Been busy as per usual but I have managed time to fit in a couple of customer trees.

Below is a quick before and after of a black pine that needed teasing out of a sea of needles. A fun tree to style.

Before

The after shot is a little lacking in quality but I am sure you get the idea.

After a day or so work.

Last year I wrote a post about fertilizing, Refine your fertilizing this year! I wanted to expand on that and offer a few more notes, since, after all, it’s a brand new year for dung related issues-

Blogging is really a bit assumption-ridden, because we make one simple statement as if it’s unconnected to a million variables. For example, when I say ‘fertilize’, I assume that we’re using a fertilizer that has all 6 macronutrients, Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P), Potassium (K), Calcium (C), Magnesium (Mg), and Sulfur (S), which, if I don’t say that, or some other variable you’re assuming and I’m not, we’re NOWHERE. And we are better if we’re somewhere. At least.

• There are very few instances in bonsai, in early training or maintenance, where you don’t want a fertilizer with at least all 6 macronutrients. (i.e., without magnesium your tree can’t create chlorophyll, and without chlorophyll the idea…