by Zach Smith | Jan 10, 2015 | Care, Elms, Potting, Water Elm
I planted out this water-elm as a cutting back in 2010. I figured it would do fine, but what I really wanted to know was how fast they’d grow in the ground under ideal conditions. Out in the swamps, water-elms have a tough life and in some places go literally under water for months on-end. We know from ring counting that it takes up to 30 years for the species to put on an inch of growth under these conditions. So you can see my incentive for the experiment.
The trunk base on this tree is right at three inches, in under five years. That’s fast growth! It got to about eight feet tall before I cut it the first time. I chopped the trunk three years ago, not because the tree had no taper – it put on taper all by itself – but rather to create the tapering transition in what will ultimately be the apex of this tree.
I lifted the tree in a couple of minutes using my handy cordless reciprocating saw. After shaking off as much of the native soil as I could, next came the root washing step. This next shot shows the result. Notice the huge root that coiled down into the ground! That one needed to come off for sure.
Here’s the tree with the roots cut back the appropriate amount for the ultimate bonsai pot. I left a couple of the branches that had grown during the tree’s development; I think they may be useable in the final design. The good thing about this tree is it makes a very strong statement. The trunk has a graceful curve, but I’m inclined to call it a masculine tree. What do you think?
Finally, here’s the tree potted in a nursery container. It’ll root profusely this year and throw enough buds on the trunk to allow for its initial shaping. By next year, the tree will be ready for a bonsai pot.
The bark on this tree is exfoliating for the first time, by the way.
This tree is available in our Elm Bonsai section. A deposit holds it till spring, when it’ll be ready for shipment.
by Zach Smith | Jan 7, 2015 | Care, Chinese Elm, Elms, Potting, Privet, Soil, Watering, Wiring
From time to time I’m approached by someone who has become excited about bonsai and wants to get into the hobby. Sometimes they’ve been given a bonsai as a present, sometimes they’ve bought one from a roadside vendor or home improvement store – a “mallsai,” as it’s called. From such humble beginnings often comes a fiery passion. All too often, however, the initial surge of excitement crashes headlong into reality as the new enthusiast discovers that bonsai is one of the most complex simple things you can do. Many quit when their tree mysteriously dies; I mean, if you don’t know why, what’s the point in repeating the disappointment and especially when it costs you money to boot?
A Chinese Elm Starter Bonsai
There are key factors the new bonsai enthusiast must know and apply when starting out. While it’s not possible to guarantee success – everyone’s situation is a little different – understanding these factors literally forms the foundation of everyone’s ability to grow miniature trees, from the greatest master to the rank amateur. In fact, it’s not an exaggeration to say that until you truly understand them, you are destined to fail.
Here are my five fundamental bonsai factors for the new enthusiast:
1. Every plant is an outdoor plant, even those that may be kept indoors for a short period of time.
Many a new bonsai enthusiast is attracted to the idea that bonsai are indoor plants, and they envision them sitting on a shelf in the living room. You have to forget this idea. Yes, I know, you’ve read on the Internet about indoor bonsai and there’s lot and lots of information about how to do it. To be sure, many bonsai experts are able to maintain bonsai indoors. You are not an expert (yet). So forget this idea.
2. The most common cause of bonsai mortality is drying out. What’s extra sad about this problem is sometimes the tree dried out before you even got it, but it’s a juniper and they die very slowly and remain green right up to the end. (Not all “mallsai” are junipers. Junipers are popular in the commercial trade because they look like little pine trees, they’re hard to kill and stay green even after death, hence they can be shipped across the country and sold to unsuspecting buyers.)
The tree above is a starter Chinese elm bonsai. If you’ve read my article on Chinese elm as one of the best bonsai trees for beginners, you know how I feel about the horrid “S-curve” Chinese elm. They are the bane of the commercial bonsai industry. If you’ve ever seen one, compare it with the tree above. Though very short, less than 10″, the tree has a solid design and is well on its way to being a small work of art.
3. The second most common cause of bonsai mortality is suffocation of the roots, due to poor soil. Bonsai are not houseplants, which are potted in a completely different type of soil than is used for bonsai. Unfortunately, all too often beginner bonsai, or “mallsai,” are potted in commercial potting soil. This is done sometimes to overcome the likelihood that watering of the tree will be spotty at best during the period of time between creation and retailing to you.
If you have a “mallsai,” one of the first things you must do is understand what’s going on in the pot. Check the soil surface. If it’s rock solid and you can’t move any of the soil, then you have one of the dreaded glued-on-rocks impervious soil surfaces. Watering is impossible. If you have this, your first order of business is to break the entire surface layer off and discard it. Underneath you should find some sort of potting soil, hopefully. Whether or not you had the glued-on-rocks problem, your next order of business is to gently stick your finger into the soil to gauge how much moisture is present. If it’s soggy, you have a problem. Let the soil dry out for a couple of days before watering. If the soil is dry, water thoroughly and watch to see if the water drains out. If it drains well and quickly, you’re in good shape. If it pools and drains slowly or not at all, you have a problem which must be addressed as soon as you can. The fix is beyond the scope of this article, but you can email me if you find yourself in this situation.
4. Learning bonsai involves killing trees. If your first bonsai does not die right away, this does not mean you’re a bonsai expert. It just means you haven’t suffered your first loss yet. If you want to practice bonsai, you have to be prepared to lose trees along the way. Everyone loses trees, even the greatest of the masters. It’s part of the price you pay for the sublime enjoyment of one of the highest of the arts. So get as many trees as you can comfortably fit into your bonsai space and maintain, given your lifestyle. More is better. You learn more by doing more. If you only have a few trees, you’ll tend to overwork them and this is just as harmful as letting them dry out. Overload yourself and your bonsai time.
What’s the average life expectancy of a bonsai? Over the long haul, you an expect your average tree to live between five and 20 years. I know this may sound a bit morbid and perhaps even discouraging, but bonsai exist in a very limited space and as a result are at enhanced risk and exposure. Drying out, root suffocation and freezing are the biggest risk factors and never go away.
That’s the bad news. The good news is, you can learn the skills needed to style and shape a bonsai to “completion” in as little as three years. In five or six years, most average size bonsai are fully developed and showable (if you should choose to pursue showing your work). By the time ten years have passed, barring issues along the way, your trees should be outstanding examples of the art if properly trained and maintained.
5. Take as many classes as you can, with teachers who know sound bonsai techniques. Sooner is better. Very few individuals are successful on their own, without getting advice from some source. I did well with books and magazines back in the day, but frankly I would have been better served if I’d learned directly from someone who’d already made the mistakes I was destined to make. It’s water under the bridge for me, but it needn’t be for you. Find someone who teaches, and first learn techniques. Then practice them faithfully, on every tree you work on.
A Chinese privet bonsai, shaped and styled using time-tested techniques.
Why techniques? Bonsai is a lot like music. The finest musicians play scales daily. Why? Because scales are the fundamentals of the art of music, and fundamentals must be practiced or you won’t get to the art part. With bonsai, wiring, pruning, shaping, root-pruning, and so on are the scales and must be practiced, otherwise you won’t get to the art part – guaranteed.
This last tree is an example of a bonsai just a year in training from a mere trunk. While I knew clearly the basic style of tree it was going to be, I had no way to know the “details.” But I didn’t need to. I simply wired and shaped the branches, and made sure they were moved into the appropriate spots. All strictly based on technique. Even at this stage of its development, I felt there was art in this specimen.
If you’re a new bonsai enthusiast, you have a challenging and exciting road ahead of you as you learn about bonsai. It’s a journey we all take, and the journey’s the thing. But I hope these tips can help you avoid a few of the pitfalls along the way.
Was this article useful to you? Let me know by leaving a comment below. I’d love to hear from you.
by Zach Smith | Jan 4, 2015 | Care, Privet
A species I’ve specialized in over the years is Chinese privet, Ligustrum sinense. Though many here in the South consider privet a noxious weed, it is in fact very well suited to bonsai culture. It takes to container life well, is drought and disease tolerant, and has the requisite small leaves and compact growth habit the bonsai enthusiast looks for. As an added feature it blooms in the pot, and you don’t have to let it go wild to get it to flower as with crape myrtle.
In 2014 privet was off my radar, as I focused on other species along with nursery construction, etc. With the new collecting year in full swing, I’ve found myself gravitating back toward this old favorite.
Here’s a newly collected privet. Some of you must be thinking, “What the heck is this?” Well, one thing about Chinese privet is it grows super fast, so you can literally pot a “stick” collected from the wild and grow the entire branching and crown structure of the tree in a couple of years. As I always tell my students, if your trunk is sufficiently thick and it’s got nice character, movement and taper, the rest can be grown in a bonsai pot. This includes roots. Privet usually comes with ready-made surface rootage, so you don’t need to spend any additional time on this chore.
I have no idea where this privet will bud in spring. I suspect I’ll have my choice of new shoots for branches. But the beauty of the art of bonsai is you adjust the design to fit the tree’s desires. I’m a big proponent of letting each tree decide what it wants to be. This way you avoid “cookie cutter” bonsai, and no two are alike. Isn’t that the way it should be?
If you decide to grow privet as bonsai, you need to be aware of one key feature of the species: it must be root-pruned annually. Privet roots as vigorously as crape myrtle and willow, so postponing the annual chore can lead to stunted growth and weakening of the tree.
Oh, here’s another privet “stick in a pot” and the same tree a year later. I think you can see why I don’t have any worries over the specimen above.
Watch for the “stick” above to be available this coming summer. Trunk base is 2″ and it’s about 10″ to the top chop. Isn’t that Byron Myrick oval superb?
Let me know what you think by leaving a comment below. Have you ever worked with Chinese privet before? If so, what did you like about it?
by Zach Smith | Jan 2, 2015 | Care, Hawthorn
I collected this Mayhaw in January of 2011. It threw lots of shoots, allowing me to wire a good set of branches right away. I also got a good new leader started, that thickened enough to be cut back in year one. By January of 2012, I felt the tree was ready to go into a nice pot and selected this custom Byron Myrick piece.
It’s important to bear in mind that when you pot up your newly designed bonsai, growth is going to slow down due to the limited space in the root zone. This is why it’s important to have one developmental task as near completion as possible, namely, the tapering transition in the apex. Otherwise, you will have to spend the requisite time on this chore. Quite often you’ll see bonsai that have obviously bypassed this part of their development, and the transition looks awkward. On deciduous trees, it’s a flaw that really stands out during dormancy.
Fast-forward three years. Now the tree is not only ramifying well, the apex is one to two years from completion and the tapering transition is looking very smooth. I’ll cut back the apex hard just before budburst in April, and should have a good set of branchlets in the apex by year-end.
This tree is also due for repotting in spring, so I’ll have a good opportunity to see how well the root zone has developed. Hawthorns sometimes root very vigorously, sometimes not. Regardless, if you look closely you can see the phenomenal surface rootage on this specimen.
I’d love to hear what you think of this tree. You can submit a comment below.
by Zach Smith | Jan 1, 2015 | Bald Cypress, Care, Potting
I collected this bald cypress in February of 2014. When collecting cypress, there’s one indispensable feature of any specimen being considered: a good flared base with buttressing roots. Leaving aside any other necessary features of your tree and the one other iconic feature of the species – the unique knees, which we rarely find in the collected specimen – bald cypress is known for the appearance of its base. When you grow the species from seed, you’ll find that it spends some years growing more or less like a pole. The trunk is straight-sided, plunging into the soil. It looks like any other species in that respect. Then, about 15 years later, the flaring base begins developing along with the buttressing roots.
So with this specimen, it possessed the necessary flaring and buttressing roots and therefore was a definite candidate for collecting. Once back at the nursery, all of the native soil was washed from the roots prior to potting. I used a good general purpose bonsai mix, a combination of Turface and decomposed pine bark, and made sure I buried the flaring roots sufficiently to ensure they didn’t dry out. The root zone of every tree we maintain, no matter how shallow the pot, dries out from top down. While this phenomenon is also present in nature, it’s mitigated by the ability of a tree to send feeder roots far afield in search of moisture. In the compact environment of a bonsai pot, drying out is an ever-present danger to your trees. This is also true for specimens in nursery training containers, though the danger is mitigated by the typically deeper soil mass.
This tree grew well during 2014, but I’d assess its growth as about medium in strength. Part of this was probably due to the limited room I gave it. So today I decided to repot the tree into a bigger nursery container for 2015, to allow for stronger growth. This will give a specimen ready for initial styling in 2016.
In this photo I’ve removed the tree from its original nursery container and scraped away the excess soil. You can see the “water mark” where the tree was previously buried. You can also see the newly revealed flaring, buttressing roots that I had first discovered (by reaching down under the water and muck where the tree was growing and feeling around) when considering the tree for collecting.
Here’s a close-up of the buttress. 
And finally a shot from the side. The tree needs to have buttressing roots in at least three places to appear stable. This one has four. In time, when the tree goes into a bonsai pot, the entire flaring root structure will be revealed. This will be a fine bald cypress bonsai in about five years.
This tree is available at our Bald Cypress Bonsai page. It will be available for shipping in late spring, and will be shipped in its nursery container to ensure no disturbance to the roots.
