how long have these sequoia been in the ground for? I’ve heard that they grow slow for the first 8 ish years then they blow up like rockets
Glad you like this thread!
Damn, that’s getting fat. Do you have a board underneath the root system? Have you dug it up every now and then or just left it in the ground?
I remember I had one sapling in a pot, around the end of September I moved the pot to another location. At the end of October I came to move the pot and instead of lightly picking it up with the resistance I expected as the month prior, I fell to my ass 
I then grabbed the pot again and pulled and I had roots going for more than 10 feet in each direction, it was nuts! So I can only imagine what is underneath that trunk after several years.
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That is interesting. I do need to rewatch watch Ryans stream on it. Both trees have been in the ground for a whole growing season, around a year and a half. Its thickened a fair amount tbh from what it was when I initially planted it.
That is insane! Yes its grown soo much since its been in the ground. I literally took it out of its growing container and put it straight into the ground. Didn’t want to mess around with the roots as I wasn’t sure how I would place a plate/tile directly under the trunk/roots. Hopefully its coming out this year as I am sorting out my garden so this is most likely going to be planted inside a large grow box of some sort which I still need to figure out ha.
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Hey are you the same Yugen that sell seeds in the UK? If so - good to see you on here 
He’s unfortunately never covered Giant Sequoia but I hope he does this year. It’s a legendary tree. He just mentioned in a Live Q&A and the forum Q&A that they’re waiting for some good material to cover it I think?
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Alas, I am not the same. Sorry to disappoint
This beautiful picture of some mid-sized giant sequoias by Samuel Lethier came across my Facebook feed so I had to share.
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Thanks, that is awesome. Looks like there was a proper blizzard too!
Really happy this thread has gotten started. I have started a few from seed this winter, and am looking forward to seeing what happens.
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Here is my sequoia, also started from a souvenir seedling 4 years ago. Repotted last spring from a 5 gal. nursery pot and it responded well to the root reduction with a lot of bushy growth.
I did the first pruning and apex chop in December. Before and after:
Hard to tell scale in the photo, so this pot is 13"x17"x5" and the tree is 14" now. I did try to train a new leader upright with a bit of wire in the fall, prior to chopping. This sort of worked but the tender green shoots don’t seem to like wire. Had a bit of browning on the interior where it was near the trunk and I think a spider made itself cozy in the new tight space. The leader shoot is not as upright as I’d hoped and I’m hesitant to straighten it with wire again. Best to let that sort itself out?
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Thanks for this, badass! The bushy look seems to be the ancient form. I really like the “There’s some gnarly deadwood up here.” : )
I’m also curious, why would they want to cut these trees? I understood that if they were felled, they would shatter into pieces making them worthless for the industry?
I have a Sequoiadendron giganteum that I acquired last summer and it’s been trained for quite a while and is now getting bushy and sloppy and I started looking for information about refinement trimming and have found so little its shocking.
“redwoods” in general seem to be a mashup of misnamed trees, myths up the wazoo, and tons of confusion between the 3 drastically different species that actually are in this Subfamily.
All 3 trees in this Subfamily have drastically different native ranges, growth styles and needles.
Here is a good primer in the 3 types and the big diferences between them: Here is a great primer on the 3 unlikely cousins of the Subfamily Sequoioideae:
Comparison of Redwood Species
I would love if anyone has info or links on trimming these, specially trimming in stages refinement
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This is the only reliable source I’ve found, from Craig Coussins on Bonsai Empire. By reliable I mean, the tree has been in development for many years (it’s visible in the images) and apparently the techniques and timing used by Craig works…
Only issue I see is that we don’t know whether he has reproduced his methodology on multiple trees, and whether he had similar results.
I have a forest of giant sequioias, and they are fussy. Touch them whenever they don’t like it…which I still haven’t worked out “when that time is”…and they will just drop a bunch of branches.
I don’t know why the species is not more common in bonsai (unless it’s hard to work with), because it’s gorgeous. The foliage is way more interesting than the dawn and coastal species…which honestly…they just look like yews.
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So Czech Republic is banned from viewing the redwood website you shared 
oh to have a VPN service. Anyway, I completely agree with the points you made about redwood, although not as much as I’d like to-studying the foliage and behavior, I almost want to think they share some traits with junipers (foliage strength and reaction to strong pruning) and a sort of cypress. Not sure if their completely vascular like the other elongating species
I’ve asked if Ryan could come up with something and they’ve mentioned several times that the time will come but that they just haven’t found anything proper yet and I am very excited about that stream once it actually does happen. I’ve just got a little formal upright I’ve been playing around with and it seems to be extremely apically dominant and not really react to the laying out of structural branches (cytokinin). But maybe the energy just isn’t ramped up enough. This will be the 3rd spring from the first re-pot.
is Craig still around? the blog he had about the GS is pretty old and there was still a lot of unknowns.
Well - Craig is a pretty big name in bonsai (i have some of his books), so I expect he is still around. If you’re asking how to get in touch with him? I have no idea 
sorry. I’ve never looked him up. Can’t find him on FB or Insta. Maybe some brits around here can help out?