I wanted to try my hand at grafting a branch unto a tree. I thought that I could try grafting a ficus microcarpa. Ficus microcarpa are resilient plants. Even if I did something wrong the damage might be minimal. Boy, was I wrong.
Here is the trunk that I was going to graft onto.
Her is the branch. It is actually a piece from further up the same tree.
Confession time: To graft you should have some knowledge, the right tools, and a little experience will not hurt. I had none of those. Here was the result.
I took a nice size chunk of tree off. That is going to leave a very big scar. I felt sick. Why o why do I do the things I do? Ok, this was a fail. The tree will recover. So I decided to do it again.
It looked a lot better, but because I don't know what I am doing I do not know if it will take.
I think for grafting I will need someone to teach me. Cheers.
Sad news and tragedy. At least for me. This week I received some ficus religiosa cutting from sn3aky352. A thank you very much for the great cuttings. I was very excited to open the package and getting the cuttings in a more comfortable home. I put them in orchid bark medium (That's what I do with all ficus cuttings). I started to water the new ficus cuttings. The other plants looked a bit thirsty, so i started to water them too. I was done watering and started to put the hose away. As I followed the the hose i found that it had crushed one of my bonsai. I was in disbelief. The hose had fell on a lantana. Not any Lantana, a lantana that I was preparing to give as a gift this August.
The Lantana had started to reduce the size of its leaves dramatically. It had a nice shape, and I was getting ready to trim the roots.
Lantana are very brittle. I consider myself lucky that I didn't split the trunk in half, and that the tree will be able to make a recovery. The funny thing is that the silhouette still looks okay. It's Just that their is a chunk missing.
How can I avoid this problem in the future? I am going to have to restructure my garden. Cheers
When you start learning about bonsai you start to come across the word yamadori. Although I have not confirmed the literal translation many have said that it means collected from the mountains. There is a kind of mystique about wild collected bonsai trees. It is a throwback to the golden age of Japanese bonsai. I can picture people climbing cliffs to extract a prized tree to sell to some feudal lord. I was hiking through Joshua Tree National Park when I came across a wash that cut through some boulders. Off in the distance I saw pinyon pine. I got closer to take a picture. I started to go around a boulder for a better shot when I saw the most amazing thing. I saw a two and a half foot pinyon pine growing out of a crack in the rocks. It had dead wood, it had great taper, it had lots of needles. I was awe stricken.
My backpack for scale
What is yamadori really? It is a tree that has not had enough water, or nutrients, or grew to high of an elevation to develop properly. Some have had animals gnaw on it. Some have had weather maim it. I Believe that you can replicate all of this at home. Take a moderately sized woody plant. Grab a baseball bat (or cricket paddle) and take two good swings at the plant. Let grow for two years and swing at it one more time. Let grow for two more years than harvest. Then you can have a plant that will be uber hard to work with just like yamadori. In fact I believe some people grow trees in the ground and let the wildlife forage and walk amongst the trees. They harvest the trees and sell them as yamadori. I am not criticizing, More power to them. The greatest benefit to buying yamadori I think is to work on a big size tree that is a slow grower.
Yet, like i said earlier there's a feeling of something special about yamadori. To collect a wild grown tree. Then help it survive, then help it thrive. That is very special. Maybe it is not the tree itself but the work that goes into the tree that is special. I would love to hear your ideas about yamadori. Cheers.
Update 04/22
In this video Walter pall talks about yamadori bonsai and shaping them.
