to overall opinions of ”do or do not do it at the same time”? I’m confused so any suggestions or experiences would be great!

A few victims of my lack of discipline are three hibiscus trees I planted from cuttings (from a bigger hibiscus pot plant) two years ago. I’ve included a few pics of one of them as reference for my thoughts below. They are in dire need of repotting, so that is a given, and I’d also like to root prune, preferably including reducing or cutting off tap root/s. But would it be too daring to cut back several of the branches to 1 or 2 leaves in the same go?

One idea I have is to cut back all or most of the branches above the third (the small, underdeveloped one) to one or two leaves. When they’ve hopefully recovered and begun ramification, I’ll do the same with the first and second branch. The third, I’ll leave be to see if it can be beefed up a bit.
Or would it be better to do it in reversed order? That is, cutting back the first and second branch and hopefully hinder the apical dominance by cutting/pinching all new shoots above them (except on the third branch) and prey they’ll start developing?
Or maybe do one branch at a time?
If not try anew with the bad tapering by cutting the trunk at a suitable position?
I’m lost!

Considering I have three more or less equivalent trees planted at the same time in the same way and treated the same since, I could try three levels of aggression? If any or all fails, so be it. This time last year I completely defoliated the big mother-plant, which lives in the same conditions, with good results. If that’s any indication of its health? In my estimation, these three trees are of equal vitality. I had a brief talk with a local bonsai-knowledgeable person and he thought it would probably be fine to do it all at once. What do you think?

Addendum:
From the get-go, although the extreme-sized leaves bugged me, I decided not to try my hand on reducing them. Instead, the goal was to hinder the apical dominance and try to get the lower branches thicker in what became a sort of sacrificial branch fashion; I just let them grow without pruning, albeit with some wiring. My intention, however, was never to cut them off entirely - this was before I knew what sacrifice branches were. Rather, I wanted to thicken them up before cutting them back to begin ramification. If I had had the knowledge, I would not have ignored other aspects that are now resulting in the upper branches being way too thick, the trunk way too thin and with close to nonexistent tapering, cut marks from the wire, an overall imbalanced aesthetic and so on, but at least the lower branches kept growing. And even though these trees may be lost causes and I’d be better off starting from scratch with new cuttings or nursery stock if I’d like to try bonsai for real, I feel a certain inclination to experiment some more and see where I can take them.

So, I’d like to at least try to reduce the leaf size if at all possible. Perhaps foolishly, I initially thought that leaf size was primarily a matter of care and training of your tree (i.e. you can drastically reduce the leaf dimensions no matter the initial, “natural” size). But as I’ve come to understand, some hibiscus and many other species may be hard to train as bonsais if you want a relatively small trees - which I do? To my understanding, leaf size depends approximately 50% on DNA and 50% on training but I guess I’ll try as best I can. If reduction can’t be achieved by a considerable amount, I’ll let these trees go as bonsai-prospects since the imbalance of foliage vs the rest of the tree will be too great.

TL;DR:
I have three relatively small two year old hibiscus trees that need repotting. I’d like to root prune (preferably including reducing or cutting off tap root/s) and hard prune branches (preferably several) in the same go. In my estimation, the trees are in good health. Would you try this or advice against it?

I’d be very grateful for any thoughts or answers, thank you in advance!
Best regards
Nils

I started to read your post but gave up half way. If you want to re pot and root prune at the same time then do it. Leaf size in development is irrelevant, Keeping it inside will always be a problem, no humidity poor light temperature too high. You have some advice from someone that has bonsai, so do what they suggest.?

Ahh Southwestern Sweden. I am on Hising island ?

Hibiscus is a very nice tree. But the slow thickening and big leafs make it better suitable grown wild in a big pot rather than as bonsai in my opinion.

I repotted a 20 year old one this spring. The same time as I do all of my repotting. Full bare rooting and pruning, it worked great. Growing better than ever now.

I do not do any big pruning at the same time as repotting on any trees. It has served me well. For hibiscus I think pruning is best done in spring. That means repotting in spring 2026 and styling in spring 2027 or the oposite. I do prefere to prune before repotting myself.

Growing all year indoors may need another approach.