Pruning | Bonsai South

Repotting Mr. Van Winkle

by Zach Smith | Apr 6, 2018 | Care, Oaks, Potting, Pruning, ZPC

It’s been a couple of years since I repotted my big Willow oak, Quercus phellos. Last year I named him Rip Van Winkle, because he waited until May to finally bud out. (I was afraid he was R.I.P. Van Winkle.) Anyway, when I did the repotting back in 2016 I tried something different when I went back into the pot, namely, I added a drainage layer of pea gravel to the bottom of the pot. I didn’t have any firsthand experience to know if this actually does any good for bonsai – after all, we need to prepare soil that’s free-draining before we even consider potting up a tree. But I was willing to give it a try.

Willow Oak - Quercus phellos

The first question you may be asking is, Was it really necessary to repot this tree after two years? The best answer I can give is that what goes on below the surface of the soil is more important than what goes on above. Don’t forget, we’re expecting trees used to growing in open ground to survive and thrive in a small, shallow space. This means their roots cannot travel where they need to go to gather water and nutrients. We provide an environment in the pot designed to give oxygen, water and those needed nutrients as best we can. When the tree grows roots, the spaces that allow for sufficient water and oxygen get filled with roots. Eventually, there’s just little to no soil left and the tree won’t stay alive under those circumstances. Now, does this happen after two years? For most species, no. But there’s no reason not to pull a tree of this age (40+ years), especially considering how late it came out last year. Plus I know from the last repotting that Mr. Van Winkle grows a lot of roots in a short amount of time.

Willow Oak - Quercus phellos

My first step was to loosen the securing wire, remove the training wire from one of the branches and clean the trunk with vinegar-water (white household vinegar and water mixed 50:50) and a toothbrush.

The bark on this tree is very tough, so I was able to give it a good scrub. I also have done some light pruning, being careful not to trim the lower branches too much as they still need to gain heft.

Willow Oak - Quercus phellos

Here’s the tree after I pulled it and removed the pea gravel that was in the bottom of the root mass.

Note: I didn’t see any indications that would suggest a drainage layer improved the growing environment of this tree. There were roots in among the gravel, which is exactly what you would expect. As for drainage, a shallow pot like this one can only produce so much hydraulic head to cause the water to drain; a drainage layer of less than 1/2 inch doesn’t really change this significantly.

Willow Oak - Quercus phellos

Here are the roots, combed out and trimmed. You can see the really nice radial roots.e.

Willow Oak - Quercus phellos

Going back into the pot. One thing I’m doing at this repotting is to raise the tree slightly in order to better display the nebari. This is one of the key things to bear in mind when you work with collected trees (those you get from me, for sure). It’s always best to bury the radial roots, as this will keep them from drying out as the tree recovers. To be sure, you want to display nice roots on your trees, but from a practical standpoint it’s more important to keep them alive in the beginning than to be able to see them. In time they’ll be revealed, as in this case.

Willow Oak - Quercus phellos

The dry soil has been worked around the roots using a chopstick, to fill any gaps. Gaps in the root zone = dead roots in that area.

Willow Oak - Quercus phellos

This is the same picture as the very first one you saw in this article..

I’ve placed it here for you so you can have a birds-eye comparison of how it looked when I started and how it looks afterwards (that’s the photo to your immediate right).

Willow Oak - Quercus phellos

The final result for today, after a thorough watering.

If you compare this photo with the first one (to the left) you can see that I’ve revealed a little more of the nebari, making the tree look even more impressive than before.

Now I’ll wait for it to leaf out, so I can continue its development.

Let me know what you think of today’s work.

Note:

Comments are closed. Remember to use the new Insider’s Club Form to post your questions and comments. This helps everybody learn and help and this is where I am now posting responses to your inquires and comments. (You’ll find the forum by scrolling up; it’s on your right.)

How To Fix Problems When They Happen (For They Will)

by Zach Smith | Mar 11, 2018 | Care, Crabapple, Pruning, Styling, Wiring

As you know by now, we had an unexpectedly cold winter that included two snowfalls that accumulated (inches, which for us is unheard of) and temps of 15F on three separate occasions. For those of you up north, this is probably balmy spring weather, but down here the trees don’t like it a lot. Everything goes on the ground, of course, but there can still be problems.

I potted this nice little Crabapple, Malus sp., last summer. It did well and seemed fine going into winter. Due to the harshness of the winter it lost a couple of small branches, as well as the leader and a small section at the top of the tree. Is this a problem? You bet. Problems happen in bonsai, despite our best efforts. So what do you do? You fix them, of course.

Here’s another view of the tree. In this shot it’s easy to see the dead leader and branches down along the trunk. I need to unwire the tree, then remove the dead stuff, and then rebuild the design of the tree. You will eventually be faced with this same problem, on many occasions. But that’s okay. Designing bonsai is fun, and so is redesigning them.

In this photo the tree is unwired. You will be doing a lot of unwiring (if you use anodized aluminum wire). It’s tedious, but it’s a big part of bonsai.

Here I’ve removed all of the dead stuff, and chopped that dead section off the top of the tree.

What do you do next? You make that angle cut. It was good to see green at the base of the angle cut; that means the trunk is alive in that area. Will it die back more? There’s certainly that possibility. But allowing the leader to run will enhance the strength of that area, so for that reason plus the need to thicken the transition point I won’t do anything to it for months (if at all this season).

Here I’ve wired and positioned my new leader..

More wire, more positioning.

Here’s a closeup of the back of the tree. There are small shoots that I need to let run for a while. In time I’ll wire and position them, in order to fill out the design.

The final shot for today. There will be more changes to this tree as it grows back out, but for now it’s got a workable design. I’m looking forward to seeing how it develops.

Let me know what you think of this tree.

Note:

Spring Work – Potting And Repotting

by Zach Smith | Mar 4, 2018 | Bald Cypress, Care, Chinese Elm, Elms, Potting, Pruning, Soil

The beat goes on. As I mentioned yesterday, spring is the time when you need to do all sorts of things all at once. One of those things is potting. Another, related, is repotting. Here are today’s subjects.

Here’s my Chinese elm, Ulmus parvifolia, that you can learn more about on its Progression page. Last fall, I decided that this view of the tree didn’t really show it off to best advantage. I liked the one below better.

Better trunk movement, better tapering transition, all in all just better. Today it was time to turn it in the pot.

I took off only enough root to fit the tree in the pot, including a small amount at the bottom of the root mass to allow for a little drainage layer (till the roots grow down into that area, of course). The tree won’t mind this at all.

Tied down and filled in with fresh soil. As you may be able to see, the tree is leafing out. I prefer to do my work on Chinese elms when the buds are swelling, not in the dead of winter. I also lift them from the growing beds at this time.

Here’s a two-tree Bald cypress planting I got from a fellow grower last fall. I figured it would make a nice composition more or less as-is. Today it was time to make this happen.

I happened to have this antique Tokoname tray on the shelf, and I thought it would complement these two trees very well.

A good bit of root had to go, in order to fit these two trees into the tray properly. I also took off a lot of the upper parts of the trees. That should help balance things.

Here they are, placed in the tray.

And the tray filled in with soil. These trees are already budding, and I don’t anticipate potting them will delay their growth too much. In a couple of weeks, they should be filled out pretty well.

Note:

For All You Timid Root-Pruners Out There

by Zach Smith | Feb 9, 2018 | Bald Cypress, Care, Pruning

I regularly cause a lot of anxiety by how drastically I root-prune newly collected trees. To be sure, it takes some courage to start really chopping on your deciduous trees the way they need to be, but once you figure out they don’t mind it does get a lot easier.

This Bald cypress (Taxodium distichum) a client bought last fall, which surprised me the other day by starting to pop buds all over, is actually a different case in that it’s been container grown to size. My bonsai friend and sometimes supplier Bill grew this tree from a young seedling, developing the trunk by the grow and chop method. He did an awesome job of creating taper.

But the roots, man oh man, he actually got them to buttress in the growing container by keeping the tree’s roots submerged in water all the time. It’s a technique I plan to try myself. Notice how deep the growing container is. And notice how the roots have burst through the container. When I got it from Bill, he had the whole tree stuck in a 5-gallon bucket. I knew I had a root-pruning job ahead of me. With the tree popping buds, I had to take care of this today.

The first step was easy – just saw off what won’t be needed. I went ahead and took it down to about how deep the eventual bonsai container will be. There’s no point in leaving thick roots that will have to be chopped again down the road.

The rest of the container removed.

The roots have conformed themselves to the shape of the container.

Container-grown trees always produce coiling roots; in fact, you’ll see many container-grown trees, and Bald cypress is one of the worst, that have really horrible-looking roots owing to this phenomenon. I believe that Bill’s technique of growing the tree in a very deep but not too wide container, and keeping it submerged, prevented this problem from happening.

Here’s the shot that is sure to make some folks cringe.

There’s just not much left of the root mass, now is there? But this is all that’s needed.

If you’ll look closely at the third photo above, you’ll notice one very interesting fact: there are no nice fresh white feeder roots. It’s not time for them to begin growing yet. BCs push foliar growth first, whether on a newly collected tree or a container-grown tree. Once the shoots start pushing, that’s when the new root growth begins. This probably won’t happen for another couple of weeks. But I’m taking advantage of the habits of the species to go ahead and do this necessary work now.

And finally, the tree in its new (temporary) home. The pot is only a 3-gallon, but it’s plenty since no further trunk thickening or taper building is required. All of the branch work can be done starting from here.

The base of this tree is 3.5″ across, 3.5″ above the soil surface. It’s chopped at 22″, and should finish at about 28-30″. The buttressing is very uncommon for a tree this size.

Let me know what you think.

And are you chopping your roots hard enough?

Want to post a comment after February 2018? Remember to use the new Insider’s Club Form to post your questions and comments. This helps everybody learn and help and this is where I am now posting responses to your inquires and comments. (You’ll find the forum by scrolling up; it’s on your right.)

A Few Sweetgums For 2018

by Zach Smith | Nov 19, 2017 | Care, Collecting, Pruning, Sweetgum

It’s not time to dig trees yet, certainly not Sweetgums (Liquidambar styraciflua), but it’s not a bad time to scout for specimens to dig when the time comes. Here are a few that I expect to lift in 2018.

This one volunteered four or five years ago, and I finally chopped it earlier this year to begin stunting it. Sweetgums like to grow straight and tall, and very fast, so you have to be prepared to rein in that growth or the tree can get away from you quickly. By this I mean the trunk will lose its taper, usually by the time the tree gets to be about six to ten feet tall. Up until that magic moment, you can harvest nice upright specimens with subtle but suitable taper and create a nice apical tapering transition.

This one has a 2″ trunk base at the soil level. Most likely it has nice radial roots as well, but I’ll know more about that this coming May. When I chopped it earlier this year, it produced two strong new leaders. Today it was time to eliminate one and chop the other. I like the one I’m looking at in this photo.

Here I’ve sawed off the leader in back, leaving a stub that will be reduced in spring. I don’t want to chance cutting it flush now; the tree may object and die back at the bottom edge of the cut. By leaving the stub, I can carve down this coming spring and the tree should respond by throwing buds near that fresh cut. Then I’m assured of proper healing.

You can see I also chopped the new leader down. I also left this leader long, as it won’t bud right at the chop but rather at an internode below the chop. I can remove that stub next spring once I have a new leader going.

The trunk of this tree is just over 1″ at the transition point, by the way, which is 14″ above the soil surface. This will allow me to finish out this specimen at about 18-20″. I plan to train the tree in the typical Sweetgum columnar style. It’s actually just beginning the process of barking up, so that will lend a lot of character to the trunk.

Here’s another specimen I chopped recently. Also with a 2″ base, this one got chopped at 10″ above the soil to a new leader. I need this leader to continue running, in order to make the tapering transition look right. Although the photo doesn’t show it, the trunk is about 1″ across at the transition point. Nice taper in another nice upright specimen. The bark on this one is also starting to roughen up.

Finally, here’s a triple-trunk specimen that volunteered two or three years ago. I didn’t chop it to the ground or anything, it just decided that three trunks were better than one. I like its appearance, and I think it’ll make a nice bonsai starting in 2018.

Let me know what you think.

Happy Halloween From Me And The Dragon

by Zach Smith | Oct 31, 2017 | Care, Elms, Pruning, Water Elm

Today’s Halloween, and Halloween is my birthday, so I took the day off and it turned out to be a perfect day to do some work on the Dragon, my super-duper Water-elm (Planera aquatica). For those of you unfamiliar with this tree, here it is in “stick” form back in Summer 2015. A not-so-humble beginning – trunk base 5.5″ across, 42″ in length, nice “dragony” trunk.

Here it is back in July, after getting wired and growing and getting unwired and trimmed.

Here’s the first shot from this morning. The tree is developing right on schedule. But it does need to have the dead wood treated with lime sulfur. It’s mostly very durable, but I don’t want to see any insect damage.

After the trim and treatment. I’ll pot up this tree in the spring, once I have the custom pot in hand that I’ll be ordering soon. I also need to carve out the shari into the new apex. Easy stuff.

I caught a glimpse of this tree from another angle, and wondered if I had the front right.

I think there are definitely two options. This one seems a good bit more dramatic.

What do you think? Speak before it gets potted in spring!

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Repotting Mr. Van Winkle

Willow Oak - Quercus phellos

Willow Oak - Quercus phellos

Willow Oak - Quercus phellos

Willow Oak - Quercus phellos

Willow Oak - Quercus phellos

Willow Oak - Quercus phellos

Willow Oak - Quercus phellos

Willow Oak - Quercus phellos

How To Fix Problems When They Happen (For They Will)

Spring Work – Potting And Repotting

For All You Timid Root-Pruners Out There

A Few Sweetgums For 2018

Happy Halloween From Me And The Dragon

Bonsai Files