The Bonsai Files
Your free access to general and how-to articles, The Bonsai Files. Detailed and filled with bonsai pictures, Zach shows you step-by-step how he designs bonsai and provides before, during, and after images.
The Bonsai Files
Sunday Bonsai Fun – A Little Fall, And Bleaching The BC
The weekend's almost over. I spent a good bit of time yesterday and today cleaning benches and reorganizing my trees. We seldom get fall color around here, which I guess is the price you pay for not having excessively cold weather each winter (*brrr*), but here's...
Fall Growth – Are Your Bonsai Doing This? Does It Hurt?
What does fall mean to you? Leaves turning, growth ended, prelude to winter? That's all true, but for most of us (perhaps more of us in the South) some of our trees may still be pushing growth. This is particularly true if you've done any recent root work on them. ...
Bonsai Planning – How To Make The Plan Fit Reality
If you develop bonsai from the most basic level, meaning either from the field-grown tree or a collected specimen, there's usually a plan of some sort that presents itself from the start. Usually your idea goes about the way you think it will, but just as we've seen...
Some Real Good Bonsai Lemonade – How To Do It Right
In keeping with my fun series on making great bonsai out of less-than-great starting material, I wanted to show you what you too can do with a little time and a good plan of action. Because I tend to send my initial efforts at making bonsai lemonade to other artists...
How To Make Bonsai Lemonade – Part 2 Of Part 5
Last weekend we made a promising future Bald cypress (Taxodium distichum) bonsai from a piece of material that did not come through the collecting process intact. I'm a big proponent of not wasting material, and the fact is a lot of great bonsai come from...
How To Make Bonsai Lemonade – Part 5
A few weeks ago I posted a blog about a Bald cypress, Taxodium distichum, that I collected in 2015 and that failed to bud all the way up the trunk. I have a couple of others hanging around that I had been planning to make something of. Today it was time to work on...
Tough Love, Tough Cuts – How To Build A Bonsai The Right Way
I've written about this Water-elm bonsai (Planera aquatica) a few times now. Ever since I collected it in 2012, I've been working toward a broom-form bonsai. And you can see that this year it's reached a nice stage of ramification. I could continue pinching and...
How To Collect Elms – And Can I Get Away With It Now?
To answer the question first, I don't know. If this Cedar elm (Ulmus crassifolia) survives, then the answer will be yes but I won't have any idea of what my success rate would be if I lifted a bunch of them at this time of year. That's a question I'll have to answer...
Refining Your Bonsai – How To Take Your Tree To The Next Level
Many of you have followed the saga of my "Root around cypress knee" Water-elm. You may recall that earlier this year I reported that the knees were rotting away - an unavoidable situation. I went ahead and removed the last section a few months ago, adding in soil to...