by Zach Smith | May 17, 2015 | Care
This sweetgum was not necessarily due for repotting this year. What prompted me to want to perform this chore was the behavior of the large root at the left rear of the tree. You never know what root(s) a sweetgum will choose to throw a lot of energy into. In this case, the one at the left rear took off, causing an unsightly upturn. It was just too strong, and that was the result in container culture. I knew the time would eventually come when it had to be addressed, but I needed to wait and gauge the strength of the tree before making the commitment. As you can see, there’s been a lot of growth. Knowing how sweetgum behaves, it was a safe bet that what was happening above the soil surface was reflected below. So today was the day.
The first step was defoliation. Any time you do root work outside of winter or spring, you have to take into account the tendency of the leaves to transpire moisture that can’t be replaced by a recovering root system. It’s common to remove the bulk of the fine feeder roots in any root-pruning session. We know they grow back, but we also have to bow to reality in that while they’re gone the leaves will suffer. So I removed all but a scattering of small leaves by cutting through the petioles. This is a similar technique to leaf-pruning maples: you cut half-way through the petiole, rather than try to remove the leaf and petiole together. This prevents damage to the axial bud that’s lying dormant in the leaf axil. If you stick with cutting through the petiole, you’ll find that in about a week’s time the petiole will fall off on its on, leaving the dormant bud undamaged.
Here’s a good look at the root mass. As I’ve mentioned before, sweetgums roots very nicely in a bonsai pot. You usually get few or no feeder roots when you collect them. The tree goes ahead and produces a tremendous mass of them in a confined space.
So I had no particular concerns about the health of this tree. All of these roots were healthy and whitish. No soft, mushy rotted roots. Exactly what you want!
Here’s the offending root. You may be able to see how it actually turns upward after emerging from the trunk. This is not exactly a desirable feature of a bonsai. In this case, the tree didn’t start off with this weird looking root; it just grew that way all by itself.
Here’s another shot of the offending root, after a good washing. Not exactly something you’d shoot for in developing a tree’s nebari.
So it gets whacked off and carved in with a knob cutter. Luckily, there were roots emerging from the bottom of this odd protrusion, so I simply cut off what looked ugly and was left with something I can manage going forward.
This is how it looks after repotting. Sweetgums heal very well, so this wound should close over in about four or five years. In the meantime, as it rolls over it’ll actually be a neat-looking feature.
And finally, the tree back in its home, a lovely Paul Katich oval. It should resume pushing buds in two to three weeks.
I’m planning a sweetgum collecting trip in a couple of weeks, so I should have new material for sale by mid to late June.
by Zach Smith | May 2, 2015 | Care
May is sweetgum collecting time. I’ve been planning to build a forest since last year, and I had Byron Myrick custom-make this pot for it:
It’s 24″ in length by 16″ wide, and 2″ deep. Isn’t the color superb!
You always start with the focal (largest) tree. I’ve had my eye on this one, growing on my property as a volunteer, for a couple of years now. I chopped it back earlier this year, and it exploded in growth as spring got going.
Notice how I removed most of the foliage on this specimen. That’s the other secret to collecting sweetgum in May: almost all of the foliage has to go! Now, I do keep a few leaves on the tree to use as “barometers.” If they don’t wilt, I know the tree is likely to survive. All I have to do is wait for roots to grow. Sweetgums do this very well in bonsai pots.
Incidentally, you may be able to see the layer of pea gravel I placed in the bottom of the tray. Because forest trays are so shallow, they tend to drain poorly no matter how good your soil mix. The pea gravel should help prevent this problem.
After placing your focal tree, the second most important tree must go in the right spot. It should be fairly close to the focal tree, and begin the process of providing depth and perspective to the planting. I think I’ve accomplished that with my second tree.
I know it’s “cheating” a bit for me to jump to the final composition, but if you study it for a while you can get a pretty good idea of the principles of bonsai forests and why I placed each tree where I did. (You can also see one minor error that doesn’t appear in person but which the camera picked up, namely, the fourth tree from the right in the right-hand group is hidden behind the fifth and final tree. I may need to adjust its position a bit. Edit: it was the camera position that hid the tree; it’s quite visible in person.)
There are many, many suitable designs for bonsai forests but all of them adhere to certain principles. Here are some of them, in no particular order:
- The focal tree has the thickest trunk and is tallest
- Smaller trees are placed toward the back of the planting to produce visual depth and perspective
- The lowest branches on the trees of a forest appear on the smallest trees, progressing upward with increasing tree height/size
- The scalene cone shape of a forest bonsai mirrors that which is created in an individual bonsai
- Just as no tree’s trunk should block the view of another’s when viewed from the front, the same is true when the bonsai is viewed from the side
- The trees’ styles should be the same, formal or informal upright, and if there is movement in the trunks they should move in harmony with one another
I think I’ve done a pretty good job of building this sweetgum forest. Hopefully all of the trees will survive the collecting process. I’ll publish updates as it progresses.
Comments are welcome, as always.
by Zach Smith | May 2, 2015 | Care, Potting, Soil, Sweetgum
With May upon us, it’s time once again to do some serious things with sweetgums. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, collecting sweetgum in winter has not been a happy experience for me in times past. With a success rate of less than 30%, I would just end up scratching my head. Why would sweetgum not respond as other species do? I finally stumbled upon my answer: wait till May.
I’m sure you recognize this sumo-style specimen. I collected it back in 2012, and have let it grow out with some periodic training since then. I’ve been anticipating repotting time, especially because of the big “club” sticking out on the left-hand side of the base. Pretty unattractive – but it was more or less all the root that I was able to recover when I collected the tree. Today it was time to (hopefully) correct the problem.
My first order of business was to pull the tree from its tub and wash off all the old soil – which, incidentally, was too heavy for the tree. Here’s the result: an amazing amount of roots, all of which grew from nothing but the stump I collected and the awkward “club” root hanging off to the side.
For comparison sake, here’s a shot from the other side of the tree. You can see that when I collected this stump I literally sawed off whatever was projecting off the right-hand side. The tree has responded by producing nice roots directly off that cut. In a couple of years I’ll be able to carve the area to make the transition smoother.
Here’s the cut that needed to be made today. You may be able to see a smaller root that comes off this one toward the front. Since I had this to work with, I was much less concerned about just hacking the offending root off. But no matter, I expect roots to sprout at the edges of the cut.
Here’s a view from the front. Yes, it does look a bit abrupt, but to my eye it looks a lot better than what I started with.
The final step, with the tree potted into a much smaller nursery container. I think it looks a lot better without that big root emerging on the left side. What do you think?
by Zach Smith | Apr 26, 2015 | Care, Potting, Yaupon
When we last left the story of this yaupon bonsai in the making, its first growing season was coming to a close. In the photo below it’s easy to see where the trunk was chopped. I grew a new leader from just a trunk bud, wiring it to induce movement (yaupon likes to grow everything arrow-straight).
I also left a sacrifice branch shooting off to the left, because it was essential to thicken the new leader emerging from the chop so as to make the tapering transition look right.
Fast forward to today. The spring flush of growth has been tremendous. This didn’t especially surprise me, since most trees recovering from collection tend to grow strongest in year two. In this case, considering what I was trying to accomplish starting last year, it was just what I needed.
Here’s the payoff. Notice how quickly the base of my new leader has thickened. It’s gained about 50% since the November shot above. And thanks to the technique I’ve used in carving the chop, angling it into the branch emerging on its right side, this already makes for a believable transition. What does this mean? I can go ahead and remove that sacrifice branch.
By the way, notice the new shoot at the very tip of the leader I wired into position last year. This is exactly the continuation into my new apex I was hoping for. I’ll wire this shoot in the next week or two, in order to ensure it has some movement in it before it gets too stiff to work with. I can then pinch and prune it as part of the process of finishing the crown.
The next step was to do some trimming in the lower branches. Downward pointing branches, most upward pointing branches, older primary leaves where the sub-branching emerged. If you look closely, you can see the tree emerging. Now it was time for a bonsai pot. But what did the roots look like? Time to find out.
Here we are, roots teased out and mostly washed off. I was very pleased with what I got in just a year’s time. As I may have mentioned before, I haven’t worked on yaupon in the past due to the simple fact that in the wild they almost never grow with any natural taper to the trunk. So this is all a learning experience for me. Now I know I can get good fibrous roots in just a year.
Finally, the tree is potted in one of my vintage Richard Robertson pieces. As I was cleaning the pot I noticed the signature and date – ’89. So this pot has been with me for about 25 years now. I think it’s found a nice complement to its style and color. What do you think?
Incidentally, this yaupon is a female. It bloomed like crazy this spring. The flowers are tiny, pale white and inconspicuous. Yaupon berries are bright red and make a nice winter show. It remains to be seen if this one is going to set any fruit this year. Most of the flowers were actually on the sacrifice branch, but there were a few on the lower branches.
by Zach Smith | Apr 19, 2015 | Care, Flowering, Hawthorn, Potting, Soil, Watering
Back on March 7th I posted a blog on my large hawthorn that needed repotting. You may recall the scarcity of roots on such a large tree four years after collection. Here’s what I had to work with:
Not much in the root zone, eh? Hawthorns are a bit peculiar in that they don’t necessarily root as vigorously as the top growth on the tree might suggest. This was is a classic example of the phenomenon. But regardless of how vigorously your tree roots, it’s always advisable to repot every second to fourth year (I don’t like going beyond three). This is because the soil tends to “wear out” with repeated watering and fertilizing, and it’s good to find out if anything is going on beneath the surface you need to know about.
When I repotted this tree I did something I’ve never done before: I placed a layer of pea gravel in the bottom of the pot to provide better drainage in that lowest strata of the root zone. As you probably already know, drainage in a container that is less deep than it is wide has physics stacked against it. Head pressure, or the force of the water pressing down in the pot, causes it to drain at a certain speed; the more head, the faster the drainage. As the container empties, the speed of drainage slows simply because the amount of water available to press down on what’s below is severely reduced. Drainage slows to a crawl as that last eighth to quarter-inch is all that’s left. What this means for a bonsai is, the roots in the very bottom of the pot tend to stay wet and fail to get enough oxygen. Root death occurs most readily in this zone, for this reason. So, by putting the pea gravel in this area my hope is to reduce the normal holdup you’d expect a standard bonsai soil to provide (which exacerbates the wetness by preventing drainage of that last bit of water). To be sure, I anticipate roots will grow down into the pea gravel layer; what’s unknown at this time is what condition they’ll be in when I pull the tree at its next repotting.
But here’s the point: look at the growth of this tree in six weeks! It appears the tree is very happy with its growing environment, as it’s sporting shoots a foot long.
The growth density was fairly consistent between the first (lowest) branch and those in the upper part of the tree. So my goal was to both lighten the density as well as do directional pruning. At this point in the tree’s life as a bonsai, my work is focused on building the secondary and tertiary branch structure. Given that it’s a larger tree, this does take more time since the primary branches need to be proportionately thicker than on a smaller tree in order to make them believable relative to the trunk thickness.
Here’s the result after pruning. The tree will continue to grow, which I’ll allow for another four or five weeks before doing any more trimming. Remember, don’t keep your trees “show ready” all the time, meaning don’t pinch every new shoot that appears and starts to extend. In order to encourage robust health, let your trees grow out unhindered for a time and then prune back relatively hard. Otherwise, the tree can weaken over time and become more susceptible to pests and diseases.
Finally, the lowest left branch is my thread-grafted branch, which I believe can be set on its own next year by cutting the supply branch on the right-hand side of the trunk. A close examination of the collar looked very promising. You may notice that its growth density is not quite up to par with the other branches. This is simply due to the limited moisture and nutrient supply through the sapwood caused by the restriction on the supply branch, still connected, and the fact that the new supply through the left hand side of the trunk into the new layers of sapwood on that side has not yet caught up. So my strategy is simply to let the thread-grafted branch run wild, to build more supply and layers of sapwood.
All comments are welcome. Let me know what you think.
