Final winterization preparation.

Gave all bonsai and pre-bonsai plants a final feeding for the season with Peter's 20-20-20 at 1/2dilution. Then treated all plants with Captan fungicide by Bonide, using a solution of 1 Tbsp. CAptan to 1 gallon water.  Cloudy white emulsion was sprayed on tops of all leaves and trunks and finally from beneath leaves.  Prior to spraying, I covered the Japanese Black Pine with foil to minimize how much fungicide was rinsed into the soil so as not to kill any mycorrhizae.

Spraying was done outside with a breeze blowing and 45 F, but wanted to complete treatment today as we had snow flurries this morning; winter is definitely on the way.  Returned the JBP, Parson's Juniper and Shimpaku Juniper to the shed.  Brought the other bonsais indoors with the Ficus benjamina, Ficus salicifilia, serissa and bougainvillea sharing the southern window and the Crassula ovata and portulacaria afra sharing an eastern window with an old amaryllis I found in the garage this summer.

New Umbrella Tree

Purchased a new Umbrella tree (Shefflera Aboricola) from Bonsai West.  I wanted a tree to bring into the office but wanted something that would survive the subdued lighting and dry air.  Aboricola sounds like it is vertually indesstructable.  I obtained a small 250 mm hogh specimen that looks as if it were wired before from the trunk scarring.

I decided to try and wore/sty;e\le the tree to an informal upright, even though I know these trees tend to be styled in a multi trunk banyan style.  I was able to wire the branches and cut out many that were shading each other,  Hopefully, I'll have a much happier/healthier tree.

Rejuvinating a Ficus

A colleague of mine had a ficus which i believe is a microcarpa, in need of some help.  It had a great deal of foliage loss, some death of surface roots and after watering, the drainage looked very dark in color.  The tree was in a very small pot, which was cracked to boot.

After lifting the plant from it's pot, my worst fear was confirmed.  Many of the roots were blackened and dead, especially two larger roots which girdled the whole tree.  These were cut away and I removed some of the crusty, upper soil with chopsticks.  The top of the soil was hard and gritty, almost as if there was some salt buildup there.  I did not remove much soil in order to preserve the few feeder roots that were still on he plant.

I picked an oval green glazed pot which had a larger diameter but actually a slightly more shallow depth, being closer to that of the trunk diameter and wired the tree in.  Since foliage was so sparse and the tree was stressed, I decided to do no wiring or branch pruning at this time in order to maximize the leaf surface area as we go into the low light of winter and the recovery period from the tree repotting.  I did; however, tilt the tree pretty dramatically to clearly establish a new apex for future work.

In this new orientation, the dead second trunk now becomes a dead side branch which can be cut off later if need be.  Actually, it is an interesting feature and is so large, I worried about excessive bleeding in removing the branch now, in the trees weakened state.

After adding a rock for decoration and giving it a drink, the ficus was ready for return to its owner.  It really is a beautiful little tree and I hope to see it much happier a year from now.

Went to my first "Get Wired" Class at Bonsai West today. I thought I would try some of my newly learned pruning skills on some poor unfortunate Juniper tree that I purchased for $5.00 from Home Depot in Nashua, NH. It was a Parson's Juniper, Juniperus davurica 'Parsonii', often confused with Juniperus chinensis. 

The plant I picked had a great deal of foliage, but what attracted my attention to it were two 1 1/2" inch trunks which I thought might make a nice looking cascade style bonsai. I started by clearing out the mass of dead and unusable material at the base of the plant and then removed it from the pot to view it from all sides. I identified a front face and saw that the joint of the two heavy branches I hoped to use as a cascade was below soil level. Out instructor, Phil, said it would be OK to use the lower branch as a first branch to cascade anyway and use the second heavier branch as a second branch if I chose a new apex. This sounded like a good idea and would work only if it were possible to bend the heavy 1st branch downward and forward. Since the branch was so still, it needed some protection from bending so I learned how to prepare a raffia wrap. After soaking the raffia and placing it on the tree, I wrapped very heavy gauge wore around the trunk.

It bent with some difficulty but there was some splitting sound. No way to tell how it fared until we see how the branch survives the winter. I also cracked the apex branch which required my cutting it short and selecting a new leader for wiring. After final bending, I jut back all of the growing tips, expect the leader, back to last year's growth to induce back bud formation and to shorten the branches. Re-potting will wait until the spring. The finished product:

Here are the intended branch lines. Both the 1st and 2nd will be cut back and the 1st will most likely be angled downward if it survived this round of bending. The extra branches on the 1st branch will remain in case they are needed to take over as future branches.

Japanese Black Pine Class

Attended a class today taught by Rodney Clemons in the styling and care of Japanese Black Pine (Pinus thunbergii).  He was absolutely great, discussing the cycle of bonsai care, insect pests , insecticides and fertilization types and schedules.  After this, each student received a small Pinus to begin needle pruning, being careful to not remove the base sheath that will promote future budding.  I worked on my tree for about 3 hours and had basically removed only the needles from 2 or 3 years back.  

I had defoliated well over half of my tree so decided to hold off and give it a few months to recover from the trauma.  After picking a front and settling in on an informal upright style, Rodney made some great suggestion on some branch removal and suggested I whack off a substantial part of the apex in order to train a new leader and shorten the tree.  The shortened specimen indeed looks better and I will start some wiring in the mid-December time frame to start moving some branches into an informal upright style.  Today's culmination:

Privets

Purchased two privets, specifically Lingustrum x vicaryi ‘Golden Vicary Privet’, for some future bonsai project. They were about $5 each. Planted them outside to start thickening their trunks.

Yours, Mine, Ours: A Class for Two.

So was the title of a great class offered by Bonsai West (http://www.bonsaiwest.com) which I attended with my wife.  Although I know she attended primarily to make me happy, in the end,  she enjoyed the afternoon.

Each pair in the class was set up at a table with copious amounts of bonsai soil, tools, screen and wire.  The instructor started with a brief discussion of the history of bonsai and some of the styles and rules which transform small shrubs into "ancient" trees.  His description of bonsai care, especially with respect to watering, was helpful and gave some hope for the survival of our pending bonsai creations.

Each student was able to choose a small, nursery-potted, plant from a number of Jade, fig, or juniper selections and a corresponding pot.  My wife chose a very nice dwarf jade plant, portulacaria afra, to work on along with a black, glazed, rectangular pot.  After removing the jade from it's nursery pot, the first step was to remove the uppermost soil to expose the surface roots to see where the bottom of the trunk actually was.  At this point, the plant was rotated numerous time to find the bast side to serve as a "front" and decide which growing tip would define a leader.  Once this was done it was off to shearing small leaves on trunks as well as small trunk shoots that wouldn't become eventual main branches from the trunk as well as cutting back overly vigorous branch tips.  Once that was done, the root ball was opened up with the finders and reduced in size by pruning.

I could see Ginny was pretty timid at the prospect of chopping into the plant root ball.  Little did she suspect what we would have to do later on in the afternoon to a poor ficus!  After the roots were pruned, the pot was prepared with screens to cover the drain holes and wire to hold in the jade tree.  Once the tree was planted and the pot filled with soil, she used her thumbs to pack in the soil to remove any air pockets in the pot.  Then the surface was covered with white decorative gravel, a stylish rock and the whole creation, plant, pot and all was submerged in a bucket filled with water for it's first drink. What a nice looking plant indeed…….my wife definitely has a knack for making ancient trees!

I decided to try for a conifer since I've never had to prune one.  There was a nice, low, spreading Juniper procumbens available that I thought might make a nice cascade  as I chose it along with an unglazed pot.  It was tough, after looking at it, the instructor convinced me it could be pruned into an upright tree so I picked a main trunk, front and apex and gave it a whirl.  Although the final creation is very unbalanced, I was happier with the outcome the I thought I would be.  Hopefully after some time, I can direct the leader upward and back toward the main trunk line and bring some balance back into my tree.

After completing our individual trees, we could work together on a larger tree.  We chose a willow leaf fig, ficus nerifolia, for our victim.  The tree had very interesting and well developed nebari and a tapering trunk which was great.  However it looked as if the tree had trunk chop followed by inattention since there was a mass of twigs growing out of the top of the trunk in every which direction.  It took some time, but we carefully pruned out all but some thicker primary branches which opened up the crown quite a lot.  We chose a leader as well which will eventually form the apex of the tree.

On removing the soil from the base of the tree, we could see that the roots were a jumbled, criss-crossed mess as well.  As we were separating them and deciding which to keep, out instructor helped us by chopping pretty much all of the main taproots, to our horror.  Who would ever think a plant could survive such a drastic loss of rootage!  But we did it and planted our new creation in a pretty, oval pot with a green glaze.

Thanks to Phillip, our instructor…..what a great way to get folks going in bonsai!