Flowering | Bonsai South

Trying Stuff = Getting Better At Bonsai

by Zach Smith | Dec 9, 2017 | Blueberry, Care, Collecting, Flowering

Unless you are strictly into bonsai as a connoisseur, meaning you collect bonsai and have a visiting or resident artist/curator maintain them for your viewing pleasure, you can’t ever ever stop trying and learning stuff. Now, don’t take that to mean you should learn the same lesson over and over again (I’ve had a few that way); but no one, and I mean no one, ever knows it all. So I have to keep on learning, and so do you. Learning means trying things. If you’re always trying things, you’re bound to get better at bonsai.

Okay, with all that said, collecting season is right around the corner. Most of the deciduous trees here are now dormant, so they are just about in the ideal condition for collecting. They’re sleeping, in other words, having built up their food stores for winter, and that’s when they can be collected with the highest odds of success.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t lift this Huckleberry, Vaccinium sp., until next month. It’s the sort of concept I’ve stuck with for 25 years now, because it’s a known concept horticulturally and I’ve had great success following the script. But why can’t I collect this specimen now? What’s magical about waiting another 22 days to collect it? Well, nothing I can think of. So this is me trying something new, and if it works then I’ve added to my bonsai knowledge.

What if this tree doesn’t survive? What if going straight to this bonsai pot wasn’t a good way to test this idea? I’ll lift another one tomorrow and pot it into a nursery container, so that will give me two subjects to experiment on.

Huckleberry is very easy to collect, by the way. I don’t recall ever losing one, so the survival rate is in excess of 90%.

The tree in the photo, by the way, has a base that’s 1.75″ above the root crown. It’s 17″ to the chop. Huckleberries typically produce nice radial roots, and this one is no exception. I’ve buried them for now; the tree can be potted higher in a couple of years to expose the nebari.

Now for two critical questions, and I’d like your input.

1. Should I remove the right-hand leader? The taper would be much better if I did.

2. And should I remove the secondary trunk?

Let me know what you think.

How About What This Hawthorn Did?

by Zach Smith | Oct 6, 2017 | Care, Flowering, Hawthorn, Potting

Riverflat hawthorn, Crataegus opaca, is one of my favorite species for bonsai. They take well to pot culture, grow roots fast and have small leaves. When old enough, they get a nice rough bark. What’s not to like?

I grew this specimen from a cutting struck in 2015. By the end of 2016, it had really taken off. The trunk base was 1″ across, and the leader had extended to 6′. Really awesome.

I had planned to make some layers from this tree in 2016, but I never quite got around to it. One thing I did do is move it to a large growing tub. I did just a little pruning, otherwise it was just food, water and sun.

Well, here’s the same tree almost a year later. Isn’t it amazing? I chopped the leader, but a new leader has taken off and extended to 6′ in length. Overall, the volume of growth has exploded by about tenfold. The base has gained another 1/2″ in girth, but the “body” of the tree is also much increased.

I have the same plan next year as I did this year. I will layer some additional specimens from this parent tree. That will also allow me to do some training on this one itself, which is just a couple of years from a bonsai pot if the growth rate keeps up.

Here’s one more shot, from the other side. I’m thinking this will end up being the front, but time will tell.

The Crabapple Devil’s In The Details – Things You Need To Know

by Zach Smith | Jul 31, 2017 | Care, Crabapple, Flowering, Styling

A couple of weeks ago I did an initial styling on a terrific Crabapple (Malus sp.) specimen. I’ve been patiently waiting for it to put on some new growth, and it’s now reached a stage where I can show you some things you need to know as you work on your trees. These are things I see over and over again, and they are common to bonsai styling. And you just can’t ignore them if you want your trees to look right.

There’s a lot of nice new growth on this specimen.

The initial work I did on it was certainly important: you need to begin expressing a design plan as soon as you can with your trees, and I’ve got that here. I have a basic branch set, and the beginning of a leader.

All of the branches need developing, of course, but if you strain just a little I think you can see the tree here.

The first thing I want to point out in closeup is that nice back branch I’ve turned into a right-side branch. There’s not much to it, but you can always make something great out of something not so great in bonsai. In this case if I manage the branch right, it’s going to look just fine and serve its role in making this Crabapple bonsai look like a real tree.

Now, this branch is very slim. What’s more, it’s only budded in two spots over the past couple of weeks. This is less than I’d like to have gotten out of it, but I’ll take it.

For one thing, that shoot near the base of the branch will be allowed to run, in order to thicken the base of the branch. Likewise the other one, which I’ll allow to go as far as it will for the remainder of this growing season. There’s a lot of work to do at this spot in the tree.

Checking in elsewhere, the chop I made when I wired everything looks pretty ragged. It may not look good, but it’s also not a priority to do any more work on it at this time. I sealed the chop to protect the area from drying out. Next spring, one of the first chores I’ll do on this tree will be to carve the area down so it can begin healing properly and blending in with the design. (Could I carve it now? Yes. However, this is not the time of year for dynamic growth, and for large wound healing that’s just what you need. If I give this area a fresh start in spring, I’ll get a big head-start on getting the wound to roll over.)

One more thing to notice in this photo is the difference in thickness between the lowest branch and that back/right-side branch. This is the sort of growth you have to balance as you develop your trees. While you certainly want the lower branch to become a good deal thicker than the higher one, fast-growing branches tend to sap strength from their brothers. So you’ll find you have to “cool” them off at some point to maintain a good growing balance.

Here’s a closeup of the leader than I cut back.

There’s a new bud at each internode. I’ll let them grow out, most likely for the rest of the season.

Next spring I’ll cut to the first or second away from the chop point in order to continue building the leader properly.

And finally, here’s one more closeup.

This is the tip of the back/right-side branch showing no apparent growing tip. You’ll find this happens on your trees from time to time.

A weak shoot pushes, grows out for a bit and then just stops. I left this branch alone when I did the initial styling on the tree, hoping for lots of new growth. True to weak-branch habit, it just threw those two buds I showed you before.

So I leave this guy alone, with the tip wired upward, give it plenty of sunshine, and let it gain strength. This is something you’re going to have to do eventually.

The main thing is to understand what’s going on and how to approach it. Wire the tips of these branches up, and let ’em grow. Watch for too much growth elsewhere in the tree and cool it off if you have to. In time, these weak branches will usually respond as you want them to.

I hope this blog post helped. Let me know what you think.

The Humble Crape Myrtles Are Pretty Happy

by Zach Smith | Jul 1, 2017 | Care, Crape myrtle, Flowering, Pruning, Styling

Bonsai is high art, but it’s also a learning process. You and your trees, cooperating to make something that’s more than the sum of its parts. You’ll learn something on every tree that comes into your care. And not just the big collected specimens that are all gnarly and old and beat up by life.

When we last left the saga of this small Crape myrtle, Lagerstroemia indica, it had responded beautifully to being wired and placed in a bonsai pot. Within mere days it had started pushing new buds, which quickly became shoots. I was particularly interested in the two lower-trunk shoots. Why? Because strong shoots get thick very fast, and everything “downstream” of those shoots gets thicker as they do. In the case of this tree, I had a great opportunity to get thickening of the lower trunk.

Here’s where we are today. You can see that there’s rampant growth all over the tree. What’s more, those two shoots on the lower trunk are really taking off. You know what this means. I’m going to get a thicker trunk, which is just what a good bonsai can always use.

Now, it’s important to consider one other thing now that we’ve got all this nice growth, namely, I don’t want to do any pruning at all for a while. Why? Because strong growth thickens everything “downstream” of it. So not only will I get a thicker lower trunk on this specimen, I’m going to get a thicker specimen period. Ideally, I want the trunk base on this tree to be at least 1″ in diameter. I think I can get this in a growing season, meaning between now and next summer. So for now I just let this guy grow, and plan to remove wire when it binds and perhaps do some fall trimming in the upper part of the tree.

I wired and potted this tree a couple of weeks ago. It’s finally sprouted some new buds, and these are growing quickly into shoots. But notice a couple of things. One, I don’t seem to have any buds near the base of the tree. And two, there are no new buds anywhere on the branches I wired when I first styled the tree. What does this mean?

One thing that will become apparent as you work on more and more trees is that they don’t always grow exactly the same as one another. In this case I have two white-flowering Crapes. They were grown from cuttings taken from the same tree, and grown the same way. The initial styling was very similar. But they’ve responded quite differently. Why?

I don’t know, and that’s the best answer I have. In a way it’s good. Though you never see two bonsai that are exactly alike, you do see rough similarities and the fact is we want our bonsai to be unique art forms. From a development perspective, I’ll have the challenge of thickening the lower trunk on this specimen and in the end it may not happen as I want. But that’s okay. When you’ve been doing bonsai for a long time, you learn to go with what your trees give you and to make that work. We can only force things so much.

I solved today’s problem by simply cutting back the slim branches I’d wired and positioned last time.

They may produce buds now; they may not.

I’ll adjust the next development step accordingly.

I’d love to get your feedback. Just drop me a comment below.

Parsley Hawthorn Literati – Going In A Great Direction

by Zach Smith | Jun 10, 2017 | Care, Flowering, Hawthorn, Potting, Styling, Wiring

Just over a month ago I decided it was time to do an initial styling on this Parsley hawthorn, Crataegus marshallii. There was never any doubt about the future for this bonsai-to-be – it was going to be a literati. The literati style is, for lack of a better term, the way for the bonsai artist to do the unusual with either less-than-stellar material or exquisite material. It may be the purest artistic expression available to us with our trees.

In the case of this tree, it met all of the “requirements” for the literati style: tall, slender trunk with only modest taper; graceful, character-filled trunk movement; a concentration of growth near the putative apex. The only think I had to do was bring out the best design for this specimen. After the initial styling, I thought it was another step closer to the goal.

As of today, the tree had put on another strong round of growth (six weeks’ worth).

Based on this, plus a gentle push on the trunk, I concluded that the tree had rooted sufficiently for me to get a little aggressive and pot the tree.

I don’t recommend this for less-experienced artists.

In time, you’ll learn what you can do and what species you can do it with. (I don’t always get it right myself.)

A little trimming and wiring was in order.

The tree gave me a nice sub-branch in the apex, which is actually going to end up as the final apex, so I simply wired and positioned it. I trimmed the low-left branch back, trimmed the high-left branch back and wired a smaller shoot on it and continued the branch’s movement.

Picking the right pot for your tree is always important. In this case, I had a great Chuck Iker round that just came in and I felt it had the size, style and color to suit this Parsley haw. Here in the south, Parsley haws will produce a nice yellow fall color. I’m anxious to see if I get some this year, because I think it’ll be complemented beautifully by this pot’s color.

This tree should resume growing in a week or so. I plan to post it for sale within the next month, so stay tuned.

A Few New Bonsai I’m Working On

by Zach Smith | Jun 4, 2017 | Collecting, Crape myrtle, Ficus, Flowering, Hawthorn, Potting, Pruning, Styling

I collected this Parsley hawthorn, Crataegus marshallii, in February. Though it was a decent piece of material, I knew there were quite a few years ahead of it in order for it to become a presentable bonsai. Then a thought occurred to me. That nice slender trunk emerging from near the base had a ton more character than the relatively straight main trunk. Wouldn’t that make a much better bonsai, and much sooner to boot?

Here’s the tree just recently. Allowing for all those shoots growing out, I’ve made just a few minor snips. Can you see where I cut back?

I cut back the three branches on the slender trunk, and then simply removed the thicker trunk altogether. Does this tree make a statement now? I think it does.

I’ve been making Edible figs, Ficus carica, practically since I got the parent tree from my mother. One I started about five years ago was a twin-trunk. I put it in the ground about three years ago. This year I decided to separate the smaller of the two trunks and pot into a bonsai pot. It’s a pretty nice starter bonsai, don’t you think? The trunk is 1″ in diameter and it’s 14″ tall. And it will fruit in a pot.

I’m very fond of Crape myrtle, Lagerstroemia indica, as bonsai. Not only are they horticulturally simple to grow, they bloom profusely in a bonsai pot. This is a white-blooming variety that I made from a cutting last year. I was able to wire a nice Crape myrtle shape into it and go right into this Chuck Iker round. It’s 14″ tall. I would expect it to resume growth in a couple of weeks, and it just might go ahead and bloom this summer. Time will tell.

I’ll be posting these trees for sale sometime this summer. Stay tuned.

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