Dogwood Work And Potting

by | Apr 11, 2020 | Care, Dogwood, Potting, Pruning, Styling, Wiring
This Roughleaf dogwood has made the most of its spring growth. Today’s the day to take the next step in making this tree into a bonsai.
Starting at the bottom, I removed the superfluous shoots in the lower right-hand area in preparation for wiring and positioning branches there.
I started by wiring a young shoot I’d noted in a previous blog, that is emerging from just the right spot at the low trunk chop to provide a foliage mass where I need it.
On the left, I needed more movement in a branch that was already fairly stiff. I wired it with some 3 mm aluminum wire, which allowed me to reposition it where I wanted. You can see that now I’ve gotten all of the low branches in good spots, with some nice movement in each.
I’m a big proponent of “hedging” bonsai in development; it’s a technique I’ve been practicing for over 30 years now, and which has gained popularity at the forum Bonsai Nut based on Walter Pall’s work. Hedging is more or less what it sounds like – you take your shears and shape foliage masses on your tree by rough-pruning to a silhouette. The tree responds by back-budding and increasing its twigging. The added benefit is it allows you to come back and do selective pruning as you build out foliage masses from top to bottom. This is the refinement stage we work toward as we get closer to the best expression of each of our trees.
The final step for today. I’ve had this unglazed Chuck Iker round for a few years now, waiting for the right tree to come along. I’m thinking this is the one. What do you think?

Maple And Elm Styling Work

by | Apr 10, 2020 | Care, Elms, Maples, Pruning, Styling, Wiring

So here’s an update on one of the Boxelders I’m playing with. It’s got a very nice flush of spring growth. Some styling decisions and work need doing at this point in time. No surprise there. But that got me to thinking. Every tree we work on has to have its own design plan, whether we consciously think about it or not. Here’s a list of tasks that need doing now:

  • Trim back overlong branches
  • Trim or remove upward and/or downward pointing branches, or use them for directional changes
  • Wire and position branches and/or sub-branches as needed
  • Shorten new leader in order to build taper at the trunk chop transition point
Step one is to shorten overlong branches as needed. Here I’ve started that process, from the bottom of the tree upward.
Continuing upward, same thing.
Here I’ve wired and positioned branches, followed by shortening the leader. I took the leader back to two nodes. I’ll almost certainly get buds at both nodes, at which point I’ll take another internode off and use the one closest to the transition point for my new leader. This will help build taper and thicken the transition point.

Here’s a Winged elm, Ulmus alata, that I lifted from a field growing area back in January. While it’s not too well established yet, from a rooting perspective, it does have some shoots that need to be wired and positioned before they get too stiff the bend easily. So here’s the design plan for this specimen:

  • Remove unneeded shoots
  • Wire and position shoots that will be used in the design
  • Set the tree aside and let it grow until the wire needs removal; then,
  • Rewire and trim, as needed, developing branches
  • Remove trunk chop stub
  • Wire up new leader
  • Carve lower trunk chop used for directional change
This is all I can do today. Now it’s back to the bench for this specimen, and waiting for signs of wire cutting into branches. I expect that will happen as early as late next month.

Working On A Couple Of Oaks

by | Apr 4, 2020 | Care, Oaks, Pruning, Styling, Wiring
Most everything is out now, including oaks. Even Rip van Winkle the Willow oak is finally pushing new growth.
I love American beech but hate trying to make bonsai out of them (beech and oaks are cousins, by the way). They have a single flush of growth each year, the leaves don’t reduce too much and they root slowly. What’s not to like, right?

Anyway, God help me but I brought home a couple last year because … well, I have no idea why. Check out this one. It had a couple of branches when I lifted it, which dutifully leafed out. It also produce some additional buds/shoots, but they didn’t survive winter. I know the roots aren’t that strong on this one, because it gradually laid itself over in the pot during the 2019 growing season. I pushed it upright earlier this spring, so that maybe it could gain some strength. But ugly. Ugly.
With noting to lose but a little time and cut paste, I decided today to chop the tree so I can see if it’ll backbud after the spring flush of growth. If it does, and if it ends up looking like anything in the tree family, I’ll post an update. Otherwise, it’ll just spend another year on the bench. (Isn’t the trunk nice looking, though?)
I’m pretty sure this beech is why I collected the one above (this one came first). it’s a very nice specimen, and it came with some branches to go with a killer trunk. I did a year two chop earlier in the season, and today I wired up the new leader I’m going to encourage. And that, as they say, is about it for this one. See you next year.
Here’s a big Live oak I collected several years ago. It struggled some last year, but this year it’s putting on some strong growth. Hurray! But there’s a problem with this specimen (at least one): it just doesn’t look “Live oakey” enough. Well, that’s nothing some big-gauge wire and muscle can’t fix.
As you probably know, the classic form of the Live oak is one of spreading down-sweeping branches that often touch the ground. the spread is often twice the height. Now, I can’t get any of the branches on this tree to touch the soil, but that’s okay. I can give the impression of the classic Live oak form. Here I’ve gotten the first two branches in a more compliant position (that stiff left one cracked a bit, but oaks heal very well).
And two more branches got the same treatment. I’m leaving the busy crown alone for now, hoping for more growth which will help thicken everything below it and make the trunk chop transition point smoother. I’m sure that in another four or five years it’ll be much closer to believable in appearance. Given that the trunk base on this specimen is 4″ across, I haven’t done too bad so far.

I’d love to hear what you think of today’s work.

Big BC Update

by | Mar 28, 2020 | Bald Cypress, Care, Styling, ZPC
I posted a progression on this tree at the end of last year. With spring now in full force, this specimen has exploded with growth. I repotted the tree last year, and was in hopes of big growth for 2019; but I had to wait. But that’s fine. To make a good design takes time, and this is never truer than when you’re working on a large specimen.

Let’s look at some details of the 2020 plan and how I expect to accomplish it.

First of all, notice how I’ve taken a piece of wire and lashed the lowest left-hand branch to the branch above it. Why did I do this? The reason is simple: this branch has grown only weakly since I first selected, wired and positioned it. Even though I had brought the branch down, this is usually not enough to keep strong growth from occurring. In this particular case, it did. So I’m going to overcome this problem by pointing the branch upward, and this was an easy way to do it.
I’m getting results already. If you look closely at the tip of the weak branch, I have the beginnings of an elongating shoot. This is something that has not happened on this branch since it first formed. Each year the branch would put on its fronds, and just stop growing for the season. Very frustrating. But now I’ve got something going that should thicken the branch up during this growing season. You can use this technique to good effect; I have, many times.
Now let’s look up into the crown of the tree. It takes a number of years to properly complete the tapering transition when you begin with a big trunk chop. It’s common to lose patience and build out the crown of your tree before the transition is done. I need to make sure this one gets done right. With the rampant growth I’m getting, I should be able to thicken the base of the transition point easily. I need it to be at about 50% thicker than what it is now.

By rampant growth I mean the number of elongating shoots that have appeared in the crown from bottom to top. These are the type of shoots that produce thickening of the branches they appear on. If you don’t get these shoots, you don’t get thickening – it’s just that simple.
Here’s a closer view of the transition point. I don’t have far to go at all in making it look smooth and realistic.
Here’s the view from the back side. Isn’t that wound healing nicely! I expect it to be completely closed in about two to three more seasons.
For the final shot this evening, I wanted to show you the branch that I did the corrective work on back in December. Remember that I needed to force the base of the branch down at a sharper angle than it originally had. So I notched the branch underneath, put some heavy wire on it, and made that happen (cracking the top of the branch in the process – but it was all good). I was confident the branch would come through the rough treatment just fine, and evidently it has. Look at all the growth on it! The two wounds will completely heal during this growing season.

I hope this series of photos will be helpful to those of you who are working with large Bald cypresses. There are some tried and true techniques for making impressive bonsai from these specimens. It does take time, but it’s well worth it.

Let me know what you think of the progress.

Chinese Elm Initial Styling

by | Mar 25, 2020 | Care, Chinese Elm, Elms, Styling, Wiring
Here’s the Chinese elm you saw this past weekend. It’s a pretty “hunky” specimen, with a good curve in the trunk that I can use to start a nice design. As I mentioned the other day, when left to grow without intervention Chinese elms don’t put on much if any taper. They also grow pretty straight, so when I saw the curve in the trunk I was excited. As you can see, I got a lot of budding and that makes picking branches easy.
Here’s a view from the other side. There’s the stub of a branch I left, for reasons I don’t remember. It most likely won’t be part of the final design.
Here’s a phenomenon you’ll often see on members of the elm family: tons of shoots coming right out of the chop point around the trunk. I could use one or two in my design if I needed to, but I’ve got a better choice.
Another view of the chop point, plus a stretch of trunk lacking buds. You pretty much always have to work around “flaws” in the way your trees choose to grow. But what fun would bonsai be if everything worked out exactly as you wanted it to?
The first step in designing this tree was to remove all the extra shoots starting near the bottom of the tree. We work from bottom to top, more or less all the time.
The first few shoots get wired. If you’ve spent any time training trees from a bare trunk with shoots, you know how tender they are at this stage. It takes some practice to do this without popping them off.
Moving up the trunk. Taking off most of the growth as I go, and wiring what’s left.
At the top of the trunk, it was taking off all those shoots emerging from the chop and then selecting the shoot in the right spot to start growing out a leader. That’s all I can do for now. I’ll let the tree continue to grow, and plan to remove all of this wire sometime in May. By that time these shoots will be much thicker and hardened off. I expect to have to rewire, but by the fall the branch structure will be set. I also expect to cut back the leader at least once this season, and allow a new one to grow out. That process will ultimately give me the trunk line I need, with movement and taper. It’s sometimes hard to see the future when you start out with a piece of material like this. But I’ve worked on enough trees through the years to know how well they can turn out. Just look at the photos below for proof!

Bonsai Odds & Ends – Huckleberry, Chinese Elm, Pocomoke Crape

by | Mar 22, 2020 | Blueberry, Care, Chinese Elm, Crape myrtle, Elms, Potting, Styling
Here’s an update on my big Huckleberry bonsai that I potted this spring. As you can see, it has filled out with foliage. It’s normal for Huckleberries to take three years to really get “bushy” with foliage: year one is typically all structure building, making the branch structure and starting the apex; year two continues this process, along with some sub-branching development; and year three is when the tree first fills out. It also takes three years for a good blooming and fruiting. This tree put on a very nice show of flowers, and now it’s got a lot of fruit that’s ripen in a month or so. Now, it’s important to understand what the explosion of foliage this year means, and what it doesn’t mean. What it means is, the sub-branching (aka ramification) begins with this process. If you study this photo, you’ll see that I have a lot of foliage but no real organization at the secondary and tertiary branching level. There’s nothing to be done about that this year, except to prune overlong secondary shoots and watch for branching that’s gotten out of hand (it gets pruned severely or off altogether). Next year, I’ll have hardened off sub-branching that will be ready for grow and clip and editing, which will be the real building of the interior. But for now, I’m enjoying the vibrant health of this specimen. It’s growing exactly as I want it to.
I collected this Chinese elm in February. It’s a nice specimen – not as much taper as I’d like, but left to their own devices Chinese elms do not typically put on taper. This is normal for most deciduous trees, which want to grow straight and tall as fast as they can. But I can work with this one. There’s subtle taper from base to trunk chop, and I can easily build more into the crown. I’ll begin the process this year. The first step will be to get a basic structure going, and today I did that. I’ll post a blog showing the details this coming week.
Here’s the Pocomoke Crape I wrote about last weekend. I ordered in a custom pot (a beautiful Lary Howard piece), and went to town on that huge root mass yesterday. I brought the tree more upright during the potting process, and I think this makes for a more dramatic composition. I’d love to hear what you think about it.