by Zach Smith | Aug 15, 2015 | Bald Cypress, Care, Pruning, Wiring
Here’s where we left off with this bald cypress, Taxodium distichum, a couple of weeks ago. I had made mention of the fact that defoliating a healthy bald cypress in early July leads to a new flush of fresh growth within two or three weeks. It’s common for BC to get ratty looking foliage in mid- to late summer. While this doesn’t cause any permanent harm, it’s pretty unattractive. So why not do something about it? So on this developing flat-top style tree, I went at it hard July 4th weekend. By August 1st the tree had thrown lots of new strong shoots, and was ready for its next round of work. So after some fine wiring and judicious trimming, we had this result.
This is where we are today. My new shoots are now four to six inches long, and it’s time to give them a final trim for 2015. As the remainder of the growing season winds down, this new growth will harden off in time for winter. Next year, we get into serious ramification.
I also had the opportunity to correct something that didn’t look quite right to me following the previous session. The main left-hand leader looked a little bit long relative to the right-hand leader and my plan for the overall silhouette of the tree. I hadn’t noticed this until I photographed the tree back on August 1st. Which brings up another good bit of advice on developing your trees: take photos of it in its various stages. The camera will often show you flaws you just can’t see standing in front of the tree.
In this shot, you can see I’ve brought in the left-hand leader enough to restore the crown’s balance. This bit of tough-love, done now, will yield great results down the road.
by Zach Smith | Aug 9, 2015 | Care, Soil, Sweetgum, Wiring
We’re about six weeks away from the end of the 2015 growing season. There’s still some growth left on my bonsai, though the rate has slowed for most and we’re seeing typical signs of summer heat stress. Sometime in September will come the fall thickening in our trees’ branches, so any wire still on them will have to be watched closely and removed before it causes problems.
Today it was time to do a little trimming and cleaning up of a few sweetgums. Pots needed some scrubbing. Soil, a little top-dressing.
This tree is really developing some good ramification in its fourth year of training. I’ve got an issue with the first right-hand branch (the only one not in the crown); it’s weakened in the past year and isn’t likely to survive into next year. Pretty standard shading out, given the slant of the tree and nature. I do have a very small shoot that arose this past spring where another right-side branch once was; I’m hoping it’ll strengthen next year and allow me to rebalance the design.
The trunk base on this bonsai is 3″ in diameter. It measures 25″ to the tip of the crown. Pot is by Paul Katich.
Here’s my sweetgum forest I just built this year. The two replacement trees survived and are growing. Oddly enough, the weakest tree of this group was the main one. But I think they’ll all be with me come next spring.
There are 11 trees in this forest. The overall height is 36″, with the largest tree sporting a trunk base of 1.75″. Pot is by Byron Myrick
Finally, there’s the small bunjin specimen that appears on my Sweetgum Bonsai sales page. As with tree number one above, this one is developing nice ramification – but in only its first year of training. And the leaf size has reduced surprisingly well. Only a few leaves are 1″ in length; most are less than that, with some only 1/2″. Not bad for a species that sports 5″ long leaves in nature.
This one has a 1/2″ trunk base and is 19″ tall. Pot is by Chuck Iker.
by Zach Smith | Aug 8, 2015 | Bald Cypress, Care, Potting
Okay, while I admit to enjoying everything associated with bonsai, the fact is it’s not necessarily all hysterical fun. Sometimes it can actually get to be a bit of a drag. Don’t get me wrong, the wiring, pruning, pinching, unwiring, rewiring, and so on aren’t bad at all, but I’ll admit that I find repotting seldom puts a smile on my face. So every now and then, you’ve got to do something different and have some real oddball fun with bonsai. This past winter I collected my first crop of bald cypress cones from my own trees. I sold some and planted some for future projects. And then I saw a post on a forum where someone had simply potted up a handful of seeds and grew a forest directly from them. Why not do the same thing with bald cypress? So I had this small Chuck Iker pot sitting empty and wondered what I could make of the idea.
Here’s how I got started on April 11th of this year. Bald cypress seeds have a very high germination rate, so I figured from this cone I should at least get a good dozen or two trees to come up. My first half-dozen are waking up in this shot.
By April 25th, the forest was getting pretty crowded. Almost everything is still at bare seedling stage, with just the cotyledons showing.
And here we are today. Now that’s what I call bonsai fun! I haven’t done anything to this new bald cypress forest except remove the stressed summer foliage from the interior. My plan is to do nothing else until next spring, and at that time I’ll shear the forest into a nice triangular silhouette. I expect the crowded space will keep the trees from getting individually too strong. And that’s the really easy way to a presentable little forest.
By the way, the pot is 6.5″ in diameter.
What do you think of this instant forest? Leave me a note below.
by Zach Smith | Aug 8, 2015 | Care, Pruning, Wiring, Yaupon
You may remember this yaupon clump, Ilex vomitoria, collected in Winter 2014. I collected the specimen because of its neat root structure. I like clump-style bonsai, provided they’re designed and developed well. In the case of this one, I knew there was a good deal of work ahead of me because the individual trunks had no taper, which is a characteristic of yaupon in the wild.
This photo was taken in March 2015, one full year from bare trunk with nascent buds. I have a lot of nice shoots I’ve allowed to run in order to thicken. This phase of development is all about building taper into the trunk(s) of your bonsai. You do this by chopping the original trunk about 2-3 diameters in length from the ground, if building from the ground up. Once the new leader has run enough and thickened enough at the base, you repeat the process. It’s time-consuming but necessary in order to make your bonsai believable.
Here’s this specimen three and a half months later. Isn’t that an amazing amount of growth! If you look closely you can see how much thicker each of the new leaders has gotten – thick enough for their next chop.
I’ve taken each of the trunks back significantly in this shot. I haven’t cut back quite as drastically as I might have, considering the fact that each new leader is now showing taper (and has movement I wired into it, which I want to preserve). Because of this, I think there’s an opportunity to reduce the amount of time needed to develop this clump by using another technique I’ve written about before. By allowing buds near the base of each trunk to grow wild, thereby thickening the new trunk base, I can continue to build the tapering transition while moving forward with the finer development of each individual tree in this clump. It could save me two or three years easily.
In this final shot, I’ve wired up a new leader for each trunk except the one that had none – it’ll bud where I want it to – and done some carving on each of the original chops to help smooth their transition points. The only additional work I’ll do this year is to wire branching on each trunk as buds develop.
My plan for spring of 2016 is to reduce the size of the root mass on the clump, and possibly even go to a bonsai pot with it. But that decision can wait till next year.
This pre-bonsai is available at our Miscellaneous Bonsai & Pre-Bonsai sale page. I think it’ll be relatively easy to continue building it from here into a fine specimen in just a few years.
by Zach Smith | Aug 2, 2015 | Care, Chinese Elm, Elms, Pruning, Wiring
You’ll remember this trumpet vine, Campsis radicans, from a couple of weeks ago. As I noted, vines are extremely vigorous growers. I more or less knew this one would come back, and sure enough here we are two weeks later and it’s throwing shoots. Now, I don’t have to be in any rush to wire the tender new growth. The tendrils of vines stay supple for awhile, and I want these to harden off before I attempt to put wire on them; they snap off easily at this stage.
Stay tuned for updates. I’m really looking forward to working on this specimen.
Here’s the water-elm clump I first worked on back in March, in a photo taken yesterday. I’ve left it alone since then so it could gain vigor, and it hasn’t disappointed. Time to do some unwiring and trimming.
About 30 minutes later, here’s what I’ve got. I think this clump is going to be a real winner in another year or so.
The pot may be a bit large for it. What do you think?
And this is the Chinese elm forest I showed you on July 18th. If you look closely you can see the bright green new foliage on each tree. For those of you who’ve worked with Chinese elm, you know they’re simply one of the best species for bonsai. I think this forest will be very presentable next year, and within two or three will be outstanding.
