I sell a lot of native European Yamadori all of the trees are very old and of the best quality, trees that I would have in my own collection. I select trees on the hill that I believe will make great bonsai and leave those that have no or little potential. With every tree except pine I bare root, removing all the mountain soil and replace with my own mix suitable for growing new roots and establishing the tree in a pot. I also endeavour to plant the tree in the smallest container whilst still maintaining the future health of the tree. This makes transplanting to a bonsai pot a lot easier without the usual dangerous root ball reduction that sometimes takes place after establishing.

Usually the planting position in the ‘training’ pot is not the ‘finished’ angle or position that the tree will be styled, when purchasing I advise…

After sharing the results of this experiment, I received an interesting comment from an individual whose horticultural knowledge I respect and seek at times. Here is the essence of his comment, which made me consider the fact that I didn’t consciously create a “control” in the experiment.

Brian,
Very interesting blog post today…

I saw a Lindsay Farr video a few years ago where he contended that recutting the suberized tissue accelerated the healing response. While it seems plausible, it never seemed to do anything beneficial for me. I am assuming you were influenced in an analogous way. What I don’t understand about why this could possibly work is that the first thing the cambium actually does is to reform the callus and then xylem grows behind the cambium and bark ahead.

Cutting away the suberized tissue leaves the a cambium exposed to dessication. Putting something over that prevents the…

The Kawa Bonsai Society of Florida is sponsoring their annual convention The Joy of Bonsai, on January 16-18, 2014, in Bunnell, Florida, near Daytona Beach. Louise Leister did an outstanding job organizing the event. The speakers, Sean Smith, Ted Matson, Mike Rogers and Wm. N. Valavanis will be conducting demonstrations, workshops and critique. There is a wide selection of trees, containers, tools, supplies, suiseki and magazines for sale by a select group of vendors.

Come, join us as the speakers share their skill and knowledge!

This is one of those trees I’ve had in my yard a long time, and never done a follow-up post about. For one thing, it’s so large it’s hard to photograph. For another, I just didn’t get around to it.

All of the trunks come from one base; it’s one tree. The snows are so heavy where it came from that the young branches were brought down, and those branches later grew upwards and are now the trunks that create the clump.

This was the tree that started all my madness around finding new solutions for the slab question. Ironically, it’s the last tree I’ve put on a slab. This hemlock sat on a plywood slab for years, with me just dreaming about it, while completing other slab experiments. So, it benefited from other tree’s mistakes. Or my mistakes with them, I should say. Finally in 2014 it went onto…

Mark has been working on his two trees on last workshop. There we have some pictures.

big Chinese elm before

and after. this tree has been potted to more shallow pot and some branches has been re-positioned to improve ramification

the second tree was Trident Maple Mark

the tree before it was originally potted in green pot that empty one on left hand side

and after work in new blue pot. this tree has been shift more to the right side of the pot.

10/01/2015 we had our first workshop in this year. As usually very busy and progressive day. The main topic was re-potting so we have good chat about it. Then Ian and Phill did some critique on ours trees, and finally we become to do some work on ours trees. Here we have some pictures.

Mark’s poly tunnel ready for messy work. Thanks Mark 🙂

selling area- some lovely pots and trees

general chat

trees critique

Ray wiring his twin trunk larch

Kieran wiring his new Scottish pine

Mark and Ian are preparing pot for Mark’s Chinese elm

two fingers Master is working on Ray’s larch

Kieran and Ian are working on Kieran’s small cotoneaster

Ray and Phill still on the same larch

Mark is re-potting his lovely Chinese elm

Kieran is wracking his cotoneaster 🙂

First fitting Mark’s elm

All happy faces at the end of the day

Thank you…

Piotr’s van ready for tomorrow workshop with Ian Young and Phil Donnelly

it is going to be busy day for us. First workshop :). The weather is not bad and there is no signs that winter will com to us this year so we will try do lots of re-potting and some styling as well.
Will update after the weekend.