by Zach Smith | Feb 12, 2017 | Bald Cypress, Care, Potting, Pruning, Soil, ZPC
I have always loved really big bonsai. No matter where you see them, either in a show or in someone’s collection, your eye is invariably drawn to them. They’re so … big! And yet they’re a small representation of something that’s super big, which is a little odd when you think of it.
Really big bonsai come with special challenges, which are all about size and weight. It’s okay to say “Duh!” at this point. Yes, when you collect a piece of material from the wild and the only thing it’ll go into is a concrete mixing tub from Home Depot®, you have earned your membership in the Big Bonsai Club. I’ve been a member for almost 30 years now. When I joined the club, I was only 33. I was much stronger than I am now, but more importantly I was much younger. But I still love those big ones.
One species that really lends itself to the Big Bonsai Club stable is Bald cypress, Taxodium distichum. These trees are so impressive in the wild, if you have a really big one on your bench it makes a really big statement. One good feature of Bald cypress is that the wood is amazingly light. This means that even though your soil mix is going to have some weight to it, at least the tree won’t add much to the load. That turns out to be a real blessing when you go on to add a 25-pound bonsai pot to the equation.
I’ve had this specimen for a couple of years now. It’s really big. The trunk base is 6″ when measured 7″ from the soil surface. Those surface roots spread 13″ across. You can see where I’ve been growing the apex, working on the tapering transition. I should be able to finish this work in two more growing seasons. The finished height for this bonsai is going to be 32-34″.
Today it was time to go from the mixing tub to a training pot. I had this Byron Myrick rectangle that had cracked during firing (so I got it for nothing), and I think it works pretty well.
I took off enough root to fit this tree in its pot. After putting in a drainage layer of straight Riverlite® expanded shale, I set the tree in and filled the spaces with prepared bonsai soil. The tree is budding presently, and I’m confident the potting work won’t put much of a damper on it.
The big negatives about this bonsai are, as I mentioned above, size and weight. Though the tree itself is light, the tree plus several gallons of soil weighed about 35-40 pounds. I’m guessing the pot weighs another 25-30 pounds. So this whole composition tips the scales at going on 70 pounds. I’m only eight years shy of being that number old, so trust me when I say I can feel every muscle it takes to lug this thing around when I’m dumb enough to do it.
So no more really big trees for me, just this last one. Oh, I’ll no doubt collect a few more here and there, and send them on to braver and/or stronger and/or younger bonsai artists. But I’ll content myself and my personal collection from now on with just a few of these very large small trees in shallow pots.
*My back approves this message.*
by Zach Smith | Jan 2, 2017 | Care, Elms, Potting, Soil, Styling
And so, armed with some new handmade pots that I wrote about yesterday, my trigger finger has suddenly gotten itchy. To satisfy my need to create bonsai, I went out to my growing area and decided this Hackberry, Celtis laevigata, could be successfully lifted and made into something that can look good immediately this spring.
This one has been in the ground about four years, starting its bonsai journey as a pencil-thick seedling. This past year the tree put on a lot of strong growth, which helped thicken the trunk base to about 1″ diameter. But there’s a really long and straight section of trunk that continues on from the lower trunk area, which by the way has some nice movement. What would you do with something like this?
Here’s the answer I saw. By taking off the main trunk at the point where those two nice sub-trunks emerged, I now have a rudimentary crown for a bonsai that just happened to grow on its own for me. Makes sense, right? So the next move was to cut the tree out of the ground.
Another really nice thing about this Hackberry is that it came up with a good root system. Since the tree did not grow in place from seed, there wasn’t a tap root to have to deal with. So I’ve got a head start on good radial roots and a fibrous root system.
Now everything’s been pruned back where it needs to be for now. I’ve established a nice set of proportions in the crown of the tree that complements the size and height of the trunk. The roots have been cut back to fit a bonsai pot. And isn’t that trunk movement and character nice for a young tree?
And so, taking one of those nice Byron Myrick ovals I wrote about yesterday, I’ve now got a neat little Hackberry bonsai-to-be. Assuming all goes well, this tree will have a pretty complete broom-form design by the end of the 2017 growing season. I’ll post it for sale sometime in the spring.
Let me know what you think. Have you worked with Hackberry before?
by Zach Smith | Sep 16, 2016 | Care, Pines, Potting, Soil, Styling
Several years ago I bought 50 Japanese black pine, Pinus thunbergiana, seedlings. I hadn’t worked much with pines but wanted to give it another try, and I knew that JBP does very well here in the Deep South. Hence plenty of raw material.
I planted about 30-40 of them in the ground, most in a clearing at the back of my property; the rest went into either pots or another ground growing area in full sun. Then I waited to see how they’d do. I lost some the first year, then more the second year. By the third year it was time to have some trees removed from my property, and the tree cutters found a great spot to roll the logs prior to removing them – right over the bulk of my pines. I didn’t find any trace of them.
Now I was down to about eight seedlings left. I did some in-ground training on the ones I’d planted out of harm’s way, and left the ones in pots alone. Another couple of years went by, and one by one they all died – all except for one lone specimen in a pot. I ignored this survivor, except for feeding and overwatering it. I had stuck it in a pot with really lousy soil – I’m not even sure how I put that soil together, it was so mucky. But the tree trooped on, growing ever so slowly.
Earlier this year I noticed this tree had grown a pretty long leader, but had some nice lower branching. Since it had decided not to die, despite every effort on my part, I went ahead and cut off the leader. Then proceeded to ignore it some more.
Today I got a wild hair and decided this valiant JBP deserved a shot at a bonsai pot. So here’s the result:
It’s a nice looking little tree, isn’t it? While it’s not particularly large, it is at least 10 years old. The trunk has some nice movement, and there’s a decent set of branches. Now, I’m pretty confident this guy isn’t going to last through the coming winter, maybe not even to the arrival of winter, but we do have an understanding between us. It’s going right back to neglect-ville, which is my bonsai secret weapon. If it survives, I’ll drag it out in spring and post an updated photo. If not, then of course we won’t speak of it again.
by Zach Smith | Apr 9, 2016 | Care, Maples, Potting, Pruning, Soil
About four years ago I acquired this trident maple, Acer buergerianum, from a bonsai friend. He had been growing it in his field bed for several years prior and wanted to get rid of it. I gladly agreed to saw it out of the ground – which, way too much time later proved just about impossible. We lashed it to the back of his Jeep and finished the job that way.
Well, this was the last tree I potted up that day and I was pretty tired. So it went into a really big tub, after which it pretty much sat untouched until today. Just food and water.
It took about an hour, a lot of water and a lot of muscle to get the tree to this point. Isn’t the root base amazing? I had buried it, as I always do, when it was first collected in order to protect it from drying out. This technique works on everything I collect; rarely will I lose a large lateral root on a tree. This trident was no different.
Here’s a shot from the back. You can see where the trunk was chopped several years ago after the tree had been allowed to grow unchecked to thicken the base. The callus is rolling over. Tridents heal well, so in time this wound should close mostly or completely.
Isn’t that a great mat of fibrous roots! You should see the amount I cut away.
It’s a little hard to see from this angle, but there are large buttressing roots all the way around this specimen. Once this tree finds its way into a bonsai pot, the nebari is going to be stunning.
Here’s the tree in its smaller tub. I cut away a lot of stiff larger branches, which could not be bent. When the tree re-buds, I’ll be able to wire the tender new shoots and get a good branch set started. This should happen over the next several weeks.
This tree is available at our Miscellaneous Bonsai sales page, for anyone who’s wanted to tackle a really big trident maple. I believe it can ship in late May or early June.
by Zach Smith | Apr 3, 2016 | Bald Cypress, Care, Potting, Pruning, Soil, Styling, Water Elm
I posted this fall shot of my ‘Root Around Cypress Knee’ Water-elm, Planera aquatica. The tree had been in its pot for a couple of years. Because I had not been able to give it a lot of room during the first potting, I didn’t want to wait another year to cut back the roots and give the tree fresh soil. Plus I wanted to get an idea of the condition of the knee, which is not going to last more than another season or two. This knee is composed of sapwood. While bald cypress heartwood is virtually indestructible, the sapwood is very light and rots easily. This is especially true if the wood remains in contact with water. In the case of this tree, there was a smaller knee emerging from the left-hand side of the trunk base which rotted away last year. So that left me with the main knee.
Here’s a shot of the tree from the rear, after I pulled it from the pot. You can see there were plenty of roots. You can also see the very nice nebari this tree has. This is good news for the time when that knee isn’t with me any longer. It’ll make for a good, stable looking surface root structure.
In this shot I’ve already teased out and eliminated a lot of the roots, especially finer surface roots. This exposed the lower part of the knee and allowed me to judge its integrity. There’s softness going on, and because the knee has a cut surface on the bottom its ability to absorb moisture just cannot be thwarted. Cypress wood is pretty much like a sponge. This is why when collecting the species you have to seal the top chop. Water is sucked up through the sapwood from the severed tap and lateral roots, and it’ll evaporate right through the sapwood at the top chop and dry the tree out.
Another angle on the nebari embracing the knee.
Now the roots are all trimmed and the tree is ready to go back in its pot.
The final result. I’ve raised the tree somewhat in the pot, exposing the fine nebari it possesses. Even once the knee is gone, this is going to be a fine water-elm bonsai.
The trunk base is 2.5″ in diameter and it’s 21″ tall. The pot is a beautiful rounded-corner rectangle by Byron Myrick.
by Zach Smith | Feb 7, 2016 | Bald Cypress, Care, Potting, Soil, Styling
When I’m searching for trees to collect, I always look for certain characteristics of the trunks in order to determine if they’re worth lifting. While there’s definitely a bonsai in each one I collect, I generally don’t visualize the finished bonsai in making that initial judgment. On yesterday’s hunt, I found a bald cypress (Taxodium distichum) specimen in which I immediately saw the completed bonsai.
These are two separate trees that decided to grow right up against one another. This isn’t all that uncommon, but in this case the trees had such a terrific interplay of movement for relatively small specimens that the image of companion flat-tops sprang into my mind. There was no way they weren’t coming home with me.
My biggest challenge in preparing this companion planting for a container was the fact that they were separate trees. To be sure, the roots were entertwined, but during the cleanup there was the distinct possibility that the two trees would come apart. My goal was to preserve their “companionship.”
I spent the time necessary to carefully clean up the root zone, which meant pulling out the incredible mass of weed roots that always gather around cypress trees in the swamp. And of course there’s the thick, gooey mud that goes along with them. But plenty of high pressure water and elbow grease did the trick.
There comes a point where it’s time to pot your bonsai. I frequently direct-pot trees, especially when I don’t need to do any trunk development. For this bonsai-in-the-making, all I’ve got to create is the branch structure (limited) and crowns. This is easily done in a restrictive container; bald cypress is powerfully apically dominant, so I’ll get robust growth right where I need it.
A few more comments on this specimen, which incidentally is potted in this very nice Byron Myrick oval. Notice that the depth of the pot, right at 3″, is just about equal to the thickness of the main trunk at soil level, which is 2.75″. It’s 13″ long. I anticipate the finished height for the main tree will be 28-30″. This makes the pot just under half the height of the bonsai in width, which helps give the impression of height in the specimen.
I planted some moss around the trees. In addition to looking good, it will help protect the surface roots that lie right under the soil surface. I need to be sure these remain moist, so they can sprout new feeders when spring gets here.
All in all, I think this is a very nice composition. What do you think?
