Sweetgum | Bonsai South

Bonsai South News + Odds & Ends

by Zach Smith | Mar 25, 2018 | Care, Collecting, Potting, Sweetgum, Yaupon

In the next two weeks we will be launching our updated website. Cathy has created a wonderful new design, which will be much more functional and easier for you to use. We’ll send out an announcement when we launch.

Meanwhile, here are a few odds and ends that you might find interesting. For example, we just removed the Dwarf yaupon hedge (Ilex vomitoria ‘nana’) from in front of the house. The house was built in 1985. We’ve lived here since 1995. Considering the size of the individual plants in the hedge, each must be 40 years old or older. Some looked like worthwhile bonsai candidates. Here’s one.

You can get an idea of how much material I had to remove to find this potential clump-style bonsai to be. But it’s got a lot of potential. Next we wait to see if it comes back all right.

So I had to have another part of my yard dug up recently, and this Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua), which I mentioned in a previous blog, had to be lifted or it wasn’t going to survive. I went ahead and put it in this Chuck Iker round, and it seems to be recovering.

Speaking of pots, a long-time and very good client of mine, Lary Howard, also makes custom pieces. You’ll be seeing more of his outstanding work on this site in the near future. Meanwhile, here are a few I just received to give you an idea. This one is a rustic piece. Very well-crafted.

Another unique example of Lary’s work.

And this one is going into my personal collection. I don’t even know if I have a tree for it yet.

And now, the final and odd end for this episode of odds and ends. This close up is of a Sweetbay (Magnolia virginiana) I collected in Winter 2017. The foliage is coming out now, as you can see. But what’s that big fat bud in the center, and why isn’t it opening? This bud set last fall. Just a month or so ago, leaf buds began to form around this center bud. Could it be a flower bud? This and a few others appear at the ends of the branches that formed last year. I’m not familiar with the growth habit of this species, so I can only speculate. If it is a flower bud, then you’ll see a follow-up when it and the others open up. For now, it remains a mystery.

This will probably be my last blog until the new website launches. See you then!

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.

One Way To Better Bonsai – Draw A Picture Of What You Want

by Zach Smith | May 19, 2017 | Care, Styling, Sweetgum

Here’s a nice little Sweetgum bonsai, Liquidambar styraciflua, that I potted up a few weeks ago. I’d been growing it for a couple of years prior, liked the base, and it struck me that I might just have a decent broom-style specimen in this tree. So I chopped the trunk and wired up two leaders to get the ball rolling. It’s resumed growth, so I expect to be able to make some good headway as the season progresses. And I can envision what the structure of this tree is going to look like.

For those of you who aren’t yet experienced at looking at a bare trunk or newly styled starter bonsai and seeing a developed specimen, there’s a good way to create a roadmap to your goal – just draw a picture.

Yes, I’m hearing all the “I can’t draw a straight line” protests out there. Drawing is art. Art is tough, unless you’re artistic. But I don’t think this is a very good excuse. After all, you set out to grow bonsai, and bonsai is high art. So you must have thought you could learn to do this high art, or you wouldn’t be here reading this. If you can grow bonsai, you can draw bonsai. And I’m here to tell you, if you can draw bonsai you can grow them and grow them well.

Here’s what I think this tree could look like. It’s a classic broom-style design. And it didn’t take all that long, maybe 10 minutes. The best part of this effort is, I now have a plan for styling the tree in a way that I know will make it look like a real tree. Not only does it take a lot of the guesswork out of doing the design, it also will help me keep the proportions of the tree in check.

As I’ve written before, I’ve seen more overgrown trees than I can count. It’s a natural mistake to make, because our trees keep on growing and it’s not in our nature to cut off the work of many years. But I can tell you this: if I compare this drawing with the tree a year or two or three down the road, if it’s overgrown I’m going to know it immediately and exactly what I have to do to correct it.

Here’s another one I recently potted, from a tree lifted last fall. It already had good roots so I didn’t have to defoliate it. Now it’s growing again, so within a few weeks I’ll be able to start doing some of the detailed design work. But what exactly will this entail?

This is the plan. So as I make wiring and pruning decisions, I can refer to this drawing. And I always know that if I can make the actual tree look like this plan, it’s just not possible to go wrong.

So does this inspire you to pick up pencil and paper? Or do you already practice drawing design plans?

Ground Growing For Size – How To Make Them Fatter Faster

by Zach Smith | May 10, 2017 | Collecting, Potting, Pruning, Soil, Sweetgum

I posted this photo last December of a Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) I had been growing in the ground for a few years. The tree started out as something just beyond a seedling, in a nursery pot. I was developing it in the pot, using directional pruning techniques to create taper and movement. But the tree just wasn’t fattening up as I wanted it to. So I put it in the ground, knowing that the fastest way to make a smaller tree into a bigger tree was to give it room to grow.

This photo shows one classic way to get thickening in the base of your tree: letting a low shoot run. And boy, did this one run! In the process, I now have a 3″ trunk base whereas I started with a 1″ base just a few years ago.

So I chopped off the low leader in December and sealed the chop, with the idea of lifting the specimen in May (the best time to collect Sweetgums).

And so, on May 1st I sawed this tree out of the ground. Here it is with its root mass and soil ball (I shook off what I could). It’s grown like a weed, as you can see.

First I gave the root mass a good washing off. I don’t want any native soil, as it’s not needed.

Referring to the above picture to your right, the tree will go into a fast-draining coarse bonsai soil, which will promote regrowth.

I also cut back the long leaders; they aren’t necessary at this point.

Take special note of the branch growing from beneath the large cut. This is important to ensure I don’t get any dieback into the root from this area. I was careful to leave the branch collar when I chopped the big leader, also for this purpose. But this branch is my insurance policy. I’ll leave it for a year or so (though I will keep it cut back while developing the structure of this tree).

The next step. All of the foliage is gone now. This is absolutely vital when collecting deciduous trees that are in leaf. If you fail to do this, the tree continues transpiring moisture through the leaves and will literally dry out.

I’ve also cut back the roots in the first stage. You can see one of the coiling roots that will need to go.

You can also see the trunk line of this specimen and the massive taper from the base. The trunk measures 3″ across above the root zone – so I’d say my ground-growing effort succeeded.

Now I’ve got the root zone cut down to size. Notice how much smaller it is in this photo than in the previous one.

It’s a common mistake to leave too many and too long roots on a collected tree.

Remember two principles when working on the root zone of a newly collected tree:

the roots need to be cut back enough so that they will fit in a bonsai pot in the future, including cutting them shallow enough for that same purpose; and
they need to be 2-3 diameters long so you can build taper in them when smaller roots sprout from the cut ends.

What’s the best front for this tree? I have at least a couple of options, and I don’t have to choose now.

Should the trunk be chopped back farther? I can see a likely spot for a chop. But again, I have options and don’t have to choose now.

After a good dusting with rooting powder, here’s the tree all potted up. All cuts 1/4″ and over were sealed with cut seal. This has to be done every time you collect a tree.

And a third possible front. I’m thinking this is my favorite.

Sweetgums are great to work with. They grow fast and will regrow from chops very well. It does take some time to build ramification and get some leaf size reduction. But all in all, they are one of my very favorites.

Today this tree is showing signs of pushing new buds, so it looks like the harvest was successful.

Slip-Potting A Sweetgum – How To Make A Nice Composition

by Zach Smith | Mar 5, 2017 | Care, Styling, Sweetgum

Bonsai design is a hugely complex subject. The good news is, we have some tried and true rules to help get us through the process even if we’re not the next Rembrandt (I’m certainly not).

Last October I published a blog titled Designing Your Bonsai – Not To Not Miss Better Options, which featured this pretty decent Sweetgum.

As I noted at the time, the usual idea with a piece of material like this is that it becomes an informal upright bonsai. There’s nothing at all wrong with this idea. But with all of the foliage emerging from near the top of the trunk, I got this strange idea while looking at photos of the tree from different angles. I ultimately decided that this angle might make an ordinary Sweetgum a little less so.

This photo was taken in October, when I published the blog referenced above. It had grown out enough to get an initial wiring. And that’s what convinced me to do something different.

Take a few seconds to study this photo. Does anything look odd about it, or not quite right? Remember our principles about potting trees in bonsai pots. For oval and rectangle shaped pots, you always pot the tree slightly off-center. The idea is that the very tip of the apex of the tree should be right about in the center of the oval or rectangle, which helps you choose where to place the base of the trunk in the pot. Now, depending on the specific degree of “informality” your tree possesses, the apex may not end up precisely over the center of the pot. And in the case of slanting style bonsai, this definitely does not happen. Not only does the apex shift away from the center of the pot, the trunk base shifts farther away from the center of the pot in the opposite direction. The key is always balance. In the photo above, does the tree look balanced in its nursery pot? It appears the trunk may be emerging from near the center of the pot, and this throws the apex far off-center. Taken as a whole, it looks like the tree and pot are going to tip over. And this gives us all of the guidance we need in order to make a nice composition out of this Sweetgum with the right bonsai pot.

Here’s the result of applying compositional principles to a slanting style bonsai. I’ve restored the balance of this tree and pot as a whole. Notice that the base of the trunk is a good bit off-center; this is to counterbalance the thrusting movement of the trunk toward the left. If the tree were planted in the center of the pot, as in the photo above, it would appear as if the whole thing were going to tip over. Balance is vital to making a nice composition with your bonsai.

The buds of this tree are starting to open, so in order to avoid any unnecessary disturbance of the roots I slip-potted it into its pot. It shouldn’t skip a beat.

I’ll be posting this Sweetgum bonsai for sale in about a month, so stay tuned.

Thank You For A Great 2016 – This Year Will Be Even Better

by Zach Smith | Jan 1, 2017 | Bald Cypress, Care, Collecting, Elms, Hawthorn, Hornbeam, Maples, Oaks, Sweetgum

Happy New Year to all of you!

And many thanks to all of you who helped Bonsai South grow in 2016. We’ve been doing better each and every year since I relaunched the business in 2010, and I’m happy to report that 2017 looks like it will be another record-setting year.

What can you expect this coming year and into the future? The mainstay of our business is obviously larger collected specimens of various species – Bald cypress, Hawthorns, Oaks, American hornbeam, Sweetgum, Elms, and so on. We’ve also done well with field-grown specimens of not only these but also non-native species such as Chinese elm. Our plans for 2017 include adding more species along with greatly expanding our growing field; obviously we will also continue the tradition of collecting the best material we can find. We expect to roughly double 2017 production, with plans for much more in subsequent years.

I get a lot of inquiries about new material, as you can imagine. The Winter 2017 collecting season begins now, so in the coming weeks I’ll be posting photos of new collects. When spring gets here there will be lots of new material for sale.

As always, we welcome any specific requests for trees you may have. Just send me a note via our Contact page.

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