Back to the Beginning

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In March, my wife and I attended the wedding of one of her cousins in Phoenix, Arizona. While there, we decided that we would take in some sights and sounds. Some were planned, some unplanned. Since our honeymoon in the Redwoods four years ago, we have made it a point to try and visit a national park every year, usually in September. Last year’s fully reserved trip to Yosemite was terminated when we suddenly found ourselves owners of a new house (after a year and a half of looking and seven rejected offers).  

So, when this trip to Phoenix came up, I suggested that we take in the Grand Canyon. It had been a long, long time since I had been there and Lisa had not been at all. So off we went. The wedding was quick and sweet, and we were able to take in the Desert Botanical Garden on a very hot day beforehand. After the wedding we took the two and a half hour drive north to the south rim, only to find ourselves in the middle of a mini blizzard when we arrived at dark. However, we were quickly inside the century old dining room with a window seat to all the frosty fireworks.   

When we arose the next morning, it was sunny, so I was quickly out the door to capture the snow on the trees before it melted. The air and colors were crisp and clean. I took tons of photos. Of course, I took as many pics of trees as I did the canyon, and usually both together. I had greatly anticipated the chance to see these trees up close. My memory was of twisted specimens hugging the cliffs with just a thin wisp of a life-line showing. I reflected on the last time that I had stood on that spot. It was with my grandparents on their annual Fourth of July jaunt to the park. The year was 1983 and I was spending my college summer with them in Phoenix. It was nice and hot, especially staying in tents.  

But there was another reason to remember that trip. It was the beginning of my bonsai career. You see, my grandfather Mark had practiced bonsai for many years, both in Phoenix and Beaverton. In high school, I poured over his John Naka books and by the time that summer came along, I was ready to jump in. So on the return trip home to Phoenix, we drove off the road into the hills somewhere and dug my first two bonsai. Yes, I started with collected trees. I was never able to positively identify the two trees, but on this trip, 33 years later, I finally had satisfaction. They were a Utah Juniper (Juniperus osteosperma) and Colorado Pinyon Pine (Pinus edulis). The trees were small, maybe a foot to two feet at the tips. The Pinyon was only a half inch in diameter, and the Juniper older at two inches.  

They made the trip home with me at the end of the summer, but languished in the buckets we had unceremoniously dumped them into. The buckets didn’t even have drainage holes. I don’t know how they survived. It was not until 1989 and six years later that I actually started working with them. Those trees are gone now, as I moved on to other treats. With the skills I have now, I might have been able to do something with them, but they were really of very poor quality. They did the job and got me started.  

If you get a chance to make it to the Grand Canyon, I highly recommend it. The canyon is really like nothing else. Its vastness cannot be overstated. I got to see it from the air, both coming and going and it’s beeeeg. It’s almost seven thousand feet in elevation on the south rim, which is where timberline is here. That means it can be a bit nippy at night, and snowy and cold in the off season. What you will find startling as a bonsai person, are the twisted and curvy deciduous trees. That’s right, and many species to boot. They are all worthy of study and you really need a good two full days to take it in. The junipers and pines are ninety percent of the trees there, but you will find Ponderosas, and a few odd firs. Be sure to take a look at the rare Doug Firs in the photos, and take in inspiration anywhere you can find it.

Scott

One of a thousand views of thecanyon

Douglas Firs hug the cooler shadows along the canyon wall on the left side of the photo.

Morning snow with Utah Juniper

Utah Juniper emerging from solid rock and Colorado Pinyon Pine through a crack

Pine jutting out into the canyon below

Bare Essentials

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First of all, my apologies for missing this column last month. The deadline passed, and as such, most of your repotting season. But I wanted to cover a few things that came up during the February presentation and following workshops. I hope that this will help fill in some gaps and set you up even better for next year.  

The subject that I wish to grapple with is bare rooting. A bit of clarification is needed in terminology. Some folks see bare rooting as merely removing just the soil from the roots. Other folks will see it as removing all of the soil AND washing off the roots. So here is the analogy. The first is like stripping down to your underwear. A bit cool but bearable for a moment. The second leaves you stripped naked. All protection is gone, and that is the way we need to look at it. When you wash the roots, you strip away any bit of security the roots have, any mycorrhizal mycelia that may be present. This may be fine for some trees, and death to others. In general, any evergreen tree, whether a conifer, or broad leaved tree, does not like to be bare rooted, and much less have their roots thoroughly washed. There are of course, exceptions, but it would be rare for an evergreen. Last year I bare rooted and washed almost all of my deciduous trees. I was fighting a still unknown disease that I suspected was soil born, and spread through the reuse of soil (dried, resifted, etc…) It was a ton of work, especially since I had to dig about thirty trees in growing beds and do that same process in order to move to a new house. A monumental task. But everything survived and is busting out this year, with kind of growth that I have not had for some time. I attribute this to the complete renewing of the soil, a spraying program during the year, and aggressive fertilization in late summer and early fall. But this would not be possible on a conifer. I would have to come up with a different strategy.  

With conifers, if you need to change out the soil because percolation is non-existent, or because you just have some sort of mountain muck for soil, you can remove up to half of the soil all the way to the base on one side of the tree, or split it up in wedges. Be sure to do the WEAK parts first. If you do the strong roots first, then the entire root system is weakened. When the tree recovers in a year or two from that, you do the other half. If you have a fairly newly collected tree, limit yourself to one third of the total volume. Another technique I use is to lightly trim a bit of the outer roots and put it into a generous sized pot and let it grow some new roots. In the next repotting, I try to leave the new, strong, outer roots alone and go after the black gunk up under the base of the tree. It gets cleaned out, but the process is buffered so that the impact is minimal.  

So, you may ask, why the difference between conifers and deciduous trees when it comes to bare rooting? I have no definitive answer, but I like to think of balancing the roots with the foliage load. When a tree has lost all of its leaves, it has no load. The roots are not required to supply moisture to the leaves. This can happen naturally as the leaves depart their branches in the fall, or induced by our cutting them off (defoliation) for some other purpose. That means that spring is the best time to repot – no load on the roots, so we can cut, bare root, whatever, andthe treehas time and temperature to recover as the leaves emerge. On evergreens, we must be much more careful. The tree ALWAYS has a load on it, so anything we do to the roots can induce stress. We need to limit root work as much as possible to provide as smooth a transition as we can. Anytime we work on roots, no matter what kind of tree, we are impacting its health. We may not notice the effects, as the tree marches on. Heck, we may want to purposely slow it down. But be careful. Repotting any tree may cause the needles or leaves to grow longer and larger as it seeks to recover.  

Respect your elders. Deciduous trees get old, just like conifers. It’s just that the relative range is shorter. So if you have any kind of older tree, treat it more gently than you would a new seedling. Younger trees may need to have their roots worked on every year to help establish a solid foundation. As the tree ages, it can be repotted less often. On a deciduous tree, you are still going to want to really clean it out every couple of years to inspect and makes sure that no single root is getting too strong, but in general things will begin to slow down and even out. Less drastic work is needed. On conifers, even on young trees, you want to let them go a couple of years between repotting. Mature trees can easily go five or six years. If you have an older tree, or any bonsai approaching a mature state, you really want it to slow down and produce smaller growth. That’s what all that nice Akadama in your mix is for. The roots are able to penetrate the particles, drilling right through them. This increases the available space for roots to grow through multiple seasons, stabilizing the tree. That is when the fine ramification starts to occur. That is what we are striving for in the end. So next time you get the garden hose out to blast away on your trees, proceed cautiously.

Scott

Ponderosa Styling

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Way back in October during our first of the three part Pine series, I introduced this Ponderosa Pine to you. The material was raw, in that it had never really been styled. I worked on one major bend many years ago with Boon to make it into a cascade, and then never did anything from there. We just bent the trunk, so as soon as the raffia and rebar were removed, you couldn’t really tell that it had ever been touched.  

This “Pondo” was originally collected by Randy Knight and my original thought was to graft Japanese Black Pine onto the right hand trunk to make a very forceful, masculine little tree. But there wasn’t really quite enough movement to carry that off, nor a convenient place to graft. Then my taste started to shift more towards preserving the original foliage whenever possible on wild trees, so it was left alone.  

The first photo was taken in 2007, making it obvious that it had been collected several years prior. It has been out of the mountains for at least a decade. After the first year or two, it was repotted from the usual 2x6 lumber box into its present ceramic container and has not been touched since. As I remember it, probably three quarters of the soil is native to Wyoming.  

The second photo I have to offer is from this winter. Notice the difference between 2007 and 2015? Hard huh? That’s because there isn’t much. Eight years of watering and weeding has produced very little “Bonsai” growth. And here in lies my first point. Trees don’t get better by themselves. Only when we have styled a tree, optimizing the branch placement for light and orienting the foliage so that the growth can be balanced throughout the tree can it begin to really develop as a bonsai. Ponderosas grow really slowly, so this is an important point. We need to get this thing wired and styled so it can begin to really accelerate its development.  
 
The next few photos are the before and after process of designing this tree. It was five feet wide!! It took up a lot of precious bench space. I spent several sessions over a couple of days studying the tree at various angles and coming up with some design solutions. I really liked the lower section of trunk on what was to become the back side, but it emerged from the soil with reverse taper, so not so good. I saw a way to make a stumpy, muscular semi-cascade, but Iwould be losing out on three quarters of the tree. Ultimately I came back to the same angle that we talked about in October.

Before styling (left photo).                                        Right-side view (right photo)

Back

Removed back branch

Front

Left-side

Detail

As I worked, I discovered the untamed beauty in the line of the trunk, and I really wanted to work with this. The only problem was that the foliage was not really placed in the proper positions to work with this design – the classic Ponderosa dilemma. Most all of the foliage is out on the tips. There were a lot of branches down low on the right, but the trunk was ascending on the left. To compound matters, the right hand trunk/branch took a convoluted route back on to itself several times. This is usually a feature, but not so much for this design. I had to minimize that, and I am still open on this area.   

From here the design hinges on the ability to bring the left branch down and forward. Fortunately, Ponderosas are the most flexible tree that I have ever had the pleasure to bend. Most of the required bend comes at the juncture where it emerges from the trunk. Impossible to protectwith raffia there, so it ended up tearing a bit. This is the only place on the tree where I have any concern. After I wired it and then pulled it down with a guy wire, I found that the branch had some stiffness in the middle, so it did not flex with the force of the guy wire – one of the reasons it tore.  

To me, the still straight branch was exposed and ugly. So then I had to go back and retrofit number four copper wire from the trunk out onto the branch. Once I did that, I really no longer needed the guy wire. With that major hurdle overcome, I was free to work on the rest of the tree. I tried my best to wire on the major branches and tried to work all over the tree to progress the design. I had to stop and work on the lower right branches to see how they could work into the design. I cut the farthest back branch that will now be a jin. The right hand branches were brought over behind the main trunk to help create depth and mass.  

Once that was accomplished, I could then see that I really wanted the crown to extend from the left side over to the right to complete the movement. I was able to swing the top, which was constructed of two main branches, forward and around.  

I very much tried to be disciplined and provide branches growing out the back for future growth, not just make it look good from the front. The new tree is now 42 inches tall and much more compact on the sides. Of special note is the fact that when we changed the angle we now have the weaker parts of the tree on the top and the stronger on the bottom. This is an ideal situation. The tree will naturally want to grow stronger on top, so I expect that region to develop more rapidly and catch up with the lower section.

Now that we have changed the angle, it’s time to get it repotted. Normally I might wait for up to a year to do this, but the tree is very stable and strong and has been in the current pot way too long. So for our February program, we will be repotting this beast on stage. Be sure to be there and give your input on the pot. Do we utilize a new one, or keep the old one? My back would really like to see it in something a bit smaller. We will focus on all the details to make a successful repot and stress the finer points of handling collected material. Be sure to join us for the fun.

Scott

Pine Redux

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Each month when I sit down to write this column, I have the same goal. To empower each and everyone of us to create beautiful trees. Sometimes that entails talking about bonsai philosophically, and at other times we cover specific techniques. My intent to make all of the principles apply as broadly as possible, so we can learn to cook. Cooking? What does that have to dowith it? Have you ever seen some of the cooking shows like Chopped? Contestants are presented with a basket of obscure and oddly paired ingredients that they must take and make into an award-winning dish. There are no recipes, and they can add ingredients. The main requirement is that they transform the ingredients into something different. This means relating the ingredients to each other and thinking about how they might compliment the dish. In my parlance, this is cooking, and not merely following a recipe. Relying on recipes is what I have done most of my bonsai life, and I had some quite tasty ones. But now I am to the point where I need to think on my own. Case in point. I have been growing Douglas Firs for about ten years now. The Artisan’s Cup presented the first Doug Fir I have seen on display. No one has been doing them, yet I have to figure it out. I have had to observe, experiment, regroup, and forge ahead. That is how you create art and that is how we learn to cook. We take what we already know and synthesize it with something new. So that is what I was up to last month with the year-long Growth Chart and Attributes Chart for the pines. Here is what we know, now can we apply this knowledge to other species, or refine what we know? So for this month’s column, I thought I would recap, review, and extend a few of the concepts that I shared in, ‘Everything’s Going To Be Just Pine,’ at last month’s meeting.

We started with a broad approach to pines. We talked about the energy level of different species throughout the year and how that can guide us in the techniques we use and the timing to apply them. Higher energy pines, like Japanese Black, and to a slightly lesser degree Red Pines are described as Double Flush, or Coastal species. Both are two needle pines. These trees produce an excess of energy which leads to long needles and leggy extension of shoots. To manage this energy to our advantage, we decandle the trees in mid-year, forcing it to regrow, or reboot as it were, to produce shorter needles and internodes. This process shifts the fall work calendar for these species. We have to wait longer for the new needles to harden off so that we can work on them – usually October.

By contrast, lower energy pines are often described as Single Flush, Alpine, or Mountain species and would include all of the five-needled or white pines, Mugo and Lodgepole pines, Ponderosas, and just about anything other than the Japanese Black and Red Pines. We use all of the energy that these trees produce during the year. We manage water and fertilizer to keep growth in check, and pinch candles rather than wholesale cutting. That means that we can start working on them as early as August.  

All of the pines species have distinct attributes and we should be prepared to take advantage of what each has to offer, and learn to deal with any disadvantages they posses. For instance, we know that black pines grow really fast, which is great when we want to grow a trunk, and not so good when we want to keep it exactly as is. We can take the sure knowledge we have for one species and apply that technique and knowledge to species with similar properties.  

Maybe we can apply what we know about Japanese White Pine to similar species here like Limber Pine. Or maybe we can treat Mugo, Lodgepole, and Scots Pines similarly, even though they are from different continents. I have yet to find the person with extensive experience with all of these different species. So with that in mind, I put together a chart to help relate these different attributes in different species to one another. This is based mostly on my own experiences and what I have gathered from others. I have a good amount of experience with Japanese Black, Red, and White Pines, along with our own native Lodgepole and Ponderosas, but not a lot beyond that.   

Take a look at the attached chart and see if you can use it for your own work. If I have left a space empty, I really don’t have much info for you. Better to say I don’t know than to give you incorrect information. Of course, this assumes a healthy and vibrant specimen. Unhealthy trees are very unpredictable, except that they will not follow the rules! There are certainly more columns that could be added, like bark texture, heat resistance, etc… But at least this will point you in the right direction.

And now, few points to remember as we firmly land in fall and gear up for the winter months. This is a great time to work on pines. Actually, we are a little past. So if you do some extreme bending, or thinning of the trees, be sure to give them some winter protection. If you are not sure, leave more foliage, as this will leave more solar collectors operating all winter and help to buffer the challenges of winter.  

Other than that, clean out old, withering needles, but be sure to leave some of last year’s needles on each branch. They will continue to produce hormones that help the tree know what to do. Whenever you wire a branch, make sure that both the needles and the buds point up. That will keep them healthy.  

The work that you do now on any tree to wire and organize the branches will set the tree up for a successful growing season next year. Without this work, the tree can never really progress as a bonsai. It will not automatically begin to ramify and back bud on it’s own. We have to help. And that is what bonsai is all about, helping a tree be all it can be.

Scott

The Artisans Cup

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Wow! Did that just really happen? With a resounding note, Ryan and Chelsea Neil have reinvigorated American bonsai. What we saw last month was the seminal point of bonsai here in America. We finally have a voice. We now have expression and a shared vision for the future.

Kudos go to Ryan, Chelsea, and their whole team for presenting trees in such a refreshing manner. I just loved it. The attention was solidly focused on the trees, and not the trappings. I spent three days on the floor and never got tired of it. I doubt this will become the de facto standard for exhibits, simply because it takes so much technical prowess and financial investment to pull it off, but it will influence all exhibits for years to come. I know that other exhibits have done something with dark lit rooms, but nothing like this. This was throwing out the rules and see what we can create. Every time the Neils made a leap of faith they stuck the landing with near perfection. Well done.

Most of you reading this article put considerable time, effort and talent into making this great event happen. Whether showing up a day early to build the great rhomboid erector set for the displays, ushering folks through the exhibit, or manning the swag tables, you put in a ton of hours, all for the love of bonsai. A few of you even spent days, months, and years preparing trees, stands, and accents for the exhibit. Twelve to be exact. That’s 17% of the entire exhibit developed, owned, and maintained by the good ol’ BSOP. Not only that, but outstanding BSOP member Randy Knight took home the top prize for not only the top tree but also the best accent planting. Way to go Randy!!!! Way to go BSOP!!! All of this speaks volumes to the artistic excellence that BSOP has been pursuing for so many years. We sit at the very epicenter of the emerging American bonsai movement and it shows.

We might be able to just blame some of this on proximity. It seems natural to say that, of course there were more trees from Portland because it took place here. Well to that I say, true, it’s a lot easier to submit trees to the show without needing a cross-country trek, but all that stops at the jurying process. All of those BSOP trees had to make it through the scrutiny of Mike and Ryan before they could ever make that trip across town. (I was probably the closest exhibitor at roughly 15 minutes away, as opposed to say, the 3,000 miles from New York) It also means that they beat out the other 230 or so entries that were submitted for inclusion. So congratulations Portland, on a job well done. Most of you were at the show and/or have seen tons of photos. What I show here is just a reminder of all the great trees from the BSOP.

I think that the one thing that stuck out most to me artistically besides the general presentation, and where this show really made its mark noticeable, was in the display stands that were utilized. What we were saw were many different styles from traditional Japanese and Chinese designs to fusions with contemporary furniture motifs. I think that all but one were wooden (Remember the metal trolley under the giant climbing hydrangea?). Some were rustic, like Lee Cheatle’s fence boards – how did he find those chunky, weathered boards the exact length needed? Some stands were missing parts – Randy’s winning tree sat on a table missing itsfourth leg, with the magic of 80 pounds of ballast keeping everything steady. Many were crafted locally in Portland or in Seattle, with forms yet unseen in bonsai – cantilevers, early American touches, and such. Credit BSOP member Jan Hettick with TWO stands in the show that went uncredited at the show – her wonderful stand for Eileen Knox’s Scots Pine and the lovely Bloodwood stand she made for my own Engelmann Spruce. Bob Laws also made a great stand for his display. I thought his whole display was very well conceived and executed. It had its own unique personality, speaking strongly, but softly. I even got into the act making a live edge stand for my Ponderosa.

This was the real coming out party for American species of bonsai. Sure, we have seen Redwoods, Ponderosas, and California Junipers for years. But this show is the first one were natives dominated the scene and more importantly, showed mature development. We still have a long ways to go, but everything is clearly on track. I have watched Randy’s winning Rocky Mountain Juniper for several years, including times when it didn’t go into other shows. The rapidity of its development is just shocking. But it came with persistent, expert care and technique, lots of fertilizer, and lots of sun. But nothing that you can’t actually do. I can’t wait for the release of the online catalog with judges’ audio comments on every tree. I am most anxious to hear insights into my own trees and how I might improve them. I am already reexamining a tree from the show and how to redesign it. The show is over and now it’s time to get back to work. There is a lot to do before the next one!

Scott

Grand Prize Winner, Rocky Mountain Juniper – Randy Knight.

Best Accent – Randy Knight

European Birch – Dennis Vojtilla

Chinese Elm – Robert Wofford

Ponderosa Pine – Lee Cheatle

Japanese Maple – Dennis Vojtilla

Engelmann Spruce – Scott Elser

European Beech - Scott Elser

Ponderosa Pine – Scott Elser

Coastal Redwood - Randy Knight

Southwestern White Pine – Greg Brenden

Scots Pine – Eileen Knox

Shimpaku Juniper – Bob Laws

Case Study #2 –European Beech – in it for the long haul

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Alan Taft and I have an arrangement of sorts. He grows trees from scratch until they are too big to handle. Then I buy them from him. At least it seems to work that way, and I have several to prove it. Last week I was in his back yard and I somehow failed to spot any new prospects. I wasn’t really looking, but I think it was because he has been consistently working down the size of his collection, both in numbers and dimensions for the past few years. I too have been working on downsizing the number of trees in my collection. 

But curiously, it is the medium size trees that seem to be leaving my garden. I am still entranced by large trees, and alternately, I am increasingly drawn to shohin. I didn’t set out to do this, it just happened. Of course, when I say medium size, it’s really a large size to most of you. I guess that means I am sort of a XXL kind of guy.  

Enough digressing. Quite a few years ago I spotted a large beech in Alan’s back yard. He had raised it in the ground for many years, from a seedling acquired at the Hoyt Arboretum. The tree was immense, maybe a good three or four feet wide. After some brief negotiations, I took the tree home with me. That was somewhere near 2000-2002. The early history is a bit cloudy, but as you can see by the first photo, I had already drastically pruned back the long and leggy branches back to very thick main branches, leaving just a few buds.  

I was also working on some root grafts. Of course, this being my first stab at root grafts, not all of them took. They really helped improve the nebari, but also set it back in other areas, leaving a big scar when they didn’t take. It is a testament to the strength of the tree that I did not have more die back of roots than I did. When I did these grafts, I cut a shallow groove in the base and aligned a seedling with it and hoped for the best. With this method, the tree can fairly easily push the seedling away and heal over.  

Now I cut a nice deep groove, the depth of the whole seedling, so that it has no chance of escape. I also prefer a thread graft if I can do it, with the top of the seedling emerging below the soil line, so it’s hidden. This requires using a sort of L-shaped seedling and root. Awesome technique.

I had been hosting an informal monthly study group in my garage for quite some time. During one of these sessions, I decided that it was time a good time for a defining cut on the tree. I really wanted to get the tree down in size and the existing top just wasn’t doing it for me. So I handed the saw to Alan as I braced the tree. Note the piece of rubber hose protecting the new top.  

The result was quite a large wound, which I have yet to fully heal, but am still working at it. After this cut, I let the top grow freely without pinching for several years so that I could both heal the cut and smooth the taper of the trunk. This was not difficult since beech are incredibly strong at the top.

2003 Many branches have been severely                  Scott and Alan make the big cut
pruned, but not the top. Root grafts in place             on the trunk. 

After the big cut and further branch pruning      2006 – The beginnings of structureMy development technique was to pinch the new growth in the spring back to two pairs of leaves. Beech will only reliably issue one set of growth in the spring. It may send up sporadic shoots in the summer, but you can never tell where they are going to appear, nor depend on them. During August, I would cut the leaves in half to let more light into the interior and slow things down a bit. Now I try to do this work in July. With leaves like these, I like to fold them lengthwise, then make a diagonal cut across the top, halving the surface area. You hardly notice that they’ve been cut.  
In the winter, I can cut this tree back to a single bud, but I usually leave two. I don’t have to worry about timing because beeches just eat up the cold weather. They thrive on it. The tree is really strong and is just now beginning to slow down, in a good way.  
When you look at the photos of 2003-07, you can see that the tree is slowly developing some great ramification, but the shape is rather ugly and uneven. At this point, I shifted my strategy. Instead of just always pruning to one pair of buds, no matter what, I began to leave areas that were weaker with more buds and length for the following year. I pruned the top area back to just one bud, but let the lower areas have more.  
I applied the same concept to spring pinching. I pinched back to two leaves on top, which may be reduced to just one leaf in the summer, while weaker areas were pinched to three leaves, which could be reduced later if needed. The results were that the tree started to make a more even silhouette. I also worked on the nebari, repotting about every two or three years, carving away at the bottom to push the root developing upward. You can see a variety of pots. The newest, an orangish, cornered oval is by Ron Lang. I found it at a National Show. The roots are now evening out a bit now. In the beginning, there were just three huge roots – not ideal for bonsai. I have even gone so far as to carve the roots in half and let them heal over into what appears to be two separate roots on the surface. This method seems to be working for this tree. 

You can see that I also used wire at various stages to direct growth. I highly recommend this. Everything wants to grow upward, so pulling things down was critical. But not too far. I made a decision on this tree, and all of my deciduous trees a long time ago, that I would develop them as close to their own nature as possible. This meant tossing out the traditional pine tree shape for the branching. I still want to apply wire at times, just to make adjustments.  
The tree has been maturing nicely. The last two photos were what I used to submit the tree for the Artisan’s Cup, which is just in another week by the time you read this. One photo naked and one fully clothed. Actually, I had to show all four sides, also. Be sure to stop by and introduce yourself to Mr. Beech. Hopefully, he will be dressed in his yellow suit.

Case Study #1 Lodgepole Pine, Compacting the design

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OK. You have ALL asked for it. Design information for bonsai. So we are going to try and tackle this subject through specific examples. Each tree is different and requires a different approach. Even if you go to a workshop, where there are ten trees to choose from that are all mass produced together, there will be a tremendous variation in the style and individual qualities of each tree. Therefore, the more insight into design that you have, and the more technical skill, the greater ability you will have to make your trees better. And that all comes with being exposed to more trees and more situations.  

Our first case involves a Lodgepole Pine that I collected sometime in the nineties, up on the backside of Hood, in a ditch somewhere on a side road off of Lolo Pass. Not being deceptive here - I really don’t recall much more than that. Ditches and road cuts seem to be the best place for me to find trees at lower elevations – places where all of the trees normally grow very straight. At one time, I had more lodgepole pines than any other single species in my collection. This specimen was somewhat of an upright tree when collected and initially planted. Somewhere along the lines, I decided to make it a semi-cascade style. These guys grow very slowly and don’t back bud reliably, so I needed to work with what I had, in terms of branching and trunk thickness. At this time the trunk had no deadwood on it. I stripped and carved the jin you see at the right from a live branch and was rather proud of the carving work. One of the only trees I have ever really finish carved for aesthetic purposes. At that time, I was studying with Boon Manakitivipart in his Intensive program. I brought the tree down to Boon’s club and the Bay Island Bonsai Club show in January 2006. This is the first photo you see of the tree. Take a look and see what you think.

2006 Lodgepole Pine shown at the 2006 Bay Island Bonsai Club show.

What did you notice? The trunk is rather thin, but not really a bunjin. The needles are nice and short, but the pads are not all that dense. The trunk has some reverse taper. But more than that, the foliage mass is a long ways away from where the trunk emanates from the soil. That makes a big, unsightly hole in the visual composition. Lodgepoles didn’t seem to get much respect at the time, down in the bay area, it was being considered maybe a common tree. But I never saw one on display, so that thought bewildered me. I had a lot of fun showing this tree, along with a group of vine maples growing on a lava rock, which I also still have.  

Fast forward to 2013. I had not been keeping up with my trees, and this one was no exception. I was already working on thinning my collection down and this tree was on the chopping block. It was going to have to become a better bonsai, or die trying. That may sound harsh. But lodgepoles really are a dime a dozen up in the woods, and this tree was purely my own investment in time and money. My goal is to make the most out of every tree, and if this tree was going keep using my resources, like watering every day and precious bench space, it was going to have to improve - drastically. Back in about 2010-11 I decided to change the container into something smaller and lighter in appearance. But the repotting happened to take place after the new shoots had started to elongate. Not a big problem, even if not ideal, as I had done this before. The problem here was that I had to reduce the root mass much more than expected to fit into the v-shaped pot. I should have just stopped – but that is not always on my radar. The result was that, even with my extra effort at aftercare, the tree barely survived. It lost some foliage, and most definitely it’s strength. Now I had to let it recover for a few years.  

With all of the above in mind, I had a few intrepid folks help me and in the spring of 2014 we proceeded towards styling the tree. In the intervening years, a small portion of deadwood
had expanded to cover a much larger area on the trunk, mostly on the back side. The only way to feature that element was to change the front. Once the new front was decided upon, we proceeded to bend the trunk in two places. Then we stopped to let the tree recover. It did very well, and in the early spring of 2015 I was able to complete the restyling.  

2013 The state of the tree before restyling. Obviously it has lost some branching and grown raggedly.

The process for bending the trunk was straightforward, but not for the faint of heart. For the first bend, we used a saw to separate the dead part of the trunk from the live part – dead and dry parts don’t bend, they just break. We probably could have just split it, but I wanted a little more control. We then used the rebar that you can see in the photo to anchor the wire as we bent the tree back on itself. This move was largely horizontal and meant to make the trunk shorter. The second bend then, was to move the crown back over top of the trunk. To get the trunk to bend, we hollowed it out, creating space for the wood to move lessening the force needed. We were able to anchor this second bend to the same rebar. Mission accomplished. This work is really much easier with more than one set of hands.   

When I got ready to wire and style the rest of the tree this year, I was struck by the nature of the curves that we had created and how much I enjoyed them. But darn, I was planning to feature the deadwood. After a brief debate in my mind, I went back to the fundamental hierarchy for bonsai design – 1. Base, 2. Trunk Line, 3. Special Features, 4. Branching. A beautiful trunk line trumps special features, especially when they are not so special. So now we are back at the original front. But the larger mission has been accomplished – to compact the design. The open spaces are now smaller and less intrusive and are now within reach of the foliage, another mitigating factor. Lodgepoles are quite rewarding to wire – the needles are not sharp and there is a good amount of space between branching to get in and out of. The only caveat on this particular tree is that the foliage is rather wild. Hopefully that will settle down with a more consistent growing pattern. Since I rotated the angle of the tree during styling, I built a little stand so that the tree could grow at the new angle, keeping the needles upright, and until I can find an awesome new pot. 

2015 The tree after restyling.

Overlay

Compare the old and new silhouettes. You can see just how far that jin traveled. Notice where the crown sits in each version. It has moved considerably.  

That’s my mission at the Artisan’s Cup come fall. Notice the dam of soil added to make sure the water permeates evenly through the soil column. Ready to show next year with a new pot? You decide.

Scott

The High Price of Too Many Trees

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The purpose of this column, from the very beginning, has been to advance the art of bonsai in Portland as far and as quickly as we can. I have been endeavoring to share the bonsai knowledge that I have gained in 25 years of pursuing this art. Some of this information comes via direct instruction from those who have studied extensively in Japan, and other tidbits from my own personal experiences. Most of those experiences are triumphs, but a few are tragedies. This is one of those times that I hope you can learn from some of my mistakes.  

As I mentioned in my last column, my bonsai collection started unobtrusively on an apartment balcony. Since that last writing, my now considerably larger collection is moving back to within a half mile of that first apartment. It will be time to pare down the collection to a more manageable size, because quite literally, that is all the space I will have. It took me many years to build up the collection, acquiring trees whenever and wherever I could to find the finest my budget would allow. I was able to amass quite a few quality trees, and many of them large. The trees are large enough that they make me think two and three times before tackling one, either for styling or maintenance. And there are so many of them. So many that I cannot properly care for them. And therein is the crux of the problem. Shifting interests and time constraints.  

About ten years ago, I took up dancing (Yes, all that stuff you see on Dancing with the Stars) and that started to eat into my time with lessons, etc… It was a very good thing though, as I started spending more time with people instead of trees on Saturday night. Now that I am very happily married (Yes, we met dancing), bonsai is not one of those activities that we generally do together, but Lisa is my biggest bonsai supporter. So if you couple all those factors in with trees that are growing and developing rapidly, each season multiplying the amount of care required, it’s a recipe for disaster. So, this month I have an example of what can happen when you have too many trees.  

The photos tell just about everything. These branches used to belong to a Western Hemlock that won the Best Conifer award at the National Show in 2008. But the wire from that show came off only two years ago. There was always something else to do, and well, hemlocks don’t grow too fast, do they? I will get to it next month. And the next month. And I really can’t see up inside there too well. It was a shock to see just how much I had let things cut in. Eileen Knox was so kind to help me unlock the tree from it’s bonds, but as you can see, some of branches were way beyond repair. I cut the ones shown off a year after the wire was removed. In one section, we simply removed the entire lower branch (Which improved the tree significantly). As you can see in the photos, some of the wire was simply embedded too far to get out. So, now I have some hints on how to avoid and correct this situation.  
1.    Make sure you can maintain the trees that you have. Having too many will not do justice to the ones you that you cherish. Only you can decide that number, but I bet you have some neglected ones. Go for the best.  
My addiction is that I like a great number of species, deciduous and conifers, and many
forms. And of course large ones. I just de-wired a large mountain hemlock. It took five hours just for that little chore.
2.    Wire cutting in is very predictable in certain areas, so check there first. The apex – it’s always growing much stronger than the rest of the tree and thus thickens much faster. Any place that you made sharp bends. The more the tissue is damaged, the more repair that is needed and that is where it thickens the most. Small wire on a branch with larger wire. This one is trickier. Since you have large wire on a larger branch, you don’t always notice how tight the fine little wire is, like a tourniquet, strangling the tree. Since it is fine, it buries itself deep very quickly.
3.    Watch deciduous trees in the spring – they are elongating rapidly and the negative effects of even the slightest scarring can take awhile to mitigate. Watch your conifers in the fall, when they are literally bulking up, storing up reserves for the winter.
4.    Always remove wire in the same order that you put it on. That means starting with all the fine wire on the tips of a main branch, then working back up the branch, gauge by gauge. That way the branches are supported as you unwind.
5.    Remove fine wire by unwinding. I unwind everything up to about 14 gauge, then I get out the wire cutters somewhere between 14 & 12. Two reasons. The first being that you will always miss some of the fine wire if you don’t keep it in one piece by unwinding. The second is that you risk actually cutting the branch off with fine wire. The bottom line is to always use the method that will cause the least amount of damage to the tree. Be ABSOLUTELY SURE to support the branches just as you did when you applied the wire. Remember, especially with copper that work hardens, the wire is twice as strong as when you put it on. If you are not careful, it will just rip a branch right off, no questions asked.
6.    To remove deeply embedded wire, unwind it as much as you can, retracing the steps you made when you put it on. This may require you to cut it after each revolution. On completely buried wire, I sometimes cut one end short, making sure it is straight as possible, then pull it through the other side.  

Remember, all is not lost, even with heavy scarring. The tree has already been rerouting the flow of resources around wire, so if you remove it with care, it will just keep on growing. Seal any bark that comes off with cut paste. Light scarring will dissipate over time, even on something like a maple. In a conifer, foliage can be arranged to hide something excessively grotesque. Or, you can simply cut it off and replace it with something else. Above all, don’t get your hands stuck in the cookie jar with too many trees to take care of.

Scott

Leaving wire on too long

Bonsai From the Ground Up

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For quite awhile now my wife and I have been searching for a new home. Unfortunately, the search is not over yet, but it became imperative that I dig up and pot all of the trees that I have been growing in the ground for a good ten years now. This movement from ground to pot actually started several years ago with a Styrax and a few Crabapples. Now that the process has been accelerated by the impending move, the experience has been quite enlightening. I thought that it would be a great time to share some of the triumphs and travails while they are fresh in my mind. I have had a few requests to talk about growing trees in the ground, so, here ya go.

First of all, growing bonsai from scratch is a privilege. Living in this great country where you can own a piece of land, however small, and a great state like Oregon where trees grow like weeds is awesome. My bonsai hobby (if you can still call it that) started out on an apartment balcony in Lake Grove. A pretty small space, but I had it good. I was on a second story slab of concrete where bugs and birds were a minor concern and security was impeccable - ever try scaling T-111 siding?  

But within a few years I had outgrown the space and bonsai was the main reason to leave the ease of an apartment and actually buy a home. The point that I am trying to make is that growing in the ground is not a possibility for everyone. Even at my first house, which had a third of an acre, I didn’t grow any bonsai in the ground. Wasted time and space.  

Then, shortly after I moved into the current home, I did the darndest thing and went to study bonsai with Boon Manakitivipart. Through Boon I learned to appreciate deciduous bonsai much more. So much that I began to increase my collection of those wonderful trees. That’s about the time that importation of trees from Japan began to be curtailed and sources for great material were drying up. I realized that the only way that I was going to have any good deciduous trees would be to grow them myself. Now I want to stop and state right here that NOTHING beats the quality of growing trees in pots. The control that you have on shape, health, roots, trunks, branches, etc… is superior. But you can also do a fantastic job scrubbing your bathroom floor with a toothbrush. It is all a matter of time and perspective. I wanted to halve my time and was willing to sacrifice some of that control, especially since I was after larger trees.  

It was about this same time that I discovered Oregon Bonsai and Randy Knight. Randy had been growing trees on a very large scale and I was permitted to purchase and dig a few from his field. He had started out growing his trees on ceramic tiles, which worked very well at creating a flat root pad. This was my first experience dealing with field grown trees. But as most of you know, I like bigger trees, so after my acquisitions were dug, cleaned, top pruned and root pruned, they went straight back into the ground. There were several crabapples and some quince.  

I built some raised growing beds into the gentle slope of my back yard and away we went.  

Over the years, I added to that initial planting from several sources. I planted trees that had been developed in pots for several years with nice spreading root bases, and I also purchased regular landscape material in one to five gallon pots. Some were collected from other yards and there were even volunteers that I just started training into bonsai. I added many different species, including: several magnolias, crepe myrtles, beeches, stewartias, Japanese maples, beautyberries, cherries, sweetgums, alders, native crabapples, Indian plum, etc…. As you can see by the list, most of these would really be hard to come by. I didn’t grow any conifers. It is way too easy, albeit, expensive, to obtain hundred-year old specimens than to try and grow them myself.  

From the start I knew that the goal was to grow trunks and I didn’t really care about branching in particular. I was after volume. And I knew that to do that I must really let things grow. By the way, this runs true, whether you are growing shohin or huge behemoths.  

Every year I identified a leader for that year’s growth – the direction that I wanted the trunk to grow. Sometimes I would even wire up a branch into position, or just raise it with a rebar stake and a piece of wire. Using the later method, it didn’t matter if the wire cut in, because I was tying up high, into the part of the tree would never be used in the final product. Applying wire while the tree is in the ground is difficult, and invariably it will start cutting into the tree because it is growing so fast. But it was necessary to get new leaders in some cases.  

The trees that I had the most success with were ones that already had some shape going into the ground that I could build on. Material with nicely compact and sinuous curves and gentle movement. But you have to be sure to scale your movement to the final size of the tree. Side to side movement of a few inches that seems drastic when the tree is a half-inch in diameter is almost totally gone when the tree reaches 4 inches in diameter. There are no bonsai that look good with a 6 inch straight section. This is really common with trees purchased from landscaping stock. We need curves. Better to bite the bullet and make whatever cut is necessary and let it regrow. This is much easier and palatable in the ground. Most of my pruning occurred in late winter and early spring where I could really evaluate what was going on.  

Secondary pruning, especially when I needed back budding took place at various times in the growing season. May would always be my best bet for cutting back.  

The trees put on incredible growth. Some species could add 6-8 feet a year to their height. At most, I let them grow two years without cutting them back. The first year of free growth they would really put on height, but that second year, they really thickened up, with many side branches. Many simply grew too fast and I had to whack them every year – that would be the alders. Boy, can they grow fast. In contrast, the stewartias and styrax grew fairly slowly, both in height and girth.  

Every time that I pruned the trunk I used cut paste on the wounds. I found that it always has worked the best for my cuts. I also found that some trees heal over very easily and some do not, even in the ground. So I came up with my general rule that any sacrifice branch can grow to a maximum of half an inch diameter before I need to cut it off. I was after quality and anything bigger than that left too big of a scar to heal. The crabapples growing in the ground simply would not heal large wounds for me, but the slow growing stewartias and crepe myrtles healed over magically. So you always have to know your species.  

The great advantage to growing in the ground is that there doesn’t have to be a dormant season during the summer. I made sure that the ground stayed moist even during hot spells andfound that trees could power right through the heat. I tossed my old fertilizer from the pots onto the growing beds and added other fertilizer as supplements and got some astounding growth.  

The trees went into the ground at various times of the year, in different years, and in different sizes, so not much consistency there. At first, I think, I dug up some of the trees after a year or two, then root pruned and replanted them, using 12 inch ceramic tiles under each, or sometimes plywood. As I mentioned earlier, I had already started to dig some of my treasure and put them into pots several years ago, and even sold a few. Knowing of my impending move, I went through all of them last year and used a shovel to cut a ring around them in the ground, to prune the roots and get them ready for this year’s Herculean task. I even had to take an axe to the alders, since the roots were well over an inch in diameter. I also dug up several trees and moved them to make room for others. Plus, I dug the two crepe myrtles, which I had planted in the front yard to enjoy, and moved them to the growing beds. But they too, were always destined for bonsai glory, so they had been planted in the front yard WITH the requisite tiles under them. It worked well, because they had not grown much due to too much shade.  

So the Forsythia that I had moved last year and dug first this spring came up with a massive base and a very nice root pad. Sweet success. But then I began to dig the trees that had been in the ground longer. The ones that I had supposedly root pruned several times with a shovel over the years. With the trees growing on tiles, I got some surprises. The tile always did its job and developed flat root systems. But sometimes the roots would grow over the edge of the tile, then down (That’s a good reason to use a big tile) or they were just planted overall too deep and I got more roots than I thought that I would. But at this point, I still highly recommend it. But I found that more often than not, I hadn’t actually gotten a tile under the tree. More than that, the shovel had either failed to prune the roots, because my ringing diameter was too large – not really likely, or the roots simply headed for China. The result were root pads that sometimes resembled giant squid with long root tentacles hanging down. That means that I had to cut all of those off to get them into a pot. Mostly it meant a lot of hard work. So remember when I said it was my intention to dig them up every two years to root prune them? It obviously did not happen. I sometimes ended up with roots almost two inches in diameter and totally useless for bonsai. The one really great thing is that they were all very strong and vigorous. After all the hacking, digging, and cutting back, they all seem to be making it. You will be able to see some of the results on native trees at this month’s program.  

So here are some observations and sort of a checklist of lessons learned.   
1.    Ground growing requires just as much attention as growing in pots. For great results, you still have to water, prune, monitor, etc...
2.    Growing in the ground is for developing trunks only. You might be able to use some of the branches later, but don’t count on it if you are going for size.
3.    You can grow too fast. You must create movement in the trunk, either through successive pruning, or wiring, or starting with a pre-developed shape. And this movement must have the final size in mind.
4.    You must know your species, just as if you were growing in a pot. Know how it will react to pruning, how it will back bud, and how it will heal scars.  
5.    You must prune the roots at least every two-three years. Otherwise, you are creating bulk that will just be a problem and you are not making the shallow root pad you would like. You really need to keep encouraging the division of roots in to many fine ones instead of thick and heavy ones.
6.    Watering is still critical. Planting on tiles means that the roots must go sideways to find water and more resources. It also means that the tree is less stable until it dives over the edge of the tile.
7.    Letting trees grow wild means that they need more room. Mine got really crowded and started to shade each other with their 6 foot tops. That meant that interior branches started to fade, so I had to prune trees earlier than planned.
8.    Prune hard early in May so that trees can re-grow before the heat of July and August, or branches and trunks may burn.

Scott

Container Selection

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We had a great time at the last meeting talking about containers for bonsai. The only real problem being that we ran way short of time. Things were just heating up when we had to quit, so I thought I would elaborate a bit moreon the principles that we talked about.  

First of all, we talked about soil volume. Be acutely aware of your trees needs. An inch in width, and especially depth, can almost double the actual volume of soil that the roots have to occupy, or conversely, halve it. On more mature trees, the expansive root base can take up a lot of the space in a pot without really contributing to the feeding root mass of the tree. Sometimes we have only an inch or two around the edge of the pot and a little below the base to work with. We have to be respectful of the tree’s needs and weigh in our abilities to care for the tree properly. That really cool pot might mean that we need to water the tree an extra time each day, but without that pot, the tree may not realize its full potential. So select carefully and know your skill level.

Next, we talked about the differences between masculine and feminine characteristics in pots. Is the pot rugged and strong or elegant and graceful? All of these are relative terms and paying attention to these characteristics will help us bring out the best in each tree. There is no magic formula, and if there were, it would just lead us to the land of boredom. Maximizing the best attributes in any tree may mean using a pot to contrast the color and shape of the bonsai, or harmonize with it. Certainly there will be some kind of difference between container and tree, and we can control the amount of difference. Some examples of contrast might be using a blue colored pot to set off orange colored blossoms. The brighter the blue, the more the contrast between pot and flowers. A dark, navy blue makes the contrast more subdued and refined. The difference is a matter of taste.  

For another example, let’s take a wild, collected juniper. Would you like to accentuate its movement by planting it on an equally rugged lava rock, or contrast the wildness with a stable, smooth-sided ceramic pot? Both can be invigorating and work very nicely, but you, as the artist, have to decide what kind of story you want to tell, and how you are going to tell it. The more showy the tree, whether it be colorful flowers, or fantastical deadwood, the more adventuresome the pot can be to go with it. Here is where I go back to the definition of a bonsai. A tree in a tray – not a tray holding a tree. Get the difference? The emphasis should always be on the tree, or composition and not the container. We have some great containers out there now, but they can often demand all the attention. The best containers are those that work synergistically with the tree to create something greater than either could be by themselves.  

After talking with some of you following the meeting, there were some thoughts that bear going over and clarifying. When thinking about pots and their overall feel, there is a hierarchy.  
If you forget, just go to any website with bonsai pots and it will remind you by the way they are organized. Number one – glazed or unglazed. Seems obvious, but this is usually the first distinction. Number two – the shape of the pot. This is the way that it appears from above, not the side. Square, rectangle, oval, round, etc… And the endless variations after that. Thirdly – the side profile. Does it have straight sides, angled sides, or curved sides? So a round pot that is generally considered feminine can become very masculine with straight sides, or very sensuous with curved sides. The last part to consider is the decoration. This will include the feet - whether straight, curved, cloud, or otherwise, and any banding or ribbing. We would also consider painted or carved motifs. If you have delicate hand painting on the side of a rectangular, straight-sided pot, it is still very masculine. In fact, you might be sending mixed signals.  

This brings us down to the question of taste. You as the bonsai artist get to decide what you like and don’t like. Of course, you can follow all the principles I just laid out and come out with some great trees. But it may not be what really inspires you. Taste within the bonsai world ebbs and flows. I know they do in mine. What I value changes over time. Can you imagine wearing double-knit polyester pants with a silk shirt now? Or a mullet hair cut? So don’t be afraid to let things change and evolve. Even the Japanese are not doing things exactly the same way they did ten or twenty years ago. And certainly they do not have our cultural heritage and references. We have different trees and a different culture, so naturally things are going to look different here. Let’s not settle for just copying but creating something new.  

Remember, Photoshop is your friend. And a bonsai friend is an even better friend. Don’t be afraid to try a new pot with Photoshop if you have the skills. But better yet, get some help. I rely on my wife’s keen eye quite a bit for selecting pots. She has great instincts and spots some of the aspects I have missed or chosen to ignore, that maybe I should reconsider. And then there are those times that I just do what I feel is correct. Matching trees to containers is one of my favorite aspects of bonsai. I am constantly amazed by the differences that a change of pot can make. It is sort of like coming in from a day of digging ditches in the mud. We take a shower and shave, do our hair, etc… But then we put on some nice clean clothes – maybe our favorite t -shirt and a pair of jeans, or maybe nice pants and a jacket for a night on the town. The clothes make the man and the pot makes the tree. Containers don’t change the actual bonsai anymore than clothes change a person, but they present a different aspect of the same soul. Happy potting!

Scott

Buds Number Two

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 Wow! Last months column on buds generated the most buzz yet since I started this column, so I decided to go another round. There are a few species duplicated here from last time because they can vary so much. This one may be a little more challenging and maybe a bit more obscure. All of the photos below were taken at the end of January. As usual, there is a key with comments at the end. Have fun.

Scott

Bud Key

A.    Stewartia Monadelpha – This one always shows color in its buds early winter, and then holds on for a few months before it starts growing.
B.    Beauty Berry – This one happens to be growing in the ground, so the internodes are a bit longer. I love fuzzy sprouts. Again, they sit here for quite awhile in winter before growing. C. Limber Pine – One of our native five-needle pines.
D.    California Juniper – Those are water drops on the scales. With the juniper you don’t really see distinctive buds that you do on other trees. This is an important clue on how they grow.
Junipers elongate throughout the growing season, ramping up from spring on through fall. They lack the single strong push of pine or maple tree.
E.    Douglas Hawthorne – Another one of our natives that you will see at our April program.
Also called a Black Hawthorne. This came from near the Idaho border. F. Shimpaku Juniper.
G.    Honeysuckle – This tree never seems to go fully dormant in the winter, holding onto a few green leaves throughout. The buds emerge early and stay as if frozen in time, including an occasional blossom.
H.    Japanese Maple – This one is the regular species.
I.    Crabapple – Somehow I expect this vigorous grower to have larger buds, but they are almost hidden this time of year.
J.    Flowering Plum – This tree is a red-flowered variety. It is very easy to see the difference be-tween the roundish flower buds and the small pointed leaf buds. K. English Hawthorne – This was my grandfather’s tree.
L.    Indian Plum – Another local inhabitant and one of the early bloomers. The green emerged in December and it is just waiting for the right time to elongate.
M.    Western Hemlock – The small buds of the hemlock show here.

This Bud's For You!

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Time for a little pop quiz. During our recent foggy, drippy, sunny weather (when is it anything else?) I took the opportunity to capture some of my trees in their winter dormancy, showing off their nice fat buds for next year. This years growing season started way back in August, or even earlier on some trees, when our bonsai began to develop and set buds for next year. If you have ever pinched a spruce in spring, you have felt that little round nodule at the tip of the shoot – next year’s bud already forming. The buds really come with a lot of variety and a lot of different aspects.  

When you take a look at the following photos, study them closely to see the characteristics of each one and how to recognize them. They can be a great help in identifying a tree’s species, diagnosing any problems, and as a gauge to general health and strength of a particular tree or individual shoot. See how many of these buds you can identify. You even get some helpful clues with the conifer foliage. At the end I will have the key and a few worthy notes that demonstrate something particular about that tree. Have fun!

Scott

Bud Key

A.    Japanese Arctic Willow
B.    Vine Maple – who knew that these were so hairy? Notice the tiny internodes. This is on a very small shohin size group of trees – very unusual and difficult to maintain for this species.
C.    European Beech – Long, lance like bronze buds. I pull all the leaves off in the fall – beech normally retain their old leaves until spring growth pushes them off.
D.    Ginkgo
E.    Japanese Maple – this one happens to be Deshojo, a variety with red leaves in the spring.
F.    Katsura – this reminds me of deer hooves.
G.    Linden –
H.    Star Magnolia – Huge wooly flower buds. Note the relatively small leaf bud to the right.
I.    Styrax – Japanese Snowbell. These greenish buds appear in early winter. But don’t worry, they won’t elongate until the time is right.
J.    Wisteria – These are fairly pointed. The buds on my other wisteria are very plump and round right now.
K.    Plum – Please note that these are all flower buds. They are much larger and plumper than leaf buds. Flower buds also tend to have a bit of copper color, whereas the leaf buds can be flatter and duller. You can actually see a few leaf buds at the very tip of the branch – just tiny little points. It is very important with all prunus species (Plum, Apricot, Cherry, Peach, Almond) that you do not prune back past the last leaf bud. You can’t count on there being a leaf bud being present where flower buds are. This is especially true with any double blossomed forms. If you prune off the leaf buds, then your branch may die back to the nearest main branch, thus losing ramification. For that reason, I like to prune my plums post flowering. Pruning the tips in late summer helps to encourage the development of leaf buds closer to the trunk.
L.    Japanese Quince – Note the large flower bud developing. There is a smaller leaf bud just below it, but a bit out of focus.
M.    Red Alder – This one is growing very vigorously in the ground and this is the apical bud – that is why is aimed vertically. One of our natives.
N.    Japanese Black Pine – Healthy black pine buds are creamy white and very pointed.
Less vigorous are darker, redder, and rounder.
O.    Lodgepole Pine – These are usually covered with a bit of resin.
P.    Douglas Fir – Very distinctive, red, pointed, and scaled buds. The longer and pointier, the healthier.
Q.    Ponderosa Pine – Note the large central bud and several smaller ones tucked in next to it.
R.    Japanese Red Pine – One of my favorite photos. Now you know how it got its name.
S.    Subalpine Fir – OK, so this was a little tricky, but here for a reason. There is no bud in this photo. This shoot was probably pinched earlier in the year. It’s healthy now, with great foliage. It will most likely lose vigor in the next year or two and die. It will not likely produce another bud. Its replacement is more likely to come from an adjoining branch that continues to grow strong, creating some back buds.
T.    Mountain Hemlock. These buds are incredibly tiny. A little clue that they grow very slowly.
U.    Engelmann Spruce – This really shows the arrangement of needles all the way around the branch.

Winter Wonderland

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After that nice shock of cold weather we received last month, I am sure that most of your trees are now solidly in a dormant state. So the question becomes, what do I do now that my trees are happily sleeping away? First of all, our trees are dormant, just like a volcano. That means that although we don’t see anything going on up on the surface, there is activity down below, and in the tree. Things have slowed way down and there is no active growth above the surface of the soil, but many cold hardy trees are still working away, albeit slowly, on root development, etc... The roots of conifers are still active, bringing moisture up into the tree after winter winds have swept it all away. So we still need to monitor the water uptake in our trees.

Let’s take a look at where that leaves us. Now that the trees are dormant, that means that they will have limited means of repairing any damage inflicted by pruning, styling and wiring. That does not exclude these activities, it just means that we need to be careful of what tasks we are doing, and more importantly, to what degree. Winter used to be the time that I styled all of my conifers, at least the few that I had time for. I would do large styling bends and complete wiring jobs. I am taking a more cautious approach these days, or at least one that is better informed. I save heavy bending for the times when the trees have the best chance to recover. That means that I can’t always do everything in one go. I may have to wait six months, but I will be ahead two years from now because the tree won’t have slowed down at all. So the first rule of any work is to have a healthy, strong tree. This is the first year that I really concentrated on my fall fertilizing and it has done wonders. All of my trees are healthier and ready to take on winter, and any work that I choose to do.

Let’s start with the deciduous trees. Their metabolism has really slowed down, so we want to be cautious with pruning and any wiring. The obvious advantage we have right now is that all the leaves are gone, so that we can see the structure of the tree. If you have a species that has not dropped them yet, remove them. The sudden drop in temperature that we had last month meant that many trees did not go through the normal abscission process for leaf drop going into dormancy. The leaves merely withered up. Those trees might be especially susceptible to tip die back, since they didn’t have sufficient time to harden off before the cold.  

That is also the reason that when I do any pruning this time of year, I tend to leave two extra buds past what I really want come springtime. This is my safety valve. Extra buds AND live tissue to keep sap flowing to the buds I really want. If you have trees that you let grow freely to gain strength, now is a great time to prune them back. That will allow the tree to put more strength into the buds closer to the trunk. Remember, the buds at the tip, or farthest from the trunk, tend to be the strongest and hinder the growth and strength of those close to the trunk. Leave more buds on weaker branches, and cut back strong ones harder.  

On more refined trees, be sure to prune to the silhouette that you are looking for. That means that you may not be counting buds, but rather looking at lengths of branches. You mayleave some small ones longer, or cut out heavier branches to lighten and refine the branch line. I know from experience that I can cut my beeches back to just one bud and they will be fine over the winter, they eat up the cold, just like crabapples, quince, and honeysuckle. Other species are more tender. Look at the size of twigs. Zelkova and elm can be really fine and tend to be warmer area species, so you must leave more buds. Err on the side of caution and recut just before spring growth.  

If you are looking for a strong back budding, this is the wrong time of year for a drastic cut. If you do it now, when the tree’s energy is receding, your chances of back budding are diminished greatly. This task is better left for April, May, June when the tree is cranking on all cylinders and able to perform as desired.  

If you have decandled, defoliated, or cut back heavily any tree during the summer, whether deciduous or conifer, now is the time to go through and make shoot selections down to just two branches in any one spot. Remove shoots that are growing straight up or down. That will allow light to get into the interior and strengthen those back buds that you worked so hard to create. You can now reroute the strength to where it is needed.  

It’s a good idea to leave heavy pruning to late spring, or during the growing season for the same reason. Ever wonder why cuts don’t seam to callus over? That may be a reason. The edge of the cut dies back before the growing season starts.

Conifers are a little bit different story. These guys are still growing and metabolizing. Some more than others. High mountain collected species may still have some root growth going on. Others are more tender, like Japanese Black Pine. We really do get cold enough to put them in jeopardy. I have had great luck leaving all of the foliage intact on my JBP throughout the winter, then pulling needles to thin it out in the late spring before growth. The extra foliage helps power it through the winter. Think of how this might apply to your other trees.  

This is a great time for wiring as long as you are not doing really heavy bending. Heavy means that you are cracking tissue, using lots of raffia, etc… It’s all possible if you have a way to protect the tree from freezing until spring growth. I don’t, so I am a bit more cautious. Water can get in the cracks and freeze and separate tissue. Also, the trees ability to move nutrients up to the damage site for repair and for winter hardiness is impaired. This work is generally done at times when the tree either has time to recover before winter – like September, October, or late spring when it is coming out of dormancy.  

Different species are able to withstand styling at different times. More than we can talk about now for winter. This is not at all to stop you from working. Just be more cautious. If we can time things right, then the tree never skips a beat and we are much farther in the long run. You can generally do all kinds of styling and wiring and most folks will not be pushing their trees as hard as what we are talking about here. Those tend to be collected trees that have not been yet styled. If your tree has already been previously styled, it is doubtful that you will be putting much stress on the tree unless you are eliminating major branches or making a drastic style change.

I hope this helps you in your work through the winter. Be sure to snap a photo or two and send them to Peter for inclusion in the newsletter. Better yet, do a little write up on your experience.

Scott

Thanksgiving

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I started going through my bookshelves a few weeks ago to make a purge of the things that I no longer needed or valued. This move was of course necessitated by the fact that the accumulated volume of my bonsai, graphics design, and other miscellaneous books far exceeded the current allotted space of two floor-to-ceiling repositories in my office. While gleaning the shelves I even found two of the same volume.  

One book in particular that caught my eye was the 1967 first edition of The Master’s Book of Bonsai compiled by the Directors of the Japan Bonsai Association. This was one of the very first English language books available for information on bonsai. It contained a How-To section and photos of what were then considered masterpieces of bonsai. When I flipped the book open, inside the front cover I found a photo taped to the fly leaf. The handwritten note labeled it as 1973.

John and Alice Naka, June and Timothy Boyle - 1973

The four individuals pictured were John Naka and his wife Alice, alongside Timothy Boyle and his wife June. So that was over forty years ago. Tim was an early member of the BSOP. Although he was not a founding member as such, he came along shortly after and served two terms as our president. Even though he started his bonsai hobby in his fifties, he managed to squeeze out almost forty years of loving trees in pots. Along the way he was instrumental in guiding the BSOP in its artistic and horticultural endeavors. He had a MAJOR impact on where our club is today. His heavy involvement with the Japanese Gardens and bonsai exhibits with
Hiroshi Ueno are largely responsible for our partnership with the Gardens and our fabulous Spring Exhibit. He also designed and constructed the Tokonoma that we use in those exhibits.   
This photo attests to the early support that Portland gave John Naka as he ventured out of his southern California home to give lectures and demos. You’ll notice the palm trees in the photo shows that Tim and June had traveled down for a visit. At one of Naka’s trips up here to Portland, my grandfather, Mark Emmert, purchased a copy of Naka’s Bonsai Techniques I. It was that copy that I studied intently whenever I visited Grandpa. That book and Grandpa’s back yard is where my interest in bonsai sprouted. The time was somewhere back in the early eighties, but I didn’t start growing trees until ten years later.  

As I studied the photo last week, I began to realize that next year the BSOP enters it’s fiftieth year of existence. I think about how people did things when I joined the club, and what the trees looked like. And I think about where we are now. How fortunate we are now to have so many resources, from trees and raw materials to expertise and knowledge. Think about life without Akadama, bonsai wire – copper or aluminum, or even a decent pot. No Ryan Neil, Mike Hagedorn or Joe Harris. No magazines and very few books. Unlike some other west coast cities, we had very little direct Japanese influence on the club – people who were taught bonsai at home or brought it with them overseas.  

Folks like Tim, Hiroshi, Maggie Drake, Tom Keefe, and Ron Yasenchak were true pioneers for us, and a few of these folks are still around. I have several of my grandfather’s trees and I know that many of you have some of Tim Boyle’s trees. No doubt some of you have trees that were crafted in one of the many workshops with John Naka, the father of American Bonsai. I appreciate what these folks did for our club and for American bonsai and the path that they left before us. A living legacy in trees, and a tradition of excellence at whatever level we may be able to attain. Our job is to continue that legacy and evolve our art to its next level. Happy Bonsai

Scott E

Pot Initiative

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There has been a lot of press recently on pot. Lots of folks making speeches and writing proposals for the right to buy, sell, and grow pot. So I have begun my own pot initiative. Asserting my rights to grow in homegrown pots. That is to say, the evolving idea that maybe my homegrown, northwest native trees would look best in homegrown, American pots. The trees that I find myself gravitating towards as I continue to hone my bonsai collection down to a manageable size (A never ending and daunting task, I assure you), are our own native trees that speak of wildness and an untamed, enduring spirit of life. The Japanese, and Chinese before them, have done an awesome job of designing containers that work both horticulturally and aesthetically for the creation and maintenance of bonsai. They have a great variety to choose from. But there are times when I look at my trees and feel that there is something not quite right, something that is lacking.  

So now I am on the hunt for new containers that will enhance the sense of ruggedness that many of my trees exhibit. With that said, one of the hardest things to do in bonsai is finding containers which enhance and support the aesthetics of the tree, but do not upstage it. Maybe it’s a little like strawberry and balsamic ice cream. Never had it, but how do you take two disparate things and make them work together for the greater. It is relatively easy to find great pots with lots of character, but the more character the pot has, that harder it is to find a tree that it may compliment.  

For me, the tree always has to be the driver. It comes first in the definition of a bonsai – a tree in a pot. But it is the marriage of tree and container that make a bonsai and doing so is a skill that is very hard to learn. The pot should be just under our level of consciousness, where we appreciate it, but we don’t linger too long on it.  

Imagine walking into an art gallery and all you looked at were the frames of the paintings, not the paintings themselves. I am sure that you have all seen the large, gold, ornately decorated frames the museums often use to say that this painting is really important. But this can interfere with viewing the picture. It is not quite so simple for bonsai though, as it is three dimensional. This is where art really comes in, where you can’t really give any hard and fast rules. Maybe the container is not even a pot at all. Maybe it’s a stone, or piece of wood. Or maybe a found object. If you get the chance, take a stroll through Greg Brendan’s garden and you will find a myriad of found, created, and manipulated containers for trees. It will inspire you to think outside of the pot.

The pots that I choose to go with certain trees tend to push the edges of what is horticulturally practical for some bonsai, in terms of size. It’s what takes me to the aesthetic edge to really make a bonsai great. And it’s why when I look at trees that might be shared at one of our shows, I might mention to an owner that a particular bonsai could be placed in a much smaller container. Ultimately, that means that you have to work harder to keep all of the needs of thetree in balance – water, air, fertilizer, sun, etc… But again, that is where the art dwells. Many of you are much more comfortable with larger pots and that is fine. Dead trees are not, by definition, bonsai. But the real point is to have containers which really show off the trees best.  

If you have a highly refined tree that is very formal, very lush in growth, then maybe a highly refined pot is in order. It doesn’t matter where it came from, it just has to work. Any artist is affected by the cultural that they live in. Asian culture is somewhat different than western cultures, and you can see it to different degrees in bonsai containers. I am hoping to find containers that have that undercurrent of the Northwest spirit that will really synergize with trees. I see it being done at times, so I know it can be done. I just have to watch for the opportunities as they present themselves.  

So back to those pots and where do I find them. Good question. Not an easy one to answer, but let me give you some ideas. The web has been a great new source and method to access potters. We have lots of great American potters out there, and many have web sites. Unfortunately, you can’t always see exactly what the potter has in stock. So you will have to write them about particular needs. I was fortunate to meet Charles Smith and his wife Michele during a Juniper class at Bonsai Mirai. You’ll find them under MC2 Pottery. They make very different and wonderful small pots. When you can find a vintage Michael Hagedorn, and they are out there, buy it. I have found no better quality in a US potter. They are simply awesome, and I hope he makes more sometime, rather selfishly.  

The most astounding American artist would have to be Sara Rayner out of Minnesota for the pure quantity of high quality work. The pots are exquisite and she makes some larger ones missing from other folks repertoire. And speaking of large, about the only other person besides Sara making large pots is Ron Lang. It is pretty much special order and he might be a year out by now. Hence, the reason for this column - now is the time to be working on next year. There are others, like local Jan Retanauer and nationally known Byron Myrick, Nick Lenz, Jim Gremel, Dale Cochoy, and Jim Barrett. Gary Wood also does some great work. You might be able to find something from Max Bravermen, with a Pine Garden Pottery stamp on it. Literally. He is no longer with us, but his designs often have a chunky rustic charm that really speaks of the Northwest.  

Some of these folks can be found at conventions and shows, which allows you to actually see and handle the pots before purchasing. I think that I have a pot from most everyone I have mentioned, many of the them actually have trees in them! Nature itself may feature some of the best containers – I am on the prowl for a very large piece of lava for a new bonsai that came off the same lava. So, lots of words here to help prompt you all to start thinking about your needs for next spring and how you can take your trees to their next level through the appropriate choice of containers. Enjoy this great fall weather.

Scott E

What the H2O?

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I have been working on bonsai for about twenty-five years now. I have been fortunate to study extensively with some of the best instructors this country has to offer. And after all of that time and study, I am still trying to figure out how to water my trees effectively. It seems to be the one skill that is so vital to the health of trees, yet remains elusive, even for the professional. Each tree has it’s own, separate watering needs, so meeting them all can be a challenge. This might seem like a strange time to talk about watering, now that we are moving into fall. But really, watering is a year round activity for all bonsai endeavors. The problem with water is keeping an even balance. Far too often we either have too much or too little on any given tree. So now is a good time to really concentrate our efforts as the needs of trees change during this fall season.

What our trees really desire is a balanced level of moisture throughout the year. They don’t really get that in nature, with swings in moisture levels from spring through summer to wet winters. But trees in nature also have a built in buffer in the ground that they grow in. That’s an advantage that we don’t have in bonsai. Our trees are out on benches and expose both top AND bottom to heat, cold, wind, and rain. Conditions can change rapidly, drying out too fast, or hold too much water in a shallow pot. Too little water and the tree starts to shut down. Growth and vigor are inhibited and wilting may occur. We may also see roots die off. Then, when we do add water, the tree is unable to uptake the water and the issue is compounded and we end up giving too much. We really stress the tree out. With too much water we start to deprive the tree of oxygen and it starts to suffocate the roots. A vicious cycle ensues.

Healthy trees use a large amount of water. Most of this is for air conditioning of the tree via transpiration through the foliage. Only a relatively small portion goes to metabolic growth. My wisterias sit in tubs of water for about six months of the year. On a hot summer day they will drain an inch of water or more out of the tub in order to stay cool, folding their leaves likes wings in order to minimize the surface exposed to the sun. So supplying enough water is critical. How are we going to do it?

First of all, good watering starts with proper potting techniques. You must set your trees up for success. It is critical to leave a portion of the rim exposed above the soil line when repotting. This edge will catch water and keep it moving through the pot instead of dribbling out onto the ground. Also, the flatter the top of the soil surface is, the more even the penetration of water to all areas of the root ball will be. You probably want it to be a little mounded though. The next thing that will help is to have the soil covered with nice green moss. This will create a buffer for the tree. It helps direct the water down into the soil when watering and it also keeps the moisture from evaporating out of our coarse soil mixes. How do you get the moss going? Mix a little grated New Zealand sphagnum moss and the green moss of your choice and sprinkle it on after repotting. You’ll have a verdant crop in no time.  

Now that your trees are set up properly in pots, get them sitting right on the benches. To water well, you need access to both sides of the pot. Hopefully you can walk on either side. I like to hit the tree from both sides, which means that at least three-quarters of the tree is getting watered twice. And that is the next important point. Make sure to water each tree at least twice each session, if it needs water. The first past just moistens the surface, kind of like remoistening a sponge. The second pass is then able to penetrate the top layer and make it down to the roots. I found that when I went back after watering and uncovered the soil that I thought was well watered, it was still bone dry. No water had made it through. Lesson learned. When a tree needs water, it is best to get it done thoroughly, letting water reach all of the roots. Then allow the tree to use that water at its own pace. That means not watering it again until it needs it. There in lies the quandary for many of us. What if you water in the morning and tree runs out of water at 2:00? Most of us have no choice. We have to go to work, so our only opportunity to water is before and after work each day during the summer. Professional nurseries often check water up to five times a day. That doesn’t mean that every tree gets water each time. Some trees like white pines that like drier conditions may only get one thorough watering a day. I have a black pine that takes a thorough drenching three times a day if it can get it. Luckily, I happen to work at home, so I can serve its thirsty desires. The point is that the more often you can check water on your trees, the more appropriately you can water.

There are some other factors that weigh in on the water usage of each tree. The aforementioned black pine is in a fairly deep pot, but not super big for the tree. What the tree has is a dense foliage mass that really churns through the water. It isn’t the size of the trunk that governs the water needs, but the foliage mass, and the proportion that it has with the pot. Obviously shallower pots are going to hold less moisture overall. Orientation is another one. My trees use water at different times and amount during the day based on when they get sun. Many of my trees do not get direct sun all day, so I must adjust my watering, even for things that are a foot apart – in shade and out. Season is also a big factor. In the spring when things are pushing, trees will have a voracious appetite for water. Then in the summer, when things have hardened off, trees may enter summer dormancy, so they may actually use less water when it get really hot. That is the challenge of staying on top of water situation. My general rule is that if it is going to be above eighty degrees, I MUST check water twice a day. When it is above ninety, I check three times. The we get to winter where we don’t have to water very much around here. But with a dense canopy on a good tree, the load is great and not much water is making it through, so keep checking unless you’ve had a hard downpour or day of rain unending. When deciduous trees lose their leaves, don’t let them dry out. They still need some moisture.

So there is an awful lot to watering. And I am still learning. I hope this will help you in some way with your trees and maximizing their health through good watering practices.

Scott E

Geisha versus Sumo

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One of the main characteristics that we strive for in bonsai is that of a thick, fattened trunk. The bulkier we can make it, the better. A thicker trunk shows the proportions of a more mature tree. In nature, we know that the larger tree is usually the older one. And while trees may peak out in their height, or really slow down, they continue to grow sideways. I sometimes have the same situation.  

But in a bonsai, it’s good, so we are always seeking ways to make the trunk look bigger. One notable method is to reduce the height of the crown through pruning. The shorter the tree is, the larger the trunk will appear in proportion. This usually works pretty well.  
But we have lots of trees that seem to sit in the middle between thick and masculine, and those that are feminine and thin. Many of these trees are fairly unsuccessful because they haven’t really made up their minds on what they want to be. They lack anything that would make them distinctive. Do they want to be thick and powerful, like a Sumo wrestler, or slender and delicate like Geisha? So our job as a bonsai artist is to encourage the tree in one of those directions. Otherwise the tree becomes boring and lacks interesting qualities. How do you make those decisions?  

Take a look at your tree and check to see how many changes in movement it makes. How many zigs and zags? If there is only one, or no significant change in direction of the trunk line before the point where you want to reduce the crown, it might be better to style it into a taller tree, introduce some curves in the trunk line, and let it mature into a tree with a slender, more subtle nature.  
Here in the United States we tend to under value thinner trees. Often, these trees are classified as Bunjin. (Thin is not the only defining quality for a good bunjin) Now it might seem strange you coming from a person that admittedly likes large trees, but bonsai is still about proportions and making something beautiful. I very much enjoy creating bunjin style trees from appropriate material.  

However, we must explore each piece of material on it’s own merits. We want to take whatever the tree has to offer and expand upon it. Sometimes that means cutting something back hard to a new leader and redeveloping. This can even be part of the original plan to growing a thicker trunk. Sometimes we have a great abundance of branches and many options to reduce the height with plenty of movement in the trunk.  

There are times though, when the best solution is to use as much of the existing trunk as possible and lengthen the design. Pull a branch up and make it taller. A lodgepole pine is a great example of tree that would vary rarely make short, powerful tree. By nature, it is tall and slender and the option to grow it thicker just is not there.   

As the trees get smaller, keeping a thin proportion becomes harder. If you look at most shohin, there are not many bunjin style trees. In fact, the trunk diameters approach or exceed the total height of the tree. They become sumo-like pyramids. The sense of delicate movement is much harder to express in a shorter tree. So next time you pick up a pair of concave cutter, think about what your tree has to offer, then feature those aspects, whether it be the trunk line, jin and shari, fruit, or whatever you might have.

Scott E

The Courage to Cut, or Not

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Yesterday I was in my backyard with Steve Piper working on some trees that I had grown from seed. They are crabapples. Years earlier, I had stratified the seed in my refrigerator in a plastic bag with some sand in it. Pretty soon, those seeds sprouted and started growing, right in the refrigerator. Apples do like their cold! I was really late in getting them planted, so I ended up planting seedlings rather than seeds. I grabbed a few Anderson flats and put a layer of soil in the bottom, then built up a berm of soil to lay the tender roots on. I didn’t want to crush them by trying to shove them into soil from above. I then added a strip of soil on top of a row of seedlings, then layed down another row of seedlings on top of that. When I got done, the whole tray of seedlings was sticking out of the soil at roughly a forty-five degree angle. So as these seedlings began to grow, they natural grew straight up, reaching for the light. Fast forward seven or eight years and I have these wonderfully twisted trunks without a single wire scar, all on accident!  

This spring I laboriously rooted pruned and repotted into clay pots roughly eighty of these trees. At that time, I had to cut off about seventy-five percent of the roots because they were encircling the pot and tangled in the drainage mesh. I knew my Crabs and that they could take such harsh pruning. They grow roots profusely and are presently growing right out the drainage holes. Now that they have regained some strength after the spring ordeal, it has come time to give them a good pruning.  

I pruned them hard two years ago when they were out-growing their little four-inch plastic pots. But they ran again and now were towering at two feet tall – a little unwieldy in the wind and lacking much side branching. As we came to look at each specimen, we had to determine whether we were going to keep it as a shohin as originally intended, or let it grow into a medium sized tree. This was largely determined by the size of the curves available. In some cases, we made a drastic cut, leaving no leaves at all, but always a visible bud node. On others we were able to save leaves and still have some good curves.  

What we knew is that the foliage mass of the tree is what will drive its strength. The larger the foliage mass, the more strength the tree has and its ability to respond to our training increases. But overriding that, we had a need to get the trees to a height that we could easily manage and also induce some back budding to get branches to grow.  

I would have preferred to do the work a month ago, but that’s the way the schedule goes. The idea is to cut it in May or June so that the tree has enough time to grow new leaves before  the heat of the summer hits and burns the trunk. Be sure to keep this in mind with any defoliation technique. We really ended up with some home runs in this batch. The trees have a great  start. In many cases, we left a long branch to give the tree some strength and help it thicken and develop further. Every tree we touched was a viable bonsai and the reward of diligent work.  

Watering the trees all these years was a bit of a task. I even had to have help to keep them weed free. But now on to the real point. Every time we touch a tree we need to have a clear purpose in mind and a clear direction for the tree. Each tree needs a different kind of treatment for each stage of development. Can I begin developing branches, or am I still working on the trunk? Can I do a little of both? Do I have the courage and patience to make the hard cut, the best cut? And then let it recover.  

Or for some of us, do I have the patience to not cut and let the tree build up strength and bulk. Many of us have weak trees simply because we keep cutting off the very foliage the tree needs to get strong. Our task as a bonsaist is to balance the needs of the tree at any given moment, whether it be water, air, sun, styling, or growth. Have fun in the sun this summer with your trees and be on the lookout for each one as you water and prune.

Scott E

May Work on Pines and Deciduous

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Circle the week on your calendar. Last week of May. What's it for? Decandling your Black and Red Pines. This date has come by much trial and error. It is based on the time we need in Portland to grow a new set of needles before the trees harden off in September and October. So that means of course that you have been fertilizing the heck out of everything up to now. And while you are at it, you can thin out the needles and do any wiring and styling that you need on these trees. Pines can handle that just fine and it opens things up for light to get in for back budding now that you have stimulated the trees by having decandled them. The whole process and technique for decandling is something that needs to ideally be taught hands on, so we can't really cover it here, especially without illustrations. But if you are familiar with the technique, you now have the date to go with it. You just have to trust me on this one. It doesn't matter what they look like now - it's all about the time on the back end. And remember, Black and Red pines only. Anything else and results may vary (including death of the tree).  

What if I don't have any those kinds of pines to work on? Now is a great time to work on deciduous trees. It's a great time to start an air layer, either in a landscape tree to create a bonsai, or to improve the roots and base of an existing tree. I will be showing that technique in the next meeting. It's also a great time to do hard pruning and cutback on deciduous trees. They are usually up and running at full steam right now, so if you cut them, they can pop out all over. Plus, they have a month or more to start growing new foliage to protect the branches and especially the trunk before the heat of summer arrives. Try not to totally defoliate a tree unless you have a specific purpose and you are able to give good after care. Most trees will not need total defoliation. Be careful with those scissors, they can be more dangerous than you might think. And finally, now is a great time to start wiring that nice spring growth. Let branches continue to elongate, but wire the first four or five inches into interesting curves, very carefully. Then as the wire begins to cut in later in the summer, or possibly all the way into fall, you can remove the wire. During your fall pruning, you can cut back past where you stopped wiring to anywhere you need. You probably will not use all that you wire, but you will have the options at pruning time and letting it elongate will set the branch and let it thicken, if you are developing a new branch. Aluminum wire works great. You can use copper too, but it would be best to protect tender species with a wrap of paper around the wire itself before it is applied. Fold a normal paper towel several times into itself - accordion style, then cut across to make some quick strips. You may also choose to use guy wires in some circumstances, which helps with wire scarring.  

Have fun with your tree and enjoy the arriving sunshine.  Scott E

Mid-Life Crisis

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I started working with bonsai in my late twenties. That’s a pretty young start compared to most folks. I got hooked bonsai by my grandfather, but that was almost 25 years ago! I poured over his John Naka books on every visit. I even collected my first two trees with him just south of the Grand Canyon of the fourth of July during a summer visit. Yes, my very first trees were collected, not nursery stock.

 I used mostly books as my guide in those early years. That meant that I hacked away on trees until not much foliage remained, weakening the trees. Most survived though. I worked hard to develop them and like many of you, I now have those trees with quite a bit of nice, even foliage. Too nicely in fact. They have what Bob Laws likes to call lots of “Fuzz”. Now that the trees have reached some level of stability and are nicely filled out, they are rather a plump and overly ramified group. So this is the midlife crisis for many of our bonsai.  

Time to go on a diet. Maybe your trees have become too thick and full, and the trunk line is obscured or the movement or interest is all gone. Time to get out the saw and pruners and loose a few branches. Your trees will thank you. A friend told me of some experiences with his class with Ryan Neil. This person brought in a few trees to get worked on. When it came time, Ryan grabbed some concave cutters and asked, “Do you mind if I cut off this branch?” Gulp. “OK”.   Wow! Now that’s a bonsai!  

What Ryan had introduced back into the tree was movement, direction, and flow. Now the tree was interesting and what made it that way was space. The space between different branches, between branches and the pot. And different sized and shaped spaces. There was variety and not merely a fuzz ball.  

The proverb, Less is More comes to mind. As trees develop, we often have fewer branches off the trunk, but those branches are much more highly developed and carry a large foliage mass, keeping the tree healthy and strong. Is your tree boring you a bit? Take a look and see if the lower branches on either side are the same height. If so, think about using wire to raise or lower one or both branches, or eliminate one completely and you will automatically introduce movement into the design.  

Less static, more dynamic. Maybe you introduce a large space somewhere in the middle of the tree. If you can get out a ruler and measure the distance between each branch to get it the same, chances are it is a really dull design. Dynamic balance takes more skill and patience, but is much more rewarding in the end. Happy pruning.

Scott Elser