Apr 30 2011

Root Over Rock Common Juniper

Amazingly I didn’t post anything on the blog yesterday!! The main reason being the Royal Wedding…. only kidding, I was having a bit of a Royal Bonsai Day at my house with friends coming during the day to play with trees and have a bit of Craic.

First up was this Root over Rock Juniper possibly ‘Repanda’ owned by Stephen. When Stephen bought the tree about 5 years ago it was very overgrown and he has worked hard to get the foliage chased back enough to allow for this styling to take place.

Stephen and I got to work getting the whole thing wired. Well, Stephen drank about 3 pots of my coffee in the process 🙂

Maggie kept an eye on us from a hidden location.

Fully wired but as yet to be styled.

After some basic placement it became evident that the left hand side branch wasn’t required in the design.

We even considered a more brutal pruning option. This is an option for the future but there were concerns over losing a corresponding root by removing the branch all in one go.

Here is the final outcome.

Apr 25 2011

Matthew’s Juniper

My son, Matthew, has been showing an interest in bonsai and I’m keen to support it. I spent some time with him today working on a Chinese Juniper. The juniper was given to him by my friend Stephen who wanted to make space on his benches. I’ve always liked the juniper and Stephen decided to give it to Matthew so I could prove it was worth keeping 🙂

It needed a thinning out to remove weak foliage and was then wired, by me, Matthew had visitors to entertain. We gave the bark a scrub and weeded the pot, then added Lime Sulphur. He likes that bit. 🙂

I forgot to take a before shot but this was it a few months ago.

This was it after some work. Some final tweaking of foliage required but we ran out of time.

The foliage needs to gain some more vigour and I plan to foliar feed during the year.

Apr 23 2011

Elm Recovery

It seems this Winter has taken it’s toll on Chinese Elms. I’ve spoken with quite a few people across the UK who have Elms that are dead or suffering. For many years people have been leaving their Chinese Elms out of doors during the mild Winters. This year they are finding out what a risk that can be. I have a few myself and they have been slower to open this year, even after being protected all Winter.

The elm below belongs to a club member who has been working hard on this tree for a number of years to remove faults and create ramification. He brought it to the meeting a few weeks back and there was absolutely no signs of budding. I offered to put it into my poly tunnel to see how it responded. After nearly 2 weeks I couldn’t see any movement and feared the worst. Yesterday I gave it another look. After a few days of really warm weather I was pleased to see loads of little swelling buds. A small amount of fine ramification may have been lost but this can be replaced quickly.

Apr 21 2011

Cotoneaster Tweaking

Part of our day yesterday was was taken up by this Cotoneaster belonging to Stephen. When I was at his home the other day I said it could be a really nice tree with a little more work on the deadwood and and some wiring. We agreed at the time to give it a whirl the following day. Here is the tree on Monday at Stephens place.

It’s an urban yamadori tree and if memory serves me right, it was salvaged from a school grounds. A few ugly rots at the bottom need to be removed to reveal a better nebari underneath, This can’t be done in total just now. The deadwood at the top needed some work with a view to eventually joining it with the deadwood at the bottom left of the tree. Some adjustments to the foliage should also help pull the whole image together.

Here’s some of the work getting carried out.

This is the original front as the tree was potted but a view more from the left would show off the deadwood to better effect.

Apr 16 2011

Elm Forest Update

Here’s an update on the Elm Forest Planting shown here Cork Bark Elm Group

I lifted out of the poly tunnel yesterday for an inspection and tidy up. It’s been growing rapidly in the tunnel and many unwanted shoots have appeared.

I gave it a weeding and trim. A few branches got a light wiring to place them in the right position. If it continues to grow like this it’ll fill out before the end of the year!! Here’s the result of yesterdays work.

Apr 16 2011

Budding Raulii

This will be my first Spring working with this species. This tree was given to me last year as a thank you for holiday care.

It is similar to a Hornbeam but you can see noticeable differences on closer inspection. Yesterday I had a look at the opening buds with a view to pinching out the tip growth. They can extend quite a bit and I want to stop this and produce back budding. I did shorten many of the branches during the Winter but stopped short for two reasons. 1- It was repotted and 2- it’s a new variety to me and I’m unsure how it’ll respond. I can now see some major back budding due to the Winter pruning and will re-evaluate how far to take it back. Some branches are too long without ramification. I took 15 minutes and plucked out what shoots I could get. Some are further behind and the process will need to be repeated next week.

I look forward to making this tree my own. The large carving wound needs work and want to improve branch structure.

This is a bud before pinching out the centre. A few have what look like flowers appearing. I’ll have to wait and see.

Evidence of pinching on the bench.

This is some of the back budding close to the tips. However major pruning is producing adventurous buds on old wood so this might be removed altogether to help fill inner branches with buds.

Apr 15 2011

Cut Backs Update

Just over a month ago I chopped back two big escallonia cut backs

A month on and the back budding is in full flow.

Apr 11 2011

De-Flowering Today

Bonsai that is 🙂

My big Rhododendron has started to drop some of it’s flowers and to make sure I get all the seed pods off, I removed the rest by hand today. If you do it at this stage, it’s easy to spot the little red tips and the emerging shoots below are easy to avoid. If you leave it until all the flowers drop of their own accord, seed heads are hard to spot, you tend to knock off new shoots and it stresses the tree even further.

Here’s it before.

These are what I’m removing. Some have already dropped the flower petals leaving the seed heads.

and this is it 45 minutes later.

this is under the bench!

I have given the tree it’s first feed and a good watering in.

Apr 8 2011

Corky Haircut

This litle Cork Bark Elm has responded really well to a repot. This it a week or so ago.

It had fully opened since then but I wasn’t happy with the length of some of the internal branches. I want to build up a fine ramification and some of these are too long and straggly. I decided I needed to take it back in quite hard to eliminate the strait bits and force some back budding. This is it today.

Apr 5 2011

Chinese Elm Progression

Here’s a link to a set of progression photos on the IBC forum. Well worth a look to see what was achieved over 6 years with this tree. I constantly try and talk club members into removing heavy mis-shaped branches and roots from large imported Elms. This chap took the bull by the horns and did it all.

Chinese Elm Progression

By way of credit, this is the guy’s website. It’s in Spanish but Google Translate takes care of that. Check out his Pyracantha if you get a chance. Click on the logo to visit.