by Zach Smith | Oct 9, 2016 | Care, Chinese Elm, Elms, Ficus, Flowering, Hawthorn, Potting, Pruning, Styling, Wiring
Sunday morning musings
I love big bonsai. I’ve loved big bonsai since I first got really into the art, and became aware that bonsai could range up to four feet tall. I’ve collected and trained my share of big bonsai. And whenever Cathy is explaining to someone that very odd thing I do, she invariably says I grow “giant” bonsai.
So with that introduction there’s an obvious question to be asked: Can there be big happiness in small packages? The answer is yes (wouldn’t be much of a blog post if the answer was no, right?).
Over the past 25+ years I’ve collected somewhere on the order of 1,500 trees. For the most part these were trees sporting trunks of 2″ basal diameter and up. Yet there’s so much more to bonsai. Through the years I’ve done a good bit of propagation, and I really enjoy it. Whether it’s from seed or cuttings or layers, making new plants gives me a real sense of accomplishment. You might call it big happiness in a small package.
Here’s a prime example of a really insignificant piece of material, a Green island ficus, Ficus microcarpa. I just made this “small package” about eight weeks ago from a much larger bonsai owned by one of our local club members. His tree has produced countless clones for club members over the years. I took a small shoot he trimmed off his tree, dusted it with rooting powder and stuck it in a pot filled with sand. It faithfully produced roots in just over a week, at which time I potted it in a gallon nursery container. I fed and watered it, then waited for it to start growing. It’s quadrupled in mass since then, and a couple weeks ago I carefully pulled it from its nursery container and put it into this nice Chuck Iker round. My plan is to bring it indoors this winter, then next spring grow it bigger still (making more small ones along the way). In time I should have a nice indoor bonsai, as the tree “grows into” the pot. But I’ll tell you, this small ficus brings me a huge amount of pleasure – big happiness, as it were.
Here’s another small package I wrote about in a blog some time ago, a Chinese elm, Ulmus parvifolia. This is another bonsai that started out life as a cutting. In this case, rather than grow the tree on in a larger nursery container or the ground, I potted it straight into a bonsai pot and began its training. Six years later, the tree had developed into a miniaturized Chinese elm with a relatively small trunk. But it developed tons of character along the way. Small package, big happiness. I sent it off to a new home this year, where I know it’s brought a lot of joy.
Here’s an example of big happiness in a really small package. I grew this tiny Water-elm, Planera aquatica, from a cutting I made last year. The cutting wasn’t the normal straight whip most commonly used for propagating by this technique, so it had a ready-made branch structure. Today I put it in this very small hand-made pot. It stands a mere 5.5″ above the soil surface. Does it look like a real tree in nature? You be the judge, but to my old eyes the answer is most definitely.
Oh, just so you can get an idea of the relative size of this “big happiness”….
Bonsai is one of the most unique pastimes there is. When you consider the variety of species, styles and range of expression in the art; the flowers and fruit of certain species; the vision and diligent care of the artist; the quiet character of the miniature tree through the seasons; from the tiniest shohins to the grandest imperial size bonsai, it’s hard to find a more pleasing pursuit.
by Zach Smith | Oct 1, 2016 | Care, Chinese Elm, Elms, Potting, Styling, Water Elm, Wiring
The days are getting shorter, and many if not most of you have already had some cool nights. Your bonsai have also begun to slow their growth. Now, this doesn’t mean they aren’t growing at all, it just means the dynamic growth of spring and early summer has given way to a different set of priorities for your trees. With fall comes a single imperative for temperate zone trees, namely, surviving the coming winter. To be sure, reproduction is near completion for many species – Chinese elms among them. Mine in the landscape are covered in seeds. But beyond this, the trees are working hard on storing food to get them through winter. As a bonsai artist, you may have noticed this phenomenon by way of wire that has suddenly bitten into branches you wired weeks ago. They sat undisturbed for all that time, all was well, then one day you walk out and are surprised to see the wire is binding. This fall swelling is due to food storage activities, and is perfectly normal. It also can be aggravating, but that’s part of the fun of bonsai.
Once you get all the wire off your trees needing it, you don’t want to miss an opportunity to do some pruning and even rewiring if you so choose. The leaves will be falling from your deciduous trees within about eight weeks. Once they’re gone, nothing is going to happen again until spring. There’s certainly nothing wrong with waiting till then to wire your trees again – but don’t forget that spring brings with it chores that must be done at that time. For those of you whose collections are rather large, repotting alone will occupy a great deal of your time once the buds start swelling. I do my share of pruning and wiring at repotting time, but trees that have already been wired the previous fall can go right to the repotting process. It can make a big difference.
This water-elm was a perfect candidate for some fall pruning. The tree is only in its second year of training, but the basic branch structure is done. Next year the tree will move into the ramification stage, where I devote most of my effort to building foliage pads on each of the branches. It’ll start looking more “organized.”
Today’s work consisted of three significant activities:
- I pruned out unneeded branchlets and shoots
- I carved two uros, one of them at the chop transition point in the apex, and treated with wood hardener; and
- I wired and positioned the number one left branch, which is a year younger than the other primary branches on the tree
I won’t touch this specimen again until next spring, at which time I’ll likely do a little more refined pruning and wiring.
Here’s another activity you can do in the fall, depending on the species and your skill level. I’ve been reporting on this Chinese elm during 2016 as I developed it into a nice pre-bonsai specimen. Today I decided the tree was ready for a bonsai pot, so I grabbed this Chuck Iker round off the shelf and cut off enough roots to fit the tree into it.
Is fall really an okay time to be potting trees? Again, it depends on the species and your skill level. I know that root growth is fairly vigorous in the fall, so this tree should recover fine over the next 6-8 weeks – in time for actual cold weather here. There won’t be any significant foliar growth for the rest of 2016, but that’s all right. Come spring of next year, this tree will be ready to explode with new growth, at which time I’ll be able to complete the design. If I wait till spring to pot the tree, the growth will be delayed by a few weeks and I’ll lose a round of growth. This way I get a leg up.
by Zach Smith | Jul 31, 2016 | American Elm, Care, Chinese Elm, Elms, Pruning, Styling, Water Elm, Wiring
There’s nothing like developing a bonsai. Sure, we all have or want “finished” trees in our collection for sheer viewing pleasure, but no destination is fun without the journey to get there.
We’re well into the depths of summer now, and my trees have put on a lot of spring and early summer growth. For material newly in development, it’s time to finish up the first phase of their journey and get them ready for completion of year one. This is a combination of techniques, involving unwiring and rewiring and trimming. These won’t all be done at the same time, even on a given tree. You’ll find that your branches will develop at different rates. You’re likely to remove the wire from your new leader before any of your branches, since that’s where the strongest growth is almost certain to be. And as the weeks roll on, you’ll remove wire successively until it’s all off – at which point it’s time to put wire back on most of those branches.
Here’s one of the big Water-elms I’ve been showing you. From trunk buds this April, here we are with tremendous leader and branch growth in less than three months. At this point I’ve removed all of the wire from the branches; a new round or wiring is coming soon. The wire was removed from the new leader a few weeks ago; it’s been trimmed a couple of times now and I’ve applied new wire to get the shape I want.
And after a good trimming. When you’re building your branches, you want to create the taper that mimics the taper of the trunk by growing and cutting back in stages. Now, these branches are a bit long even though they’ve been trimmed back pretty hard. With water-elm I know this will work fine. In the next year I’ll have much thicker branches, and they’ll have nice taper.
Size really doesn’t matter when it comes to developing bonsai. Even in a small tree, you go through the same stages. Now, there is one significant difference to be aware of when working with small material in development. Though the process of creating the crown of the tree is more or less the same, in the small bonsai it represents a much bigger part of the tree. This means you have to get it exactly right!
Here’s a small Chinese elm I’ve been working on this year. The trunk base is only 1″ near the soil and it’s less than 10″ to the trunk chop, meaning the finished height of this tree will be not more than about 12″. Contrast that with the Water-elm above, which will end up 30-32″ tall. Now, I will need to do a good job on that tree’s apex, so don’t misunderstand my point. It’s just that the small bonsai has to pack a lot into a very small space.
Here’s the next stage in this small bonsai, six weeks after the shot above. Notice how nicely the leader thickened up – so much so that the wire is no more. Notice that I’ve already got some ramification on the branches. Great progress!
One more thing to notice is that I cut the new leader a couple of internodes too long. This is to ensure I don’t have a problem with rebudding. I’ll get a new shoot in each of the leaf axils on the shortened leader. I plan to pick the lowest one, because that will ultimately produce the best tapering in the trunk. But I didn’t cut to the lowest node at this time because I didn’t want to risk the new leader drying out and dying.
This American elm is similar in size to the Chinese elm above. Here we are in early July, with a branch set wired and a new leader doing its thing. Doesn’t look like much at this stage, does it? Oh, it’s got a nice lower trunk, and you can see the potential. But it’s just an early stage bonsai in the making with a lot of miles left to go.
And four weeks later, here’s where we are. Nice growth in the leader, which will need to be even shorter than I’ve trimmed it once I get new buds. The wire has been removed. I don’t yet have any ramification in the branching, but that’s just a matter of time. For now, I need to continue to build the rest of the trunk of this tree and the apical branching.
Bonsai development is all about simple steps. As long as you do the right one at the right time, it’s pretty much like A-B-C.
by Zach Smith | Jun 12, 2016 | Care, Chinese Elm, Elms, Hornbeam, Pruning, Styling, Water Elm, Wiring
As I wrote yesterday, creating small bonsai is not as easy as you might think it would be. So much has to happen in such a short distance – literally, since these trees are under 12″ tall – that design skill becomes critical. This begins when you select a tree to work on (or collect). With experience this happens immediately when you look at a prospective piece of material. When you’re first starting out, it takes time to develop your eye – but it comes with time, so don’t get discouraged.
This Chinese elm, Ulmus parvifolia, is about four or five years from a cutting. It had gotten about eight feet tall, nice and lanky, and lay neglected off to the side in my nursery, before I chopped it back and repotted it. That was about four weeks ago. You can see in this photo that it’s thrown some nice shoots along the trunk. What does that mean? Well, it means I can strike a blow to overcome the awful “S-curve” Chinese elm trade with a well-designed little Chinese elm bonsai. The trunk base on this piece is right at 1″ in diameter, and it’s got some nice radial roots. There’s a bit of a turn in the trunk (no exaggerated “S” here). It’s enough of a turn. So I can actually design a bonsai starting with this piece of material that will be no more than 10″ tall. I’ll do this with fewer than 10 branches. And I believe it’s going to look great.
Now you can see where I’m going with this little guy. The new leader will make the rest of the trunk of this bonsai. I’ve wired, positioned and trimmed five branches. I’m going to leave the tree alone now, letting the leader grow out to thicken it. By late summer not only will my tapering transition be looking good, I’ll also have the remainder of my apical branches started as new shoots. That’s the way Chinese elms grow.
Not a bad start, eh?
Here’s an American elm, Ulmus Americana, that was lifted out of harm’s way in a flower bed a few weeks ago. It doesn’t yet have the root system the Chinese elm above has, so I don’t have strong enough shoots to wire yet. That will happen in another few weeks. But I’m aiming for a small bonsai with this one as well.
As you study this material, a couple of things stand out. First of all, there’s taper from the base of the tree to where it’s chopped. There’s also a turn in the trunk near the base, which provides some character and interest. While there’s not necessarily anything wrong with a straight trunk, both the formal upright and formal broom styles are among the most challenging to pull off. So for the sake of ease in styling, I’ll take this nice little tree with the curve in the trunk.
Should it be chopped lower? Certainly that’s an option. I’ll make that decision when it’s time to do the initial styling. That should happen by late June or early July.
And now we come to the “ready-made bonsai” approach to the hobby. I spotted this little water-elm, Planera aquatica, last summer on a collecting trip. The trunk had a nice curve in it and there was a set of branches ready to lend themselves to a broom-form style. So I brought it home and let it grow out this year. Today I cut it back, and we’ll see what it looks like in a few weeks. For a bonsai coming in at under 12″ in height, I think it’s going to look great.
by Zach Smith | Jun 11, 2016 | Care, Chinese Elm, Flowering, Hawthorn, Pruning, Styling, Wiring
You may be like me and become enthralled by very large bonsai that are designed well. There’s something about the big ones! But if you’ve spent any time working with smaller trees, you’ve no doubt come to understand that just because they’re small doesn’t mean they’re a snap to style. Perhaps the main reason for this is the simple lack of branches to work with, along with the length of the trunk itself. You see, with less to work with you have a lot more to accomplish in a short distance. With a large bonsai being three or even four feet tall, that’s a lot of distance to display trunk taper, movement and character. And usually you’ll have 10 to 20 branches to shape and achieve ramification with. Contrast that with small bonsai, those under 12″ in height. A lot has to happen in those 12 inches. As for branches, you may have a handful only. So creating a “tree impression” becomes much more difficult.
Remember this Chinese elm, Ulmus parvifolia, from last year? It’s a mere 7.5″ from soil to apex. My goal from the start with this little guy was to make it look like a real tree. I had worked on it for years, and while it was okay it needed a serious design inspiration. So I cut half of the tree off! So now, there’s character in the short trunk and a nice tree form in just a handful of branches. Mission accomplished.
Here’s a small Parsley hawthorn, Crataegus marshallii, collected in February. You can see where I cut what was a lengthy section of trunk from the main area (I used it for cuttings). Now a shoot has emerged from near the chop. If I don’t go ahead and wire it, it’s going to become too stiff to do anything with. Ultimately, this small piece of material could make a nice shohin bonsai. But as I noted above, this will only be possible if I can make a lot happen in a very short distance.
This is the likely front view of the tree, by the way.
And here we are, after a single piece of wire and a little shaping of the shoot. I also took off most of the old existing branch that was soaring off toward the sky. A neat branch to be sure, old and with good character, but it was long and untapering and useless for my intended design (which at this point is just an intuitive impression; I’ll know more about it later on). Now it’s time to wait some more, and let the piece grow on out while ignoring it. For a point of reference, the trunk base is 3/4″ in diameter. The chop is at 4″ along the trunk.
For those of you who like smaller bonsai, let me know what you think.
by Zach Smith | May 15, 2016 | Care, Chinese Elm, Elms, Pruning, Styling, Wiring
You may remember this Chinese elm, Ulmus parvifolia, from last November. In this photo, taken in August of 2014, we have a trunk with a new leader and some branches wired and positioned. In the photo below, the end of 2015 has arrived for this tree. It has changed in some obvious and some subtle ways. The branches are ramifying, which is easily done with Chinese elm. The new leader has thickened well, even in the confined space of a bonsai pot. On the subtle side, the bark is getting rougher which is a good sign of maturity.
Here we are in mid-May 2016, and you can see the result of a couple of things I did earlier in the season. For one, I wired up one of the small shoots at the apex of the tree. And I wired and positioned two other shoots to form lateral branches on the developing apex. Remember, this tree is going to be another six or seven inches tall above the original chop, so that means I’m building branches all the way up as the apex comes into being.
Notice I’ve allowed the shoot I wired up to run. This shoot will remain untrimmed, until such time as it has forced thickening of the new section of leader that emerges from the original chop point. This part of building a bonsai cannot be shortcut. All too often you’ll see an abrupt transition at the point of a trunk chop. While this can certainly be hidden on evergreen specimens and even deciduous trees during the growing season, come winter the flaw is all too obvious. We’re all impatient when it comes to creating our bonsai, but this is one step you just have to take the time to do right.
This Chinese elm is going to make a nice upright bonsai in about three more years. This growing season is all about extending and thickening the new leader and continuing to build the crown from the chop upward. I’ll post one or two updates later on to show you the progress.
For those of you just starting out in bonsai, Chinese elm is one of the very best species for beginners. Its “bad rap,” if you will, comes solely from the mass-produced ugly S-curve specimens sold to newcomers. Don’t let that stop you from owning one.
