by Zach Smith | Jun 6, 2015 | Care, Elms, Potting, Water Elm, Wiring
As most of you know, the winter of 2014 was extremely harsh down here, so much so that I lost a number of trees during a snow and ice storm that literally froze my trees to their benches. I wasn’t alone. I only spoke with one or two of my clients up north who didn’t lose trees as well. But you move on. You get more trees, you train them, you pot them, you build them into respectable bonsai. And that’s what I’m doing.
This is one of the trees I lost last year, photographed in 2012. I had collected it in 2009, began its training that year and put it into the unique, vintage Richard Robertson oblong pot you see here. A perfect match of tree and pot, to my way of thinking. But after last year’s killing winter all I had left was the pot, which sat forlorn under one of my benches.
Enter this tree, an August 2014 collect that had refused to bud anywhere but right near the base last fall. With water-elms you don’t give up until you’re absolutely sure they’re not coming back. So this year, while all my others budded and this one re-budded near its base, I reminded myself to just leave it alone. Sure enough, come late April I saw a bud up the trunk. Whenever you see one there’s more than one, so I scoured the trunk and sure enough, there was a bud up near the very top of the tree. Amazing! So I resumed ignoring it, and buds popped everywhere and then turned to shoots and then started thickening.
Here’s the tree after trimming the excess branches, wiring up a nice branch set, giving the trunk a good cleaning, and potting into my classic Richard Robertson oblong. Isn’t it lovely?
From this point to the degree of training in the tree above will be about three years. Water-elms ramify without any coaxing, and you can stop wiring and go with grow and clip in year two.
by Zach Smith | May 31, 2015 | Bald Cypress, Care, Potting, Wiring
It’s the time of year to do initial styling on bald cypresses collected this past winter. I had posted this specimen earlier in the season, and mentioned my idea of a style for it that represented something I’ve never done before. There’s nothing like a rainy Sunday afternoon to dive into some styling work.
Photo number one at left shows the strong growth of this tree since I collected it. Even going straight into a bonsai pot – in this case, a nice Chuck Iker round – doesn’t hinder regrowth all that much. With bald cypress, unlike many other deciduous species, you tend to have more than enough to work with in terms of new shoots!
Dealing with the lower parts of this tree was not particularly challenging. You can never go wrong with the classic rules for styling your tree. First branch, second branch, back branch, on and on until you get to the apex. But what you can see from this photo, perhaps a little more clearly than in the first, is that huge mass of new apical shoots has got to be dealt with! Bald cypress does this every time. It’s just how the species wants to grow. So it’s imperative that you rebalance growth before things get out of hand, or the lower branches will weaken and die.
In choosing the new leader for this tree, I needed to avoid the tendency to “over-style” the tree. It’s more than clear, even in the first photo above, that there’s a certain graceful movement to this trunk that has no need of being interrupted. So rather than try to get all “artistic” with it, the obvious answer was to simply go with the flow. That made choosing very easy.
And here’s how it all turned out. This tree has a very simple shape, and it’s saying all it needs to say in a pretty strong way. Remember the key time-tested rule of bonsai:
Less is more.
by Zach Smith | May 30, 2015 | Care, Hawthorn, Potting, Wiring
We’ve been following the progress of this Mayhaw, Crataegus aestivalus, for a while now. Back in winter I did a hard pruning of the branches in order to continue development of the tree’s structure. As with any such work, I then let the tree alone to grow untrimmed from budburst till now.
This is the result. You can see I have growth well in excess of a foot over multiple shoots all throughout the tree. This is a good sign, of course. I wouldn’t contemplate repotting the tree unless I knew it was strong enough for such work. This is true no matter what species you’re working with.
Now the tree gets a haircut! I’m not sure at this point how much root I’ll be taking off the tree, but the demand on the root system needs to be reduced. Thus the serious trimming.
Here’s the tree lifted from its pot. I like the plentiful white roots. At the same time, I had noticed some obvious leaf scorch, which told me there was something going on under the surface of the soil. You can see these roots are running laterally, right up against the pot. Pots start getting pretty hot in May around here, and that tends to overstress any roots snuggled up next to their surfaces. This stress is reflected in the leaves.
Now I’ve combed out the roots and done a limited pruning. Hawthorns often don’t grow a profuse set of roots, but they seem to get along fine anyway. For this tree, I took the opportunity to do some judicious pruning and carving in the root zone. This particular tree has an awesome set of radial roots; it came from the wild that way. So my only chore has been to manage what God created.
And finally, the tree is back in its home. Given the rate of root growth, I expect to not have to do another repotting for at least two years. You can see that I cut back the apex and wired up a new leader. This is part of the building of the crown of the tree. It’s a meticulous process that, done properly, takes a few years. But I expect the result to be worth the effort.
New buds should appear in about two weeks.
by Zach Smith | May 29, 2015 | American Elm, Care, Elms, Potting, Wiring
I’m sure you remember this American elm, Ulmus Americana, that I first posted last month. My goal with this tree is to train it into a classic American elm shape, what’s called vase-shape. I did the initial wiring on March 11th, and left the tree completely alone to grow out and set the position of the leaders. American elm is a vigorous grower, even in a bonsai pot, so I figured I’d get a lot of the basic development done this year.
Here’s the same tree six weeks later. The main leader has gained a solid foot of growth, which has thickened it significantly at the base. The secondary leaders have also put on strong growth. My main goal today is to trim the tree back to its vase-shape, and to reposition the trunk to a more upright position.
Here’s the final result. I cut the central leader back a little harder than the others, to allow them a chance to catch up in girth. I also carved the original chop, in order to make the tapering of the trunk smoother.
This tree is available for sale on our Elm Bonsai & Pre-Bonsai page.
by Zach Smith | May 2, 2015 | Care, Potting, Soil, Sweetgum
With May upon us, it’s time once again to do some serious things with sweetgums. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, collecting sweetgum in winter has not been a happy experience for me in times past. With a success rate of less than 30%, I would just end up scratching my head. Why would sweetgum not respond as other species do? I finally stumbled upon my answer: wait till May.
I’m sure you recognize this sumo-style specimen. I collected it back in 2012, and have let it grow out with some periodic training since then. I’ve been anticipating repotting time, especially because of the big “club” sticking out on the left-hand side of the base. Pretty unattractive – but it was more or less all the root that I was able to recover when I collected the tree. Today it was time to (hopefully) correct the problem.
My first order of business was to pull the tree from its tub and wash off all the old soil – which, incidentally, was too heavy for the tree. Here’s the result: an amazing amount of roots, all of which grew from nothing but the stump I collected and the awkward “club” root hanging off to the side.
For comparison sake, here’s a shot from the other side of the tree. You can see that when I collected this stump I literally sawed off whatever was projecting off the right-hand side. The tree has responded by producing nice roots directly off that cut. In a couple of years I’ll be able to carve the area to make the transition smoother.
Here’s the cut that needed to be made today. You may be able to see a smaller root that comes off this one toward the front. Since I had this to work with, I was much less concerned about just hacking the offending root off. But no matter, I expect roots to sprout at the edges of the cut.
Here’s a view from the front. Yes, it does look a bit abrupt, but to my eye it looks a lot better than what I started with.
The final step, with the tree potted into a much smaller nursery container. I think it looks a lot better without that big root emerging on the left side. What do you think?
by Zach Smith | Apr 26, 2015 | Care, Potting, Yaupon
When we last left the story of this yaupon bonsai in the making, its first growing season was coming to a close. In the photo below it’s easy to see where the trunk was chopped. I grew a new leader from just a trunk bud, wiring it to induce movement (yaupon likes to grow everything arrow-straight).
I also left a sacrifice branch shooting off to the left, because it was essential to thicken the new leader emerging from the chop so as to make the tapering transition look right.
Fast forward to today. The spring flush of growth has been tremendous. This didn’t especially surprise me, since most trees recovering from collection tend to grow strongest in year two. In this case, considering what I was trying to accomplish starting last year, it was just what I needed.
Here’s the payoff. Notice how quickly the base of my new leader has thickened. It’s gained about 50% since the November shot above. And thanks to the technique I’ve used in carving the chop, angling it into the branch emerging on its right side, this already makes for a believable transition. What does this mean? I can go ahead and remove that sacrifice branch.
By the way, notice the new shoot at the very tip of the leader I wired into position last year. This is exactly the continuation into my new apex I was hoping for. I’ll wire this shoot in the next week or two, in order to ensure it has some movement in it before it gets too stiff to work with. I can then pinch and prune it as part of the process of finishing the crown.
The next step was to do some trimming in the lower branches. Downward pointing branches, most upward pointing branches, older primary leaves where the sub-branching emerged. If you look closely, you can see the tree emerging. Now it was time for a bonsai pot. But what did the roots look like? Time to find out.
Here we are, roots teased out and mostly washed off. I was very pleased with what I got in just a year’s time. As I may have mentioned before, I haven’t worked on yaupon in the past due to the simple fact that in the wild they almost never grow with any natural taper to the trunk. So this is all a learning experience for me. Now I know I can get good fibrous roots in just a year.
Finally, the tree is potted in one of my vintage Richard Robertson pieces. As I was cleaning the pot I noticed the signature and date – ’89. So this pot has been with me for about 25 years now. I think it’s found a nice complement to its style and color. What do you think?
Incidentally, this yaupon is a female. It bloomed like crazy this spring. The flowers are tiny, pale white and inconspicuous. Yaupon berries are bright red and make a nice winter show. It remains to be seen if this one is going to set any fruit this year. Most of the flowers were actually on the sacrifice branch, but there were a few on the lower branches.
