Bonsai Stock Alert

There are some nice pieces of stock - nebari and reasonable trunk girth - at:
Cannor Sears - they have some azaleas for $30. They are the variety "moon" something. They have white flowers with pink edges. The trunk girth is about 3/4 an inch or a little bigger.
Red Barn Market. There are some nice pieris in bin 11 out back. They could be worked as is - The variety I mean has a very dense crown already, but I did not look at the name. They could also be cut back. I cut back mine in the winter - back to a stump, and it is budding right now. They are about an inch in girth, and the crown is closer to the trunk then in some pieris. Unfortunately they are $40.
I consider both of these too expensive. However, I am one of the members who spends too much on trees. These are reasonable pieces of stock for their prices, but there are better deals for those who look.

How much time can you put into one bonsai?

What I mean is how much time can you spend refining a tree?
It takes alot of time to apply wire to every branch!
Before today I did not think it was worth it. However, I needed a small juniper branch to cover a very specific area on the tree. There were 15 branchlettes. I wired the branch to heck, and it did what I wanted it too.

Now I wonder how much more I can do with branches that don't need to be wired to the nines, but could be anyway.

Crab Apple - Time to repot

I got this crab apple from a friend. It was a good stump but with no-where to go, artistically. He gave it to me. I plunked it in the ground for two years. This year (grown last year) there was a branch that did just the righ thing for the stump. I cut back everything not that branch, and I potted my new pre-bonsai.

Last Years Willow Cuttings

I repotted last years willow cuttings today. The primary reason I did it was because I like to play with my trees. Next it was: one year old willow cutting have got to be as hard to kill as fresh willow cuttings - which are very hard to kill - so these ought to be tough and can take a February transplant.
The yearlings had plenty of roots. I chose the lowest, most radial roots and chopped the rest. I planted them in cut-down gallon pots; and put them close to the house so they don't catch any sudden frosts.
I would not do this with a bonsai-ed willow. Willows drop branches when stressed. Don't ask what stresses a willow, the list is too long. Dropping branches is, of course, very bad for a bonsai. Take the utmost care to baby willows.
But the yearling trees have no branches - so either the "one branch" will die, or nothing bad will happen because there are no branches. I have stated why I don't think the one branch theory will happen.

Learning Bonsai

Oddly, there is no specific "beginning" when learning bonsai. I learned about bonsai with wild collected trees, meaning I had to learn to shape the tops of trees first; I had a trunk already and knew how to keep it alive. Others start from seed, so they must learn about trunk growing first. Still others purchase ready made bonsai and need to learn pruning techniques before anything else.

Workshops ($50-$80) start participants off with a tree, so they do not teach selection principles. They cover identifying the bonsai within the raw material, and how to make the tree like that. They do not cover how to care for the tree horticulturally. Nor do they teach how to refine a tree with the passage of time.

Bonsai is learned gradually; through trial and error; reading books; conversing with people of experience; and looking at bonsai trees. The Joshua Roth New Talent Competition considers "new talent" those with less then 10 years experience.

Official Opening of Buds/Blog

Yay! It is leaf break! This is a Chinese Corkbark Elm. My Japanese Maples are starting to go as well.

I had planned on starting this blog with the first bud break. Here we are! The reason I started the blog early was so it would have some content right from the official opening.

I got this elm from a club member. She gave it to me because I had lost a big elm that summer. I have planted this elm in my garden and I am just going to let it grow. When the trunk is around two inches I will cut it back hard, that should be in two or three years.

Grow a bonsai from seed kit

Grow your own bonsai from seed kits are ridiculous. This is because they give the impression that you can actually obtain a bonsai from seed quickly. The book which comes with the kit is very vague, an introduction to bonsai only. Seedlings don't need to be repotted, trimmed or wired.
What one needs to know about growing bonsai from seed is how to a) care for a seedling and b) develop good stock.
a) seedlings in crummy peat pellets are prone to drying out, or being drowned. This is because of the peat - it is either bone dry, or saturated. It doesn't spend much time slightly moist, what plants like. I suggest potting soil because people know how to keep plants alive in potting soil, or sand/gravel because the is what the seedling would want.
b) nebari and trunk girth are what is important about stock. The seedling has to be root trained by planting it on top of a flat surface, so its roots spread. Good nebari results in a greater trunk girth then a tree with poor nebari. But trunk girth is also obtained by unrestricted growth. This is why a bonsai from seed is a long term project.
Small bonsai from seed - 5 yrs
normal sized bonsai from seed - 12 yrs
large bonsai from seed - 18 yrs

My List for Spring

I went to my garden and made a list of things I will need to do by the end of April. Of course, many tasks will be added and deleted from this list. But if I have no clear plan I may endanger my plants. I have to:
...make tree growing boxes, benches and tags.
...replant some trees. Some young trees need to be repotted to take advantage of their vigour. The older trees need to be repotted because the soil in the pots has broken down to a level which makes watering difficult.
...dig up some garden growing plants, and pot them.
...dig up some garden growing plants, place a tile under them and re-plant them.
...trim the garden growing plants - no bar branches; trim to promote low branching.
...wire trees!
...clean dead areas on trees - to heal over, or to apply new lime sulphur.
...take cuttings.
...do air layerings when the buds start to swell.
...cultivate mosses.
...purchase soil.

Alder Leaves

Alder seem to break buds the earliest in Victoria. There was two new leaves on an alder at the club meeting today. The red alder is a native plant. It loves living very close to streams and lakes, ditches and anywhere there is a lot of water. I hypothesize that the water soaked roots warm up faster then regular dirt bound roots. If the plant has evloved to work with water this way, then it would make sense the plant would wake up early in the season even though bonsai alder are not so wet.

Pots and Spiders

It turns out I have more pots then I thought I had. I had to move them from one outdoor shelf to another and it took a long time! It seems I collect pots just as I collect trees for bonsai. The pots sometimes are used for bonsai, other times I just enjoy the empty pot.
Of course, when you have lots of pots outside, one must be careful to tidy them every so often. I found two large spider nests in my pot collection, as well as several spider egg sacks. It is possible the two live spiders were dangerous. The reclusive and widow spiders around here are dangerous. An upside down liter sized garden pot is about the perfect size and shape for these kinds of spiders; and they will also use smaller and larger spaces, like all of your other pots. Heck, just be careful!

growing bonsai stock

I made some decisions today to wire or trim certain things. In particular, I need to pay more attention to the branching of my young larches, the branches are easy to see now the needles are all gone. There are too many branches on these trees. I need to think ahead to how big I want these trees to be. Then I need to thin out the branches to a final few branches which will be part of the complete bonsai. Those, and a sacrifice branch or three to thicken the tree trunk up faster.