03 | March | 2013 | Bonsai Eejit

Nichigo Bonsai

Neil over at Shibui Bonsai has just posted some very interesting results of taking cuttings from Japanese Black pine seedlings.

He essentially is getting two plants from every seedling as opposed to the standard method where the original roots are thrown away. His strike rate has been excellent and with seed in Australia often being scarce doubling your stock shortly after germination is a great thing!

Anyway, have a look, it is well worth a read.

http://shibuibonsai.com.au/japanese-black-pine-cuttings/

Oh and Neil also grows some excellent stock in a range of species which can also be found on his site, http://shibuibonsai.com.au/.

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Yes, Stephen managed to find his way to my house, so we had four for the potting up session. 🙂

We had to do some major shuffling of trees in and out of protective cover before we started but space was found for everything. The spruce were potted first and put into a tunnel with last years spruce. Sphagnum moss only seems to be the way to go with Sitka Spruce. Last years trees loved it producing a lot of fresh roots.

We then moved on to the Hawthorn. The first one Stephen lifted bit him on the forehead, opps! We experimented a little with mixes to try out different options, time will tell.

Ben also brought a few trees of his own to get potted and we both finished these off before calling it a day. I didn’t take many photos to be honest, it was a very busy session and dirty hands and cameras don’t mix. You will see a triple trunk in the gallery that I lifted. Bark not very mature compared to some of the others but a nice tree for the future all the same.

Stephen was quick to point out that he was the oldest there yesterday but with all of us mumbling about aches and pains, he said he was the fittest of the four of us!! I would like to point out that he took Friday off by virtue of senile dementia setting in and his failure to find the collecting site when he was half a mile away at one point. Fittest my arse 🙂

Today I plan to catch up with some of my regular repotting on my own. I’m actually looking forward to a little time on my own in the garage with the radio on and wee trees for company. Spring must be in the air 🙂