Rock over root planting

Do you like to grow things? Do you like rocks? Let me show you something. At the bonsai club that I joined last year, they have a raffle at the end of the meeting. One meeting I won a carved rock. I knew what it was for but I had no interest in rock plantings.  Some months later I remembered this nice Chinese elm from the National Bonsai Museum. I thought it was a very interesting piece.

I thought why not? Why can’t I make one of those?

I grabbed the rock, three Ficus macrophylla trees, some black lava rock, perlite, and composted dirt. I mixed it all together and put it in an Ikea pot.

I Imagined the way I wanted the trees to grow and placed the trees accordingly. Then I added a bit more dirt.

That's all I am going to do until mid-March. I want the roots to grow. That will anchor the trees. Then and only then will I start positioning the trees exactly how I want them.

The rock is buried deep enough to be able to stand on its own. It will be interesting to see how this project will develop. Go forth and rock out. Cheers.

Update 04/28/2017

I gave the ficus' time to grow some roots. New leaves are coming in so it is a good time to start phase II. What I want is for the trees to follow the contours of the rock, and for the tree's trunk to grow and brace itself on the cracks. The problem is that whatever I use to bind the trees with will only hold to the peaks of the rock and not the valleys. It's in the valleys that I want the trees to grow. What I did was add pieces of foam over the tree until it became a peak and was held by the raffia. I am thinking of reinforcing the raffia with some wire.

I will wait to see how thick the trunks get before I think of pruning the trees. Why would I prune the trees? to make it grow branches, of course ;). Cheers.

Update: Feb. 13, 2018
The trees grew to about a foot and a half. I added a little curve to a couple of them. I was happy with the trunk thickness to rock ratio. So, to promote branches I chopped off the tops. Four weeks later buds started to pop out. These I will let grow for another year before I chop them. I will wire the branches for shape before the chop.

Pomegranate, a tough tree for these tough times

Pomegranates make great bonsai. I highly recommend these for beginners. Pomegranates are vigorous trees. They love water and fertilizer. They are also drought tolerant (potted plants should always be watered at regular schedules). Pomegranate readily grows new branches after a pruning. A drawback to the pomegranate is that when a branch becomes lignified it become very brittle. That means that it prefers clip and grow instead of wiring.

I have had this pomegranate for a year and a half. The first year I did not do much to it. The second year I trunk chopped it. You can see the scar in the picture. The trunk had an incredible taper. I wanted a broom style tree so I chopped off the top and left a thick branch on the side. You can see it under the scar. After that I let it grow.

One day I was moving some pots when I noticed I had broken the new branches. The branches were green and soft. I would have to start all over. It worked out for the best as the newer branches grew in all the right spots as you can see from the picture.

I chose this tree because the trunk was thick, it had a very nice taper, and it was relatively inexpensive (you know me, I'm on a tight budget). The bark was nice and rough. Also, it had a dead surface root which I thought lent itself to nice jin.

It lost all of its leaves this winter. I know a lot of pomegranates keep their leaves. I was scared for a while that I had lost this tree. When I checked it this week I saw buds swelling and was much relieved. There are buds up and down the branches. This little tree is trying to work with me.

A note on pomegranate. I know people like to leave flowers and fruit on fruiting trees. As a rule, I cut flowers off as soon as they bud. Why? It takes energy to make flowers and fruit, and at this time I want to direct all the energy toward growth. Cheers.

Update 01/27/2017:

I found a pic from last summer.

Update 02/15:

The leaves have broken out. Happy days are here.

uga, buga, Mugo (the european bush conifer)

Winter is in full swing here in southern California. Where I live the Temperature has dropped below 50 degrees fahrenheit a few times over night. I know, t-shirt weather in many places around the world. I picked up a few conifers this week so that I could start working on something during our two and a half month long winter. I have not had much success with conifers in the past. It could be said that I have outright murdered them.  I have made some progress over the last year however, and now feel bold enough to attempt conifers again.

TI picked up a dwarf mugo that cost around $7.00 in U.S. I had bought one before that was much bigger. I found that the branches were very leggy. The legggy branches made it very difficult to work with.

For this tree I started at the easiest place to start. That would be the base of the trunk. The place where the trunk meets the soil. As a general rule there should be no branches there. I keep removing branches as i move up the tree until I feel satisfied with how the trunk looks. With all the foliage removed from the base I can see the tree in a better light. I can make better decisions regarding which branches stay and which branches “got ta go!”

I chopped off all the branches that grew straight down. After that, I chopped off the secondary branches on lateral primary branches. In other words i cut the branches growing up from main branches but not the ones in the tree apex. This thins out the tree quite a bit. It's amazing to see how drastically different a tree looks after each part of the pruning.

After that, I cut branches that are growing out of the same or near the same spot. Sometimes it's obvious which one to cut. Other times it doesn't matter.  You do have to get rid of one for aesthetics. I also cut some of the very small branches that give the tree needle volume but that are not very useful for composition. As a general rule i try to follow the concept of brackets like the kind they use for playoffs but backwards. I follow the main branch, that should split into two branches, those split off into two branches each etc. At this stage in the trees life it is not to important to remove all of the unnecessary branches. I did trim the top a bit to give it some shape.

Brackets like a perfect branch should look like

I still was not feeling right about the tree. so I chopped off the two lowest branches and then it came together in my head. I know some of you may not agree with the last two cuts I made, but I think that this is the foundations for a great bonsai. Did I cut too much? Let me know.

It's pronounced kəˈtoʊniːˈæstər not Cotton Easter

I saw the most amazing cotoneaster at one of my favorite nurseries yesterday. It had beautiful leaves. The leaves where about just right for the size of the bush. The bush had a few berries hanging on. Yet, The greatest feature was its natural curved trunk. I however, will show you the after shot first. Why? Because I chopped and hacked, and maimed this poor little tree.

What do you think of this tree?

I honestly did not want to. The tree gave no choice, no choice if it wants to become an amazing bonsai. This is what I envision for it.

This is desired outcome

Now let me show you what I started off with.

I know, it had unbridled branches much like the hair of a free spirited hippie who ignores hygiene and never washes their hair. That was what drew me to it. Beautiful leaves and berries on a large mane. What kept me though was its long and well developed curved body. A tree can never reach its potential if the trunk does not look good. A good trunk and bad branches what do you do? You chop off the branches.  Good branches and bad trunk? You can't chop the trunk. You can correct issues with trunks, but that will take longer than a branch problem in pre bonsai trees.

As you can see I had many choices on how I could shape this tree. Different people will have different viewpoints. You may infact say that my choices are crazy, and you know what? You may be one hundred percent correct. However, I have made the cuts so now it's too late to fix anything.

The two aesthetic principles that i gave the most weight to was first, movement. Second, I wanted a nice taper up the tree. I cut away all the dead stuff, and all the things that obviously I did not want to keep. Those would be smaller low branches, branches growing against the direction of the other branches, very large higher branches.

You can see that with some clean up the picture begins to focus. Every time we do something to the tree it should make in our mind's eye a clearer vision of where the tree will end up. I love cascade and leaning bonsai. I would have loved to have left the main line of the trunk reaching out over the pot, but this would not have made a great bonsai. The main line is moving to the right. I needed to change direction to make it more interesting.

After the cut was made the tree looked even better to me. It was obvious that the direction of the main branch though moving in another direction was still too long and straight, and that my friends is not interesting. I also saw that a few branches i had left on top of the big curve did not look so great. Another challenge was that the top branches were very thick. I needed nice thin branches. I knew i would have to lob them off.

The last thought was of movement. The trunks line will end at the apex. The new apex is the little tiny branch the orange arrow is pointing too. Their is a small problem as the branch the new apex sits on is a little thicker than i would like. That is a problem for next year though.

Did i cut too much. I would say yes. We'll see what happens. Good or bad I will definitely learn something from this tree. Cheers.


Update September 27

Did you know that cotoneaster is in the rose family? I was a little afraid that I had cut off more than I could chew. I would say that I chopped off  95 percent of the foliage. Yet, this resilient plant only 11 days later has given me a rose.

Flower!!!

This is of course, a very good sign. the leaves on the left branch are also new. What an incredible find this tree was.


Update October 24

One month and a week after i pruned this little tree it has pushed out many new branches. I will remove the branches that I do not want. Those include downward and upward facing branches. Also, branches growing to close and in the same direction and others. The new branches I leave will become my primary branches. I will not brune those until probably next August so they can thicken and grow secondary branches.

One month and a week after removing most of the foliage

Top view  shows that the branches are growing in a radial pattern.

I broke a bonsai, or accidental pruning

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   

developing refinement, the tree, me and my daughter

Last Christmas I saw some beautiful holly decorations. So, I set out to look for holly. Last week I found what to me was a holly with great potential. The pot was not priced however, and it was sitting next to 35-40 dollar plants. I went home without purchasing it. When I got home I was unloading the car when I saw a green flash against the yellowing grass (we are conserving water here in southern California). It was a $20 dollar bill. Hooray, I was going to finally buy my holly. The nursery sold me the tree for 20 dollars even. I was giddy with delight.

Some people do not like variegated plants for bonsai. They say that they are weaker than the common varieties. I was willing to experiment. This holly looked well aged yet had new growth.

For this project I was going to have My daughter whom I lovingly call Monkey do most of the work. This would be an exercise in guiding and teaching my daughter.

What we set out to do is remove unneeded branches, reduce the overall size of the tree, and set the trees skeleton by lowering the lower branches.

We chose to cut the branch at this point because it was just above a growth of younger branches. These newer branches will become the apex.

It was somewhat difficult for my daughter to cut the branch. First, the places where her hands could get leverage where directly in the path of the saw. Second the cut was at an awkward angle. It was difficult for her to get a rhythm with the saw. We lost a few of the young branches.

After, the branches were cut to size relative to the new apex.

And finally the lower branches were wired and placed where they needed to be. What will become the first or lower branch (the big one moving left) was not pruned so that it can grow relatively undisturbed. The other lowered branches were thinned a bit to promote back budding.

The stage is now set to develop this tree into a bonsai. Of course I might have been frustrated at moments, but I never said a word. The key to my daughter appreciating this hobby and maybe sharing it with me is positive reinforcement. She puts up with my eccentric hobbies because she likes spending time with me. I would not want to discourage her by micromanaging or scolding her. Like a bonsai I am trying to develop my daughter’s potential.

Well, enough about that. We’ll keep you updated on the Ilex. Cheers.


Update 06/29

Well, it's 21 days later. My daughters work is coming to fruition. The tree has a lot of new growth and plenty of back budding. All those reddish brown spots are brand new soft supple leaves.

New Growth

This is going to be the lowest branch. it was long and only had leaves all in a clump at the very top. Now many new leaves are growing from the bare branch. The Holly is next to a stone pine. That is why there are needles in the pic