by Zach Smith | Aug 2, 2019 | Chinese Elm, Elms, Privet, Yaupon
I wasn’t able to blog last week, so I’m going to try to make up for it this weekend. For a start, here’s the Chinese elm forest that I’ll be developing this coming year. As you can see, the growth is already lush. All that needs to happen with this specimen for the remainder of the year is to grow and get strong. In 2020, I’ll create the basic design and move it to a bonsai tray. I have a feeling this specimen is going to end up being really nice.
I’ll bet you remember this Dwarf yaupon from a few weeks ago. This is a variety that just loves to grow in summer. I knew I could take advantage of this feature when I first did the styling. By the end of the growing season, I’m going to have a nicely filled out specimen on its way to becoming a fine bonsai.
This is another Chinese privet I had off in a corner of the nursery for a few years. It had originally been part of a larger, multi-trunk specimen. I finally figured out that this trunk was better by itself, so I separated it from the rest and potted it up. This tree will go from “stick with shoots” to bonsai in 2020. Stay tuned for updates.
by Zach Smith | Jun 8, 2019 | Care, Privet, Pruning, Styling, Wiring
I lifted this Chinese privet, Ligustrum sinense, in Winter 2019. Here is it in late March, just pushing new shoots.
Here we are, two and a half months later. Privet is very vigorous. You literally can’t take your eyes off them for long.
Time for a taming. First the long, long shoots get pruned back.
More pruning, especially the conflicting branches on the inside of the tree. I’ve got that third trunk down to a single leader … and, I’m not sure that trunk does anything for the composition.
Working our way up. That left-hand trunk ended up with only its new leader, and that’s where all of the new growth is needed.
On to the right-hand trunk. This one has some branches to work with.
And a few minutes later, we’ve got our initial design. The tree will push lots of new buds in the next week, so it will flush out again by early July. I’ll post updates, unless of course someone wants to take over. This tree is available at our Chinese Privet sale page.
by Zach Smith | Mar 30, 2019 | Care, Privet, Styling, Wiring
I potted this Chinese privet, Ligustrum sinense, into this nice Chuck Iker pot earlier in the season. I had had the specimen for a few years, but neglected it, but for those of you who know privet you understand that it didn’t really affect the tree that much. Privet are very hard to kill.
This is how it looked today, with a nice flush of shoots. There’s a design in there somewhere – it’s just a matter of finding it.
First, the easy part. Those two little shoots on the left have no role in this bonsai in the making. (What about that small shoot in the back? I’m leaving it to help with the healing of the trunk chop above it.)
So we got bottom to top for the informal upright style. I selected two branches that will definitely be part of the design, then wired them as a pair (always try to do it this way, it makes life a lot easier!).
As you work your way up any tree doing your styling, you’ll be confronted with multiple choices for your branch layout. It’s almost guaranteed that you won’t have the “ideal” set of branches. By that I mean the so-called “spiral staircase” of branches, left-right-back-left-right-back and so on all the way up the tree (with perfect spacing between the branches, too!). This is all right. If you had the ideal branch set each and every time, there wouldn’t be much challenge in the styling process and what fun would that be? Not to mention that your trees would turn out boooooooring. And who wants that?
Continuing up the tree. Some shoots stay, some go. The ones that stay get wired and positioned.
Ever close to the apex. The tree is taking shape.
And the work is done for today.
You may be wondering how important it was for me to wire this tree today. To be sure, I could have waited a bit longer. But one thing about Chinese privet is that once the branches get a little thick, they become impossible to bend. So you need to make it happen early on, or you’ll need to cut everything off and start over.
This specimen doesn’t look like much yet, but privets grow so fast that by summer I’ll have a nice set of ramified branches. The wire will also have been removed by then.
Stay tuned for updates. And let me know what you think. This bonsai in the making is about 10″ tall, with a 1.5″ trunk, just to give you an idea of scale.
by Zach Smith | Jan 6, 2019 | Care, Collecting, Elms, Maples, Potting, Privet, Styling, Water Elm, Wiring
While we were out collecting Bald cypress yesterday, I happened across this Swamp maple, Acer rubrum ‘Drummondii.’ I don’t often collected Swamp maples, because they don’t seem to last in good health longer than a couple of years, but when I saw the fluting of this trunk I figured it was worth the risk. Swamp maples generally don’t have tap roots in the wild, so they’re super easy to lift. I just sawed around the tree 6-8″ from the trunk and pulled.
As I did with the last one of these I collected, I did not remove the native soil from the root zone. All I did was put it into a nursery container and surround it with coarse mix. I sealed the trunk chop, of course. And now I wait.
Last week I had a reader express an interest in Chinese privet, Ligustrum sinense. I had a specimen I’d lifted a few years ago but had been relegated to a lonely corner. As I studied it, I decided there was a really nice trunk line I could cut to. So here it is, chopped and ready for a pot. Notice the fibrous roots! This is the way privet always grows. They are super rooters.
There’s never any issue with going straight to a bonsai pot with a privet. I had this lovely Chuck Iker piece all empty and waiting, so in the tree went. I sealed the chops, of course.
I’ll be able to grow the entire structure of this bonsai to be in 2019. Stay tuned for updates when I get some shoots.
FYI, the trunk base on this specimen is 1.5″, and it’s 8″ to the top. It won’t be a Bonsai South Collection tree, but I’m confident it’ll find a good home sooner rather than later.
I collected this Water-elm, Planera aquatica, back in July. Also not destined for the collection, it’s nonetheless a very nice specimen with great trunk character. I love the interplay between the trunks. Come spring, I’ll slip-pot it into a nice bonsai container and post it for sale.
The base is 4″ across, with each trunk 1.5″ at the base. Height is 16″.
by Zach Smith | Jan 14, 2017 | Care, Collecting, Privet
I lifted a couple of Chinese privets, Ligustrum sinense, today. I made the decision to collect them because of what I saw in the trunk of each – nice tapering potential and good trunk character. As with most deciduous species, you can cut back Chinese privet to a bare trunk and it’ll sprout plenty of adventitious buds for your use in creating a branch structure. That’s just what I did today.
Here’s the first one, in the ground. See the nice stout base and the trunk that tapers as it moves upward? Even better, notice that the trunk forks at just under a foot in height. You can’t ask for anything better when you’re selecting specimens to collect.
It’s easier to see in this photo just what I saw in this specimen. Privets often grow just as straight as a pole. This one actually has nice taper from the root base all the way up. I chopped off the original, mainline trunk in order to enhance taper.
This pot is one of the ovals I got from Byron Myrick a couple of weeks ago. I think it complements the tree well. I’ve sealed the chops, and now it’s just a waiting game. Sometime in March buds will begin to appear up and down the trunk. At that point I’ll be able to start thinking of a design. Privets grow super fast, so I expect to have a lot of this bonsai built by the end of the 2017 growing season.
The trunk base of this specimen is 2″ at the soil surface. The trunk is chopped at 12″. I would expect the finished height to be about 16-18″. I should end up with a graceful Privet bonsai.
Here’s the second privet I lifted today. The first thing to realize about this one is it’s chopped at 14″ – just slightly taller than the first one. But the trunk base is over 3.5″ at the soil surface – quite a difference. This specimen is also much more masculine. That means I don’t envision nor do I plan to produce a “graceful” bonsai with this one. It’s going to be a stout tree, finishing at around 18″. Same height as the first one, but a very different outcome.
This guy is available at our Chinese Privet Bonsai sale page. It will ship in spring.
by Zach Smith | May 27, 2016 | Care, Flowering, Hawthorn, Oaks, Privet, Pruning, Styling, Wiring
With spring growth soon to give way to summer growth or doldrums, depending on the species, today it was time to work on a few trees. The first was this Chinese privet, Ligustrum sinense, that I collected this past winter. It got an initial styling last month, and it’s now grown out sufficiently to get a trimming.
This work goes quickly. All that’s really necessary is to take your shears and trim everything that points up or down (unless you’re leaving a shoot pointing upward to thicken a branch), and then to shape the branch into a rounded triangular form. In the case of this tree, it only took about five minutes.
My second victim was this Parsley-leaf hawthorn, Crataegus marshallii. This tree has grown a little slowly for my taste, but I know it’s because I potted the bare trunk directly into this nice Chuck Iker round. Patience has paid off, though. Today I had a few nice shoots and a leader I could work with.
I only had a few lengths of wire to put on this tree, so the work was done in about 10 minutes total which included trimming away what I knew I wasn’t going to need.
It’s a little hard to see in this photo, but I need to chop the trunk again near the new leader. This is not the time to perform this step, as the tree is not yet sufficiently rooted to stand that sort of manhandling. Not to mention the fact that cutting in the vicinity of the small shoot I wired upright would be risky. I’ll let it continue to grow out, which should thicken it nicely by this coming fall. Then next spring I can whack away.
Last but not least is my late friend Allen Gautreau’s live oak, Quercus virginiana. I really like posting this photo because it helps dispel the idea that live oaks are slow-growing trees. This is absolutely not the case. Once a live oak gets established, it can put on several feet of growth in a single season. Here you can see I’ve got some shoots approaching two feet. Not too shabby, eh?
An established bonsai requires more care when you’re giving it a haircut than trees still in development. Unless you’re restyling the tree, you must take time to selectively remove new growth that has no business being part of your finished work. So you want to look for crossing branches, branches growing toward the middle of the tree, and of course those that point straight up or down. In about 10 minutes I was able to clean up the appearance of this fine old bonsai.
