Bonsai Odds & Ends – Bald Cypress Defoliation + Styling, Pocomoke Crape Styling

by | Jun 28, 2020 | Bald Cypress, Care, Crape myrtle, Flowering, Most Recent, Styling, Wiring

bonsai odds & ends – bc defoliation + styling, pocomoke crape styling

the bonsai files

Sneak Peek

We’re on the cusp of Bald cypress defoliation season. I did one today. I also did the next round of styling on a Pocomoke Crape myrtle.

Bald Cypress Defoliation + Styling, Pocomoke Crape Myrtle Styling

It’s Bald cypress defoliation time, that time of year when we get to remove all of the foliage from our BC’s and get a fresh new round of growth before the end of summer and fall show time. This is important because most of the time, most BC’s will get “shaggy” foliage by about August. If left alone, it really doesn’t get better and you won’t want to show your tree if you belong to a local club and they put on a fall show.

The problem of shaggy foliage is easily rectified by taking all of it off. For us down South, it’s often a July 4th event as that makes for good timing as the new growth takes a few weeks to really kick in. As long as your tree is strong, you can do this every year.

This specimen is going on to a new home in a few weeks. Not only is this the perfect time to take all the foliage off, it also allows for some styling work as the tree’s structure will be easy to see.

While you do have to exercise some caution when pulling off the foliage (always away from the base of the branch, and you need to hold the base of new shoots or you’ll pull them right off), this work goes quickly. Here you can see that I’ve allowed the “vestigial” branches to throw some up-pointing shoots. Why? Because this BC, just like every last one of them, is powerfully apically dominant. Lower branches get less energy as a result, so one way to remedy the situation is to encourage and allow upward-pointing sub-branches. This helps thicken up those vestigials quickly. But … time to take them off (for this round).

Here’s where I ended up after a final trim and some wiring. This bonsai has come a long way in a short time, and is pretty much at the pinching and light pruning stage. The trunk chop will be completely healed over in another year or so, and at that point the tree will be in its maturing phase as a bonsai.

While we’re on the subject of Bald cypress, here’s my big forest experiment I wrote about not too long ago. I’ve been waiting patiently for the new main tree to resume growth, and especially to push some strong buds/shoots near the trunk chop point. My patience has now paid off.

And a closeup of the main tree. I have four shoots to choose from, and I’ll be making my selection very soon. That shoot will be allowed to run for the rest of the growing season, probably with a bit of wire to guide it as needed.

You probably remember this Pocomoke Crape myrtle from earlier in the season. I did the initial styling and potting back in March, and I’ve been letting the tree grow out since then.

That low left branch was a big question mark. I even had a comment from a reader to the effect that it needed to go. I like having options, especially when I’m unsure of a design move, so I left it alone at the time.

Fast-forward a few months, and the tree has definitely settled happily into its new home. I recently did a little selective pruning, but today it’s time for some additional work.

So what about that low left branch? I was just about to remove it, and then I studied the tree some more and noticed something about the branch above it that I had initially wired and positioned downward. What if that branch went away? In this photo I’ve moved it up out of the way, and did some styling work on that low left branch. Hmm. Now I think I see why I left the branch there. The branch higher up has the challenge of emerging from what is the bottom of the trunk. While I’m sure this could work all right, it remains an awkward and not necessarily aesthetically sound location for a branch. I think it has to go.

Now that branch is gone, the one above it makes more sense design-wise, and that low left branch is exactly in the right spot with a good shape to it. I’m sure this is what I saw in the recesses of my mind when I first started out on this tree. So I’m glad I didn’t cut too quickly.

This tree is a good, strong, beautiful Crape myrtle specimen and is now posted for sale in our Shop. It’s going to make a great addition to someone’s collection.

Bonsai Odds & Ends – Oak, Privet, Crape Myrtle

by | May 30, 2020 | Care, Crape myrtle, Most Recent, Oaks, Privet, Pruning, Styling, Wiring

bonsai odds & ends – oak, privet, crape myrtle

the bonsai files

Sneak Peak

This is the time of year to be doing rapid development of many of our trees, due to their robust growth. Here are a Water oak, a Chinese privet and a Crape myrtle that moved closer to “bonsai-ness” with a little pruning and wiring.

Bonsai Odds & Ends – Oak, Privet, Crape Myrtle

I collected this Water oak earlier this year, and once it got established it just took off. I’ve had to trim it some already. With that kind of strength, the obvious thing to do was go ahead and work up an initial design.

First order of business: make that horizontal chop an angle chop.

This is quick work with a trunk splitter and knob cutter. Notice how much better this tree looks already.

There aren’t but a few branches on this tree (plus the leader) to work with. Is that a problem? Not really. The trunk chop was made 7″ above the soil, and the tree has a base of 1.75″. If the finished height of the tree ends up, say, at 16″ then the first branch will be in an okay spot and the majority of the branches will end up in the new leader anyway.

How about that low branch? I’m not sure if this is going to make a workable design element, but if you look at trees in the wild (especially oaks) they tend to have both a main trunk line and secondary trunk lines that fork off the main trunk. This one may be too low, but then again if it turns into something unique then so much the better.

This is a small Chinese privet I was able to chop to a rapidly tapering trunk line (7″ above the soil). When you get an opportunity like this, you take it. I love well-proportioned shohin bonsai.

Fast-forward a few minutes, and this bonsai in the making is trimmed, wired and shaped. It’ll grow out quickly enough to allow slip-potting in the next month.

This is a white-flowering Crape myrtle I grew from a cutting several years ago. Due to living its entire life in a nursery pot, the trunk has just reached 1″ at the soil. But … it’s going to make a cool shohin specimen.

The big takeaway from this example is how you can use a sacrifice branch/leader to thicken the base of a specimen, while at the same time working on a design that will ultimately become your tree. But there’s a caution you need to be aware of. That leader is taking 90% of the energy generated in the roots, meaning the ultimate tree is getting very little. This means you have the risk of losing branches you may have worked on for years. So there are limits to what you can do with a sacrifice branch. If you use this technique, you have to keep a close watch on the entire tree.

Here we are post-sacrifice of the sacrifice branch. This little tree is now on its way to a more complete design, now that the energy is going to be redirected.

Incidentally, I’d like to encourage you to use a saw rather than concave cutters when removing larger branches from a Crape. Even with a very sharp tool, the wood will break rather than cut smoothly. This forces you to come back and carve even if you don’t plan to. The saw makes a nice smooth cut. Get yourself a Japanese bonsai saw, which cuts on the pull stroke. It’s an indispensable tool.

Picture Day – Hawthorn, Oak, Crape Myrtle

by | Apr 26, 2020 | Care, Crape myrtle, Hawthorn, Oaks

picture day: hawthorn, oak, crape myrtle

the bonsai files

Sneak Peak

We’re wonderfully in the depths of spring, with warms days, cool nights and a nice breeze each day. Most everything is responding very well, so I thought it a good time to update photos of three trees in our collection. Two have been on the bench for almost a decade now, while the third has been in training for over 30 years. Nothing to sneeze at! But don’t be misled: just as it is for us, every tree you ever care for will have its ups and downs along the way. This used to frustrate me, but I finally came to understand that bonsai is not about perfect trees, it’s about working to perfect our trees while they work hard at growing the way they were created to grow. These two intentions are often at odds, but that’s the fun of bonsai, right?

Hawthorn, Oak, Crape Myrtle

picture day

This Riverflat hawthorn has just about reached full maturity as a bonsai. The biggest challenge it has posed in recent times was last fall, when an early freeze caught the tree with its still-green foliage on display. The result was an attractive though concerning bronzing of the leaves, which happened despite the tree being placed on the ground in a sheltered location. I was a little concerned, but once spring arrived the tree seemed to shake off the event. The good news is, I’m a year or two away from a repotting so the tree shouldn’t experience any new shock any time soon.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen an oak bonsai with a more attractive base than this one. I’m just always amazed whenever I look at it. Now entering its 10th year of training, this one has seen its share of challenging times but always bounces back. A couple of years ago I named it “Rip van Winkle,” for the simple reason that it’s one of the last of my trees to come out each and every spring. I don’t mind, though it would be nice if it came to the show sooner.

This year I expect to continue building ramification on this specimen. That’s one thing about any tree you develop. Trunk, branch structure, ramification. It pretty much always has to go this way. I had the trunk I needed when the tree came home in 2011. The branch structure took the past several years of painstaking work. Now it’s time to move into refinement. Notice the relatively large leaves. They need to be smaller, obviously. That’s a process I can start to work on this year, with the next step being to prune the new growth back pretty hard in about two more weeks. I’ll then get another flush of growth, along with the back-budding that will increase twig density and reduce leaf size. We’ll see how it goes.

This is the old Crape myrtle I’ve written about on a number of occasions. In checking Allen’s hand-written notes, training was begun on this specimen in 1986 after he and I collected it before that growing season began. It sure has come a long way.

This one had its most recent challenge in Winter 2019. We had had a warm snap, which is not unusual for late winter down here, and this tree decided it was time to start pushing buds. With a light freeze on the way, I thought nothing of leaving the tree on the bench. I’ve had plenty of experience with Crape myrtles, enough to know they are surprisingly cold-hardy. I expected this to extend to the new growth, especially considering that the sap in the emerging foliage should have enough sugar to lower its freeze point. Well, the sap did not.

So the new buds withered and dropped off, meaning the tree had to push a second round of first-round growth. That’s a setback, of course, but Crapes are pretty tough customers so I figured it would recover given time and not pushing it. I let it grow out last year, with only minor trimming and adding a little wire where needed. This year, I should be able to do some reshaping work toward summer. I’ll also remove any flowers buds, to ensure the tree doesn’t suffer any undue stress.

A Little Evening Fun With A Crape Myrtle

by | Apr 23, 2020 | Care, Crape myrtle, Flowering, Potting, Pruning, Styling

I was walking through the benches this evening and this Crape myrtle caught my eye. I started it from a cutting several years ago, and haven’t done more than maybe rough-prune it once. Today it called out “make something out of me” as I passed by. So I took it to the work bench, figuring it would make a fun 10-minute project.

(I apologize for the low-light photo. Late in the evening, sun going down, you know.)

When you have a piece of material like this, you have to always think about proportions. This Crape is a small shrub in a nursery pot. Making a bonsai-to-be out of it requires adjusting its proportions. This is one of the challenges I see beginners face all the time.

A few minutes of pruning changes everything! With the height of this specimen dramatically reduced, we now have a workable trunk thickness to height and spread ratio. It actually looks like a much larger specimen. So when it gets to its bonsai pot, it’ll possess the necessary “treeness.”

This is what I had in mind when I first noticed this Crape on the bench this evening. It’s not a huge specimen, but it looks like a full-grown Crape myrtle. A little more shearing is needed, but that’s easy-peasy.

What style of bonsai is this? It’s the well-known “I’m not sure but I like it anyway” style. But seriously, my plan is to guide it toward the so-called “pierneef” style, the iconic African savannah tree form. By shearing each of the trunks properly, I should be able to get to this result in a year.

Now about the pot. It’s a Lary Howard piece I ordered last year, but unfortunately it was broken in transit by the ever-enthusiastic shipping service. I really loved the pot, so I kept the pieces just so I could learn Kintsugi. This is my first effort. If you look closely, you can see the gold leaf I used along the mended cracks on either side of the front of the pot. Not a bad result at all.

Bonsai Odds & Ends – Huckleberry, Chinese Elm, Pocomoke Crape

by | Mar 22, 2020 | Blueberry, Care, Chinese Elm, Crape myrtle, Elms, Potting, Styling
Here’s an update on my big Huckleberry bonsai that I potted this spring. As you can see, it has filled out with foliage. It’s normal for Huckleberries to take three years to really get “bushy” with foliage: year one is typically all structure building, making the branch structure and starting the apex; year two continues this process, along with some sub-branching development; and year three is when the tree first fills out. It also takes three years for a good blooming and fruiting. This tree put on a very nice show of flowers, and now it’s got a lot of fruit that’s ripen in a month or so. Now, it’s important to understand what the explosion of foliage this year means, and what it doesn’t mean. What it means is, the sub-branching (aka ramification) begins with this process. If you study this photo, you’ll see that I have a lot of foliage but no real organization at the secondary and tertiary branching level. There’s nothing to be done about that this year, except to prune overlong secondary shoots and watch for branching that’s gotten out of hand (it gets pruned severely or off altogether). Next year, I’ll have hardened off sub-branching that will be ready for grow and clip and editing, which will be the real building of the interior. But for now, I’m enjoying the vibrant health of this specimen. It’s growing exactly as I want it to.
I collected this Chinese elm in February. It’s a nice specimen – not as much taper as I’d like, but left to their own devices Chinese elms do not typically put on taper. This is normal for most deciduous trees, which want to grow straight and tall as fast as they can. But I can work with this one. There’s subtle taper from base to trunk chop, and I can easily build more into the crown. I’ll begin the process this year. The first step will be to get a basic structure going, and today I did that. I’ll post a blog showing the details this coming week.
Here’s the Pocomoke Crape I wrote about last weekend. I ordered in a custom pot (a beautiful Lary Howard piece), and went to town on that huge root mass yesterday. I brought the tree more upright during the potting process, and I think this makes for a more dramatic composition. I’d love to hear what you think about it.

A Pocomoke Crape Myrtle Gets Styled

by | Mar 12, 2020 | Care, Crape myrtle, Flowering, Pruning, Styling, Wiring
I acquired this Pocomoke crape myrtle from a grower a few years ago. It was overgrown, so my first job was to chop it back so I could start planning a design. This is a photo of the tree from last August.
The buds are starting to swell, so it’s time to get busy making a bonsai out of this piece of raw material. If I don’t act fast, I’ll have a mountain of shoots and foliage to contend with in no time.
Almost all of the development work you’ll do on your bonsai consists of reducing the breadth, volume and profile of your tree. Also the maintenance work. They’re always wanting to grow out on you. So here I started by dramatically reducing that branch on the right side of the tree.

Here’s a good illustration of the principle I noted above. In removing most of the low left-hand branch, I’ve brought the profile of the tree even further in. Compare this photo with the first one. The proportions of your bonsai are vital to believability. It’s very common for our trees to “get away” from us, meaning they become too broad in their silhouettes. This tends to make them look younger and less mature, and less like a real tree in nature. In the worst cases, your tree will end up looking like a shrub in a pot! It’s the sort of thing that can sneak up on you over time, so it’s always good to ask yourself the question: Will this tree look better if I just reduce its profile and open it up? You may be surprised at how often the answer is yes.
Less is always more. There were too many shoots in the upper part of the tree. I’ve removed most of them along that upright knob that didn’t add anything worthwhile to the design.
Here I’ve wrapped things up for today by wiring and shaping the branches. When you compare this image with the first (or second) one above, you can see how much improved this Pocomoke is. All it needs now is the right pot. (I do need to go ahead and remove most of the root mass and get it in a bonsai pot. The design can be completed over time, and the restricted space of the bonsai pot will finish the miniaturization process. One more thing to note: that low left-hand branch needs to continue from where it’s been pruned in a downward and then horizontal sweep to the left. That will really add to the design by complementing the movement of the branch on the left-hand side that’s directly above it.) Let me know what you think of today’s work.