Spring in the middle of winter?

July 16, 2012 in General Bonsai | Tags: , , , , | 2 comments

It’s a strange season. Here in Australia we are in the middle of winter, yet in my garden some of my trees think its spring.

Trident Maple budding out.

For what ever reason, my trees seem to be ahead of schedule by a couple of months.

Chinese Elm.

My Chinese Quince dropped its leaves in autumn and almost straight away began to leaf out again and is now almost back in full leaf.

Chinese Quince leafing out.

I guess this means that at least for some trees I will have to move the re-potting window forward a little to keep up with their early movement. I think next year i will re-pot the Chinese Quince as soon as it drops it’s leaves in case it decides to move early again.

Are any other Australians seeing an early spring?

I wonder if these trees leafing out early will make for a big year of growth or if their lack of winter sleep will mean they are weaker than those trees that are taking the full winter sleep? It will be interesting to see what happens this season.

Another point of interest in my garden at this time of year is the ‘Choujubai’ flowering quince which although flowers throughout the year really blooms out in a big way now. It’s a nice splash of colour in amongst the bare deciduous trees. I had been hunting for ‘Choujubai’ in this country for a few years before finding one being grown by a friend. I am really enjoying it even though it is just a piece of stock at the moment. I hope to take a number of root cuttings this spring but perhaps that is the topic of a future post.

Choujubai colour.

Approach graft update.

June 28, 2012 in Bonsai Techniques | Tags: , , | 4 comments

I though it about time I updated how the grafts I did back in November were taking. If you look back at THIS post you can see the whole process of how I started this graft.

The graft is beginning to take.

A week or so ago I had to do a demonstration on approach grafting for a local club so I took this tree in as an example and also placed some new grafts onto other areas of its trunk. It was a strange night as we had an earthquake in the middle of my talk. It was a small quake in world standards (5.4 on the Richter scale) but it was the first I had felt. The building shook, doors rattled but it only lasted for about 30 seconds and the talk soon continued. It certainly added an interesting break in the night.

Now that the earth has stopped shaking and im not in front of a meeting group I am able to see how the graft is doing a bit more closely. The graft has begun to take but I think that I will leave it attached to the host branch for at least part of this growing season (ie. next spring). You can see in the above photo that the section after the graft is beginning to grow thicker than the host branch on the other side of the graft. This is a good sign that the grafted branch is beginning to take nutrients from the main trunk. Once it becomes a little thicker I think the union will be much more solid and I will be able to remove the host section of the branch.

I will be doing a whole lot more grafts on this trunk this coming spring so I can begin to build the framework of the branch structure. It really is an easy almost foolproof technique that allows you to get branches where you want quickly. If you have a tree that could benefit from a new branch, give it a go.

Just a small side note, I will be pretty busy for the next few weeks as Hirotoshi Saito is coming to Melbourne to run workshops with various clubs over the next week and a half. I hope to attend as many sessions as possible so will not have a lot of time to update the blog. Hopefully once the workshops are over i will have a bunch of photos from the events to share. For those interested in Hiro’s visit have a look HERE (information about the BSV workshops/ demo and the Ballarat sessions are available in the links section of that page.)

 

Corky Bark Chinese Elm.

June 12, 2012 in Bonsai Maintenence, Pruning | Tags: , | 2 comments

Well, the inevitable happened and another tree has found its way into my collection.

While at a friend’s place I spotted the below corky bark Chinese Elm on his sale benches and decided I could make something of it. It had great taper, nice bark, some interesting movement and only a couple very small scars. Another bonus was it was of a size that would see it make use of several pots I have gathering dust on the shelves at home. For those interested, the tree is from the same grower that produced my other Cork Bark Elm.

The tree as i bought it.

Once I got it home I made a few preparations to set it up for next years growth. I cut off the taper-less apex section of trunk which also removed a lumpy section. I then reduced some of the heavy branches and pruned off any shoots that were not going to become part of the future structure. I think in the next few days I will have a go at bending the first left branch down a touch but we will have to see how that goes.

Ready for springs growth

I will probably re-pot it back into this container this year so I can get some fast growth out of it next season. Once I have the main branches and the start of secondary growth set I will pot it up into a bonsai container where I can start the ramification process. For now all it needs to do is grow, especially the new leader. It needs to really thicken up to continue the line of the trunk. This species is such a strong grower I should have the trunk-line and base branching set after a year.

My AABC Exhibition Trees.

June 4, 2012 in Bonsai Shows, Nurseries and Events | Tags: , | 3 comments

The Display

At the recent AABC convention I displayed two trees. One was a Chinese Elm and the other a Trident Maple.

To get these two trees to this state actually took a whole lot of work and time. I didn’t think it would take so long but it took me roughly 2 weekends to prepare these two trees.

Chinese Elm Pre-work

The Chinese Elm had the following done to it:

  • First, I defoliated. This took a long time. there are A LOT of small leaves on this small tree and they are all difficult to get at with a pair of scissors.
  • Next I cleaned up the trunk and did a basic pruning to refine the outline of the silhouette.
  • Then I had to select a pot for the tree (in this case an old Yamaaki pot) and re-pot the tree.
  • Then I mossed the tree
  • Then oiled the pot.

Chinese Elm as displayed.

The tree came up nicely. It improves each year as it’s canopy becomes denser. I think the new pot is a big improvement over its old container. Looking at the above image, it makes me wish I had a more delicate stand for it, but that can wait.

Trident Maple pre-work

Next came the trident Maple. It under went pretty much the same process as the Elm although it was not re-potted. I had considered changing into an antique chinese container but in the end I thought the blue pot was a good match.

This tree took most of a day to moss. The mossing was the easy part and only took a few hours. It was the finding of the moss that took the time. I had to hunt all over the neighborhood to find enough moss. No gutter was spared. Every time I thought I had enough I would go home to start applying it only to find the moss was either not good enough quality of that after trimming out the bad parts I didn’t have near enough to finish the job, so back out onto the streets I would go. I repeated this process several times, each time heading out to further gutters in search of the perfect moss patch. I didn’t find it, instead I had to collect many small pieces from many gutters.

 

Trident maple as displayed

I finally got the tree mossed and selected the only stand I had that came close to suiting it.

All in all I was pretty happy with how the display ended up but of course like many things in bonsai I saw many areas in which I could improve it.Both trees will look better in a few more years, but when is that not the case?

I guess that is part of the draw of growing bonsai, they are ever-growing, changing and shifting and you are forever adjusting to match the tree’s changing form. Some times you get it right and sometimes you don’t but always if you think about the decisions you are making along the way you will learn something new.

 

Japanese White Pine

May 29, 2012 in Bonsai Maintenence, Styling | Tags: , , , , | 4 comments

Prior to the recent AABC convention, I was asked to style an established Japanese white pine that had reached a stage where it needed some work to get it back on track.

It had been worked on a number of years ago during a workshop held by Hirotoshi Saito where the second trunk was bent upwards from what was a heavy first branch. Since then the tree has grown out with the occasional branch guyed down from time to time and with some trimming to keep the growth somewhat compact. What the tree was desperately needing was a full wiring and styling.

As the tree arrived in my garden.

I cut a good amount of branches off and had to do some heavy bending to move the apex from leaning towards the back to leaning forward. Most of the work was sorting out branch structure and setting basic branch positions to prevent thickening in areas that you might not want it in the future and providing structure for the tree to grow into.

Some of the removed branches.

After a couple of days wiring.

The tree will really benefit from a couple of years growth to fill out some areas such as the apex, but it now has a solid base structure to build upon further in the future.

The graft in this trees case is quite noticeable at the moment but I think that once the white pines park begins to crackle it should start to blend in much more. How long will that take? Who knows. I think 10 years would start to see the process beginning.

You don’t see many White pines in Australia and particularly of this size. It will be a good tree to keep an eye on as it progresses in the coming years.

AABC 2012 Exhibition Gallery.

May 25, 2012 in Bonsai Shows, Nurseries and Events | Tags: , , , , | 4 comments

While I am going through my photos from the convention I thought I might share a few of the bonsai that were on display. The below pics are only a selection of the trees that were on display as I didn’t have the time I thought I might to take photos of the full exhibition. Enjoy.

Busy times.

May 15, 2012 in General Bonsai | Tags: | 4 comments

It is looking like it will be a busy week. I have just moved offices for my day job and have also been preparing trees for exhibition. Between the two I don’t have a whole lot of time to post.

Freshly mossed.

This weekend is the AABC‘s annual national convention which is being hosted by Bonsai Northwest here in Melbourne. I have spent my last couple of weekends wiring, defoliating, cleaning pots, re-potting and mossing up trees as well as preparing accents for the exhibition. I am showing two trees and I wired a third for a friend. For such a small number of trees they have managed to take up nearly all of my spare time.

Once the exhibition has concluded i will share a few pictures of the trees, the displays and some of the things I did prior to the exhibition to get the trees up to show condition.

For those not already booked into the convention, I think you may be able to get a late registration via Bonsai Northwest. It should be well worth coming along to as Boon Manakitivipart (USA) will be doing demonstrations as well as workshops. The exhibition that will accompany the convention will showcase some of the best trees in Victoria if not Australia. The exhibition and sales area is open to the general public so I would recommend that if you cannot make it to the full convention you at least try to get along to see the show and sales area.

Hopefully next week I will have a full report.

New Tools.

May 7, 2012 in General Bonsai | Tags: , , | 3 comments

Let me start by saying I like tools in general. I like going to hardware stores, searching second-hand markets and looking through garage sales for spanners, wrenches, planes and all other host of hand tools.

Needless to say, I also like bonsai tools. Recently I bought two new tools to add to the toolkit. I like old-fashioned tools, made from good steel. This carries into my choice of bonsai tool aswell. I like the black steel tools over stainless. Stainless steels are great but i like the older feel of the black tools. The black tool’s steel is good, the price is usually cheaper than stainless and they need maintaining.

Now most people don’t like to maintain tools but I enjoy the task. I like inspecting the edges, cleaning the blades and oiling them.

The two tools I bought were black steel Masakuni cutters designed for working on trees that are getting to a ramified state. Now a lot of people say that Masakuni make the best tools…. I dont agree with this 100%. It depends on the tool and the user. I like certain brands for certain tools. For example, I really like Masakuni’s No.9/No.8009 wire scissor yet use kikuwa pruning scissors.

The two tools are essentially two different sizes of branch cutters, or so i thought. No.216 (left) is a small set of branch cutters good for removing small branches up to about 3-4mm thick that are growing in amongst many other twigs. It’s a fairly standard tool but its spring-loaded handle makes doing a large amount of pruning a breeze and it’s tapered head allows you to get it into small places.

No.216 (Left) and No.61 (right)

The blade profiles

No.61 is the interesting tool. I had imagined that it was a larger version of No.216, but I was a little shocked when it came out of the box. What I was use to seeing in a branch cutter was a concave blade, this one had a convex curve to its blade profile!

Concave No.216 (Front) and the surprisingly convex No.61 (behind)

After the initial shock of seeing the unexpected profile I decided to try the cutters out. To my surprise they performed really well. They are narrow enough to get into dense ramification and make cuts which standard concave branch cutters are unable to do. The cuts the tool made were also really flush and clean. Usually on these hard to get to cuts I use a pair of scissors as they are the only tool able to get in amongst the ramification and make a cut without cutting surrounding branches. The cut stubs that the scissors leave however are always a little ugly and leave small lumps in amoungst the twigs. This tool can make cuts in similarly dense places yet leave perfectly flush cut wounds.

Below are a few pics I took while playing around on a branch removed from a white pine I have recently styled. It’s not really the perfect example as it’s not part of a dense canopy and I can easily get the tools in to make the cuts, but it shows the resulting cuts nicely.

Test branch. Notice pruning stubs at the first fork and just after the second fork.

First stub removed. The tool leaves a nice flush cut. I would have previously used scissors for this cut which would have left more of a stub behind.

The stub inside the first fork neatly cut. It looks like this stub was left over from a cut made previously by scissors. If this was a branch on a well ramified tree it would have been difficult to get a standard branch cutter into the foliage to make this cut.

Overall they are a pair of really nice tools. Could I live without them? Probably. They are specialist tools which limits their usefulness but its tools like these that really come into their own when you do actually need them. I can see them getting a fair work out this winter when it comes to pruning the deciduous trees.

If you are after some tools to pad out your already full tool roll and you have trees that are either ramified or beginning to become ramified then these tools might be a good option.

Just a quick heads up for my readers…. the smaller No.216 tool was imported directly from Japan and I paid accordingly. I ordered the No.61 tool from an Australian supplier who has a limited range of specialist Masakuni tools that were almost half the price of buying and shipping direct from Japan. Check out their site beebonsai if you are in the market for some tools. They are worth having a look at.

The things we do……

May 7, 2012 in Bonsai Maintenence | Tags: , , | 3 comments

It’s been a busy week and looks like it will be also busy this coming week.

On the 18th, 19th and 20th of this month is the Annual AABC convention which this year is being held in my state, Victoria. I have been lucky enough to have been asked to display a couple of trees and also prepare a friends white pine for the show. I spent the last weekend wiring the White Pine and it has come up well and hopefully I can share a post about its transformation some time after the show.

The trees I am preparing are both deciduous (with one conifer as a back up). It’s a strange time of the year to be exhibiting deciduous trees as they have not started to colour yet unlike trees elsewhere in the state (Some trees from good friend up in the foothills) so I am left with a dilemma, do I defoliate and display bare or do i leave the leaves on?

The leaves are in-between colouring for Autumn and the summer’s growth. Some years we get mild Autumn temperatures and the leaves don’t really colour at all and instead just go brown and fall off. This Autumn is also warm so I don’t like my chances of getting any colour before the show.

At the moment I am leaning towards defoliating and displaying them bare but as a last dash effort to force some colour i am keeping the smaller of the two trees in the fridge every night to try to force some colour. If this doesn’t work I think I will defoliate.

Hopefully the winter temperatures of the Kelvenator region will induce some colour.

I havent tried this before but I guess I will see how successful this technique is over the coming week or so. If it isn’t showing colour by next weekend I think it will be defoliated for the show. Let the waiting game begin.

Needle work.

April 30, 2012 in Bonsai Maintenence | Tags: , , , , | 5 comments

It has been a busy couple of weeks. Autumn has begun and with it a range of seasonal tasks. I have been madly plucking Japanese black and Red pine needles. Here in Melbourne we have a convention coming up for which I have to prepare a few trees so I tried to get my needle work out of the way early on.

It took a long time this year. What hadn’t really dawned on me until now was that needle pruning takes more and more time each year. Now this is not a bad thing, its more a by-product of a successful technique. As ramification increases, so does the amount of needles you have to remove. Where last year I was removing needles from one candle there are now two candles at that location that need needles removed from them. Not only are there more needles to pluck, but also the space you have to pluck them in becomes more and more cramped forcing you to use tweezers to negotiate the cramped conditions.

2008

2009

2012

2012 after needle plucking.

The above tree has wholly been grown in Australia and has come great leaps and bounds since I learnt how to properly care for it during my first trip to Japan. It is becoming a nice little tree although it is not perfect and it bears the marks of many of my early mistakes. That being said it has taught me a lot and although I have though about selling it on a couple of occasions I think now I would find it a little hard to part with. After all I have invested a huge amount of time into it.

Perhaps this is something to keep in mind when deciding on how large your collection should grow. How much time do you have, and will this time be enough to maintain your trees to a high level? Bearing in mind that as your trees improve and refine, in turn their maintenance times increase. I really enjoy growing pines but I am very aware of the time I have to spend on them each year. Needle plucking, pruning, wiring and candle work all add up. On a tree that is starting to get refined I am guessing I would be sending 6-10 hours on each of them over the year. When you add up all the pines you grow and then the time you spend on them, combined with the tasks you have for all other species you grow you begin to realise that there is a limit to how many trees you can look after to a high level. I lean towards keeping a smaller collection that is well maintained rather than a larger collection that doesn’t get the attention it deserves. That said it is hard to turn down a good tree.

 

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