Potting | Bonsai South

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.

Getting A Leg Up On A Bald Cypress Bonsai

by Zach Smith | Jun 3, 2017 | Bald Cypress, Collecting, Potting, Pruning, Styling, Wiring

I often try to get a leg up on developing bonsai. I typically do this by selecting trees I’ve collected that don’t need any trunk development, or at most only minimal development. What does this mean? If you collect a tree and chop the trunk, and at the point of the chop the trunk is more than about 1.5″ in diameter, the speed with which you can build a tapering transition at that point will be tremendously slowed in a bonsai pot. Because you have to devote so much time and energy to just getting this right, developing the tree’s branch structure is hampered. So in the end you don’t gain much in the way of time.

This Bald cypress, Taxodium distichum, presented me with the opportunity to get a leg up on developing it into a bonsai.

The trunk base is 2″ across, and you can see just by examining the photo that the diameter at the chop point is right around 0.75″. That means all I really have to do with this tree is to develop the branch structure.

So this was a perfect candidate to go straight into a bonsai pot (this gorgeous Chuck Iker round).

Fast-forward to today. The shoots have grown long enough that I can reasonably go ahead and wire them. That means I’ll get my branch structure off to a good start.

Incidentally, from the very beginning this tree struck me as suiting the literati style. It’s very tall for its trunk size, 24″, so with two options available – make it look shorter or accentuate the height – the obvious answer to me was to make it look really tall.

The dead snag, which originally I’d hoped would be a secondary trunk, will actually benefit the design I have in mind. So it stays. As for the foliage pads on the main trunk, my goal is to draw the eye upward and give the impression of a very tall swamp-dweller. The best way to do this is to focus all of the foliage in the uppermost part of the tree.

Less is more.

After removing all of the foliage in the lower 80% of the trunk, I was left with three branches and the apical leader. I knew before I started working on them that they would always need to remain very close to the trunk in terms of the tree’s silhouette. So armed with that knowledge, the wiring and positioning were a snap.

I also shortened the side branch in the apex of the tree. I’ll make a dead snag out of it, to complement the one that appears on the shorter trunk. Both will be stripped of bark and treated with lime sulfur, but probably not until next year.

I’ll post updates as this tree develops. In the meantime, I think I’ve got a nice Bald cypress bonsai on the way. What do you think?

Rip Van Winkle Wakes Up – How To Know When They’re Really Dead

by Zach Smith | May 13, 2017 | Care, Oaks, Potting, Styling, ZPC

You may remember my wonderful Willow oak, Quercus phellos, from this photo I took last fall. I repotted it last spring, and cut back the lowest right branch hard to improve it, and from there just did some light pinching and pruning through the growing season.

This tree has exhibited an unusual characteristic since I brought it home, namely, it’s the last of my trees to come out each year. Typically this is in mid- to late-April. I’ve been watching it closely since things started budding in March. Nothing. So I began to wonder if the tree had, for some reason, died over the winter. We certainly had some cold weather, but it’s been through colder weather than we had this go-round. Of course, you never know for sure what might do a tree in.

Here’s what I’ve been studying now for about 10 weeks. Lovely tree in its winter silhouette. Hopefully not a dead skeleton. The branches had remained supple and many had their juvenile green color. It just couldn’t be dead. But days turned into weeks and then months. No sign of life.

Two days ago I finally spotted some green on a bud.

Willow oak buds are not inconspicuous, but they lie flat against the branches and look more or less desiccated. It’s not until the alarm goes off that they swell and you can see green color and bud scales. I had one bud on the 10th, and by the 12th the tree was full of swelling buds. Rip Van Winkle was waking up. My Willow oak was alive!

This brings up something every bonsai enthusiast faces. How do you know when a tree you just collected, or one that has come through a rough winter, is really and truly dead? Are there any telltale signs? How long should you wait before yanking the thing out of its pot and tossing it unceremoniously on the skeleton pile?

First things first. When collecting new trees, the goal is to get them into nursery containers, tubs or grow boxes as soon as you can. Typically you won’t have a large root mass on a newly collected tree, and typically you won’t have any roots until you see the tree pushing shoots. Preceding this is the appearance of trunk buds. For the most part, once you see trunk buds the tree has at least a 90% chance of survival – provided you don’t hinder the natural recovery process. This means you don’t move the tree around or otherwise do anything to damage newly emerging, tender roots. It generally takes several weeks for these new roots to harden off, and you really don’t want to move the tree from the container it’s in until the next growing season at the earliest.

Circling back to the newly collected tree, what are the telltale signs of life or death? This varies from species to species. Most will show green when scratched – this is the cambium layer, which is chock full of chlorophyll that does not break down during fall and winter. Hackberry bark remains green, at the surface, for many years. Older Bald cypresses typically don’t show green when scratched, a peculiarity of the species. With that said, many younger ones actually show green at the surface of the smooth areas of bark. Sometimes you see it, sometimes not.

If you’re gauging life or death by the scratch method, be aware that there’s “juicy green” and dry green. Dry green is more or less self-explanatory; there’s no shine to it. Juicy green is a bit tougher to gauge, but once you’ve got a little experience you can easily see the difference. Now, I’ve seen many specimens that scratched juicy green for an extended time, only to eventually dry out. This can be a lengthy process, by the way.

Another telltale sign is brittle branches and branchlets, for those species that retain the branchlets through winter. Not all species do. Typically a tree that’s alive will maintain very flexible branchlets – my Willow oak did just that, so I remained mostly optimistic (on even-numbered days, alternating with pessimism) even after the April “deadline” passed. Now, don’t use the flexible branchlet sign as your be-all end-all when determining life or death; in harsh winters, some trees will lose branchlets and even small branches they might not otherwise, and then come back in spring.

What’s the bottom line? Give your trees every chance when spring gets here. Hang onto them as long as there are signs of viability. You never know when old Rip Van Winkle will wake up.

Ground Growing For Size – How To Make Them Fatter Faster

by Zach Smith | May 10, 2017 | Collecting, Potting, Pruning, Soil, Sweetgum

I posted this photo last December of a Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) I had been growing in the ground for a few years. The tree started out as something just beyond a seedling, in a nursery pot. I was developing it in the pot, using directional pruning techniques to create taper and movement. But the tree just wasn’t fattening up as I wanted it to. So I put it in the ground, knowing that the fastest way to make a smaller tree into a bigger tree was to give it room to grow.

This photo shows one classic way to get thickening in the base of your tree: letting a low shoot run. And boy, did this one run! In the process, I now have a 3″ trunk base whereas I started with a 1″ base just a few years ago.

So I chopped off the low leader in December and sealed the chop, with the idea of lifting the specimen in May (the best time to collect Sweetgums).

And so, on May 1st I sawed this tree out of the ground. Here it is with its root mass and soil ball (I shook off what I could). It’s grown like a weed, as you can see.

First I gave the root mass a good washing off. I don’t want any native soil, as it’s not needed.

Referring to the above picture to your right, the tree will go into a fast-draining coarse bonsai soil, which will promote regrowth.

I also cut back the long leaders; they aren’t necessary at this point.

Take special note of the branch growing from beneath the large cut. This is important to ensure I don’t get any dieback into the root from this area. I was careful to leave the branch collar when I chopped the big leader, also for this purpose. But this branch is my insurance policy. I’ll leave it for a year or so (though I will keep it cut back while developing the structure of this tree).

The next step. All of the foliage is gone now. This is absolutely vital when collecting deciduous trees that are in leaf. If you fail to do this, the tree continues transpiring moisture through the leaves and will literally dry out.

I’ve also cut back the roots in the first stage. You can see one of the coiling roots that will need to go.

You can also see the trunk line of this specimen and the massive taper from the base. The trunk measures 3″ across above the root zone – so I’d say my ground-growing effort succeeded.

Now I’ve got the root zone cut down to size. Notice how much smaller it is in this photo than in the previous one.

It’s a common mistake to leave too many and too long roots on a collected tree.

Remember two principles when working on the root zone of a newly collected tree:

the roots need to be cut back enough so that they will fit in a bonsai pot in the future, including cutting them shallow enough for that same purpose; and
they need to be 2-3 diameters long so you can build taper in them when smaller roots sprout from the cut ends.

What’s the best front for this tree? I have at least a couple of options, and I don’t have to choose now.

Should the trunk be chopped back farther? I can see a likely spot for a chop. But again, I have options and don’t have to choose now.

After a good dusting with rooting powder, here’s the tree all potted up. All cuts 1/4″ and over were sealed with cut seal. This has to be done every time you collect a tree.

And a third possible front. I’m thinking this is my favorite.

Sweetgums are great to work with. They grow fast and will regrow from chops very well. It does take some time to build ramification and get some leaf size reduction. But all in all, they are one of my very favorites.

Today this tree is showing signs of pushing new buds, so it looks like the harvest was successful.

Starting A Sweetgum Bonsai: Helping A BC Get A Little Better

by Zach Smith | Apr 23, 2017 | Bald Cypress, Care, Potting, Pruning, Styling, Wiring

I’ve been growing this little Sweetgum, Liquidambar styraciflua, for three or four years now. The trunk was pretty straight, so I figured it would work better as a broom-form tree and chopped most of the trunk off. There were a couple of shoots growing close to one another on the trunk down low, so that made the decision a lot easier. Here’s what the tree looked like today.

If you study deciduous trees in the wild, they often split into two leaders at some point up the trunk. Those two new leaders split into two more each, and so on. This is often how a tree often its best effort to gather the maximum sunshine where it’s growing. By the right placement of branches, the right placement of foliage is assured. The tree survives and prospers.

In this case I’ve removed all but two of the leaders, and wired and positioned them. Each has been trimmed back but deliberately left longer than they’ll ultimately end up. This will help them thicken up. In time they’ll be cut back to the right length, with two leaders each. And I’ll repeat the process.

This tree can be developed in a bonsai pot, so I went ahead and put this nice Chuck Iker round to use. The pot color complements the light green foliage color of the Sweetgum very well.

There’s not much to this bonsai-to-be; not yet, anyway. But they all have to start somewhere. I’ll post updates as this one develops.

A few weeks ago I introduced you to this very nice Bald cypress, Taxodium distichum. I knew when I spotted it in the wild that it was going to make a tremendous flat-top specimen. It finally had grown enough that I was able to wire up the initial branches and apical leaders. Not much to this one either, is there?

A few weeks later, here we are! Compare the growth that’s now on the tree. Now, this is wonderful but if I don’t start controlling it now I’m going to have branches and especially those apical leaders getting out of hand. This is because these branches are the only growth I’m allowing on the tree. I have to remove trunk buds every few days. Doing that forces the energy into the only foliage left.

The changes are subtle but just what’s needed at this time. Compare the two photos and you’ll see what I’ve done. The downward pointing growth is gone, of course, but I’ve also taken out the strong growing tips of every branch. I’ll still get thickening of these branches, but at the right pace. In the meantime, as this growth hardens off I’ll be able to wire out the sub-branching as it develops.

What do you think of my work so far? Leave me a comment below.

A Couple Of Oaks On The Way, And A Nice Live Oak Bonsai

by Zach Smith | Apr 9, 2017 | Care, Collecting, Oaks, Potting, Styling

Back in January I posted a blog about this Live oak, Quercus virginiana. Chop, lift, pot. A nice Live oak bonsai in the making. A good client of mine thought it would make a nice tree to get some styling practice on, so it got a future home pretty quickly.

Today the tree looks like this. Plenty of new shoots ready for some wire.

The final design of this tree is up to the client, of course, but my plan would be to keep the silhouette of the crown in check so as to make the tree look taller.

We’ll see what he ends up doing with it.

I have some other oaks that are pushing strong growth now. Here’s a nice Water oak specimen (Quercus nigra). The shoots are still too tender to wire, but by May or thereabouts it’ll be time for an initial styling.

How about a nice shohin Willow oak, Quercus phellos?

It’s all of 7″ to the chop, but I didn’t get any budding in the top 2″ of the tree so it’s going to get even shorter. That branch a little ways down the trunk is ideal to chop to.

But that doesn’t need to be done now; the tree’s root system has to get established first.

This little guy should be fun to work on.

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