Potting | Bonsai South

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.

Small Change, Big Impact – And How To Hurry A Tree Along

by Zach Smith | Sep 10, 2017 | Care, Collecting, Elms, Potting, Styling, Wiring

I’ve been having a great time this year with Cedar elms (Ulmus crassifolia). I slip-potted this one last month, as part of my bound-and-determined campaign to develop this tree into a bonsai as quickly as I can. This is something I started doing almost 30 years ago, partly out of impatience and partly out of the desire to make a study of bonsai techniques to test limits.

This specimen has been “Cedar elm strong.” It came back from collection quickly and has grown with vigor since. It was four months from lifting to bonsai pot. Now, the main advantages of this specimen and others like it can be summed up as follows:

The species is naturally vigorous
The specimen has the appearance of age
The specimen has actual age
Slip-potting (or, though usually less desirable, direct-potting) can be done without fear of killing the tree
The specimen has good taper, with the trunk chop being small enough that the tapering transition can be pulled off in the pot and within two years

Given these features, I know I can cut out one or two years’ worth of development time. What this means is, if I were to have plodded along with this tree in accordance with conventional wisdom, it would still be in a nursery container putting on growth without my having done a thing to it besides water and feed. Only next year would I sit down and start the styling process. It would be another year before the tree went into its bonsai pot, and another couple of years before the tree could reach a “finished” (meaning showable) state. That’s a total of four years.

I am confident that I can reach the same degree of development in, at most, three years by being aggressive. So why wouldn’t I do that?

Here’s the tree today. I’ve had to unwire the leader, as it’s grown really well over the past month. My goal for today is to carve down the chop point (hurrying the tree along), and do some more work on the leader.

Here’s the result of today’s work. This only took me about 10 minutes. I’ve done some carving at the chop point, which enhances the taper from the trunk into what is going to ultimately be the crown of the tree. I’ve also taken the opportunity to cut back the leader to a side branch, which I’ve wired straight up. This is how you build an apex properly. I’ll let this leader grow on out for the remainder of the season, with the plan of cutting it back again just before the buds start swelling next spring. I should have the crown mostly built next year.

Now for the pop quiz. Are you able to see the small change I made today in this bonsai-to-be that makes a huge difference in its appearance? If you spotted the change in the planting angle, you got it right. Compare this photo with the first one above. When I first potted the tree, the more significant slant seemed like the way to go. It’s bothered me since, but I didn’t want to fool with the tree again so soon. The roots needed to firm up. By today they had, so I was able to manhandle the tree into a more upright stance. It makes a world of difference, doesn’t it?

How To Do A Successful Slip-Potting

by Zach Smith | Sep 4, 2017 | Bald Cypress, Care, Potting

Sooner or later you’ll encounter a situation where you’ll need (or really want) to move a tree from a nursery container to a bonsai container out of season. This can be done with a very high success rate, provided you bear in mind a few key principles. In this post I’ll show you how I moved a Bald cypress from its nursery pot to a bonsai pot because … I really wanted to.

First of all, it’s important to distinguish between slip-potting done in an attempt to save a tree’s life, and one done because you know the tree won’t mind and you get closer to your goal faster. Let’s focus on the latter.

Consider these factors before you undertake the slip-potting:

Is the tree well-rooted? You can tell by the strength of the growth, plus you can poke around in the root zone for clues
Is there enough time remaining in the growing season to allow for more root growth in time for fall dormancy (for deciduous species)?
Is the root mass of the tree shallow enough so that you don’t have to remove more than a bare minimum of roots?
Do you have a pot the tree will fit in without any drastic root-pruning (no root-pruning is ideal)?

Here’s my subject, a really nice Bald cypress I’m training as a flat-top. This is one of those trees that I knew just what to do with when I collected it. I’m sure I heard it say “Flat-top.”

The base of this tree is 3.5″ across, above the root crown, and stands about 35″ tall. It makes a nice statement.

You may have noticed that prominent dead snag on the trunk.

Looks like Pinocchio’s nose, doesn’t it?

Gotta do something about that, along with the one above it on the right (the one on the left under that living branch will be removed, once it’s served its purpose as a wire anchor).

Making a jin is not that complicated a process, once you get the hang of it. You want to make the dead snag taper down while not making it look artificial, like a sharpened pencil point.

You can either carve these with a carving knife, or do the rough work with your concave cutters. Here I’m starting on the top side.

I’ve made an angle on the top of the snag. Good start.

Now I come up underneath with my cutters, and make an angled cut as I did on top. Notice I’m also shortening this snag, which it needed.

Now the jin is ready for a little carving to make it look as natural as possible.

This one is done. It sure looks a lot different that when I started.

The smaller jin above was already the right length. It just need a little carving.

Now let’s get down to business slip-potting this tree.

Prepare your pot by placing screening over the drain holes, at least one tie-down wire, and spread a shallow layer of soil in the bottom of the pot (mostly in the center).

Gently lift the tree out of its nursery container.

You should see lots of roots, as is the case here. Nice and healthy.

All of the roots get folded into the pot.

Do not remove any long roots such as the one you see in the foreground of the photo above. Those roots are feeding the tree, and you want them to keep on doing it.

Tie the tree down, then fill in all of the empty space with well-draining soil mix.

Be careful not to damage any of the roots as you work the soil in around them.

Use a chopstick, but don’t jab it into the soil mass.

Push it in gently, then wiggle it back and forth to get the soil to settle in around the roots.

Here’s the end-result. I did some light trimming in the crown so I could see how well the flat-top is progressing. Nice.

The pot is a terrific oval by Byron Myrick. The size is just right to enhance the impression of height, and the green accents remind me of the swamp.

As far as after-care goes, you can place trees you’ve slip-potted into a shady spot for a week or so. My experience has been that a well-rooted tree really doesn’t suffer inordinately from slip-potting.

Let me know what you think. Have you tried slip-potting? Did you have good success

How To Be Off And Running For Next Year

by Zach Smith | Sep 2, 2017 | Care, Elms, Potting, Styling, Wiring

That time of year is soon upon us, where our trees are more or less done growing foliage and we need to think about what we have planned for them next year. Bonsai is in large measure a game of patience, but that doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t plan ahead. And do certain things this year in preparation for next.

For me recently this has meant working on elms. As a family, elms for the most part can be worked on according to the following guidelines:

winter: lifting, chopping, dramatically root-pruning, wiring established trees;
spring: chopping, wiring, root-pruning, potting;
summer: wiring, potting, pruning, pinching;
fall: unwiring, light trimming, light pinching.

I try to take advantage of the entire growing season, based on where each of my trees is along its development path. With the elms below, I’m taking advantage of what will be our last round of growth for the 2017 growing season. By doing this, I’ll get a head-start on next year.

This is one of the Cedar elms (Ulmus crassifolia) I got from my friend’s parents’ property back in April. Nice trunk, nice taper, nice movement, nice bark. It had bonsai written all over it.

After a sluggish start, it took off and hasn’t stopped growing since. Time to make a move on this unbalanced growth while getting a bonsai-in-the-making on the bench.

That’s more like it! I needed to cool off that growth in the apex, or the lower branches were going to be weak going into 2018. That’s always risky with winter just ahead.

This Byron Myrick rectangle suits the tree very nicely. I basically slip-potted the tree, meaning I lifted it from its nursery container and with minimal disturbance to the roots set it in this bonsai pot. I filled in with fresh, well-draining bonsai soil mix and watered it in. This tree is going to be outstanding come next year.

You don’t see Japanese gray-bark elm, Zelkova serrata, all that often. It’s a pity, as the species has a lot going for it. I got some stock plants for a fellow bonsai nurseryman, including a handful of larger ones. I chopped the trunk (which had been four feet tall) back to 12″, and as buds popped and grew into shoots started working on it. Because it had a significant root mass, the regrowth was natural as the tree was attempting to regain everything above ground that I was removing. This process has continued into and through summer.

Compare this photo with the one above, which was taken in early August. That’s some fast development!

Time to find out what Zelkova’s are made of. I cut off all the roots that wouldn’t fit in this Chuck Iker pot, and in the tree went! If it comes through okay, I’ll have a leg up going into 2018.

You’ll find, as you work with the various elm species, that some of them can take a lot of work throughout the growing season and won’t keel over from it. Based on my experience, the only ones I’d avoid doing “out of season” work on are Hackberry and Winged elm. For any of the others, have at it!

How To See A Bonsai In Your Material

by Zach Smith | Aug 26, 2017 | Ficus, Potting, Pruning, Styling, Wiring

How often have you sat staring at a pre-bonsai specimen, wondering what the heck to do with it? You’re certainly not alone. Even seasoned pros sometimes have to study at length before the design becomes apparent. I always counsel that the trunk of your tree is where everything begins. Is it stout, or feminine, or hunky, or gnarly, or curvy? There’s infinite variety out there, and it’s a sure bet that along the way trees will catch your eye that produce an immediate “Ah ha!” kind of reaction. As you get more experienced making bonsai, it does get easier to see the bonsai in any given piece of material. You never get past being stumped on occasion; but it’s really nice when you know just what to do.

This is one of those cases where “Ah ha!” happened pretty quickly for me. As I studied the tree, I just saw a spreading bonsai that was less tall that it was wide. “Low-slung” came to mind. And for this sort of tree, you need a shallow tray to pot it in. I happened to have this Shawn Bokeno oval on the shelf, and it was just the right size.

Speaking of size, can you tell how big this tree and pot are? Well, the tree is only about 12″ tall from the soil surface. The pot is 6″ wide and only 1″ tall. Isn’t that something?

So, in case you were having some difficulty seeing where this tree might be going, here’s a better way to view it. You can’t see in this photo that the base of the trunk emerges from the soil in a curve that continue on up into the trunk. When you see angles like these, you’ll also see the harmony that either exists on its own or that you can create or enhance. In this case, I’ll be using wire to enhance the curviness of the trunk and major branches.

Now the unneeded branches have been trimmed. It’s easier to see in this photo what the ultimate design is going to be. As you gain experience making bonsai, you’ll be able to see these designs almost immediately in your material. Then it’s just a matter of cutting away the stuff you don’t need and wiring the rest.

Now the wire is on, and the shape of this bonsai-in-the-making is just about done.

Potted and given its finished shape (for today).

The long branch on the right can stand a bit of trimming, and this will happen as the tree recovers from today’s work.

But the important thing to take from this sequence of photos is the process of going from raw material to potted tree. I “saw” this design as I studied the raw material. The important thing about this is it only left me with some training techniques to perform. Ultimately, when we make bonsai our job is to spot the design in the material and bring it to fruition. It’s not always easy and it doesn’t always happen on the first go-round. But with time and practice, that happens more and more frequently.

Let me know what you think of this neat bonsai-to-be.

Bonsai Forestry – How To Make A Cedar Elm Group Better

by Zach Smith | Aug 17, 2017 | Collecting, Elms, Potting, Pruning, Styling, Wiring

I collected these Cedar elms with the idea in mind of making a forest planting with them. I had two pots of them, and figured on being able to make a five-tree forest.

Ultimately I decided they were better suited to making two three-tree groups. So I ended up with this composition as one of those bonsai-to-be.

All this is is the basic composition of the bonsai.

What does that mean?

With group plantings, the selection and placement of trees is extremely important. Spacing, trunk movement, trunk height, location of foliage, all of these factors go into making a believable forest. And when you’re working with only a few trees, each one becomes that much more important.

The first stage of making a bonsai out of these trees was completed with the planting itself. I could have wired the trees in advance of potting them up, but I knew their locations in the pot would dictate, at least in part, where the branches ended up going (and which branches I utilized). So I didn’t worry about any detailed styling at this point.

The next step came not too long after the first.

With a first round of wiring, the forest begins to come into focus. Now they’re not just trees with random growth. There’s planning that will lead to a naturalistic appearance.

Fast-forward about five weeks and here’s the current state of development. You can probably guess I left the composition alone. It has food, and the sun and water happened pretty much on its own (the latter since it’s rained every day for several weeks now). The trees are strong, and now it’s time for the next step.

Some trimming and wiring was all it took to continue the progress of this bonsai. Note that these trees were lifted from the ground on April 22nd. They had budded in a week, pushed a lot of growth by early July, and quickly became a small forest shortly thereafter. A month later I had a nice branch set on all of the trees, ramification on some, and the need to trim off excess growth. Not bad for such a compressed timeframe.

I don’t expect to do any more trimming on this tree for the remainder of the growing season. That time is now past. I will keep a close watch on the wire, as the coming fall will see biting on these trees and lots of others. Next spring, my design for this group will be well set, and I should be limited to grow and clip for detailed work.

If this forest bonsai speaks to you, it’s available at our Cedar Elm Bonsai page. I think it’s going to be an outstanding bonsai in just a couple of years.

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