One of my ‘Royal Bonsai’ Guests last night was Josh who brought along his Turkey Oak, Quercus Cerris. This tree was lifted from a growing bed in his garden this Spring and put into it’s first pot. He brought it along for pinching and I took the opportunity to get a photo. I must say that the photo doesn’t do this tree any favours. It’s amazing in the bark, so to speak. The pot is from Walsall Ceramics. Well, via Willowbog Bonsai 🙂
To give you an idea of the size of the Oak here’s Josh for scale.
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.
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.
It’s well hardened off already and has extension growth on most branches. I decided to allow Matthew to defoliate it to begin with. Bit early, I hear you say! You might be right, but I find Tridents so strong and vigorous that two defoliations in the year isn’t a problem. I set him to work.
Blissfully unaware of my camera work, you can almost hear the concentration from here.
I talked about extending the foliage pads on the right, and keeping the left hand side tight to show off the rock and give the tree more interest. I then explained how, in a different pot, some negative space on the right would really help the overall image. I spotted an old Mica landscape pot under a bench and decided to show him what I meant. The pot was big enough to allow me to lift the planting out of the training pot and into the mica one without removing any root.
I told him that he needs to find a similar looking bit of rock or a big lump of moss to fill the gap between rock and root at the base.
I decided to heat the jin with a blow torch and bend it into a more complimentary position. I protected the foliage with tin foil while I heated the jin. I used jin pliers to hold and twist the wood as I heated it. Once I got it to the right spot I held it for a minute or so for it to cool down and set in it’s new position.
As you can see, the heating treatment allows for decent bends to be added and has the benefit of ageing the wood with fire.
After a quick coat of Lime Sulphur I applied self Amalgamating Tape to the upper trunk area to protect it while I applied a bend or two. The upper trunk was bolt straight and I wanted to bring the foliage in tighter to the main body of the tree.
This is it after bending and some basic branch placement. It isn’t very refined as the foliage quite heavy and I wasn’t prepared to pinch it back any harder at this point. I reduced the jins at the base as they distracted from the rest of the tree. These will also be refined further at a later point as they are a bit clunky as they sit now. Further growth will be needed to fill out the image but the basic structure I wanted it there now.
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.
My little one is one of my favourite trees at the moment. (that changes on a daily basis!!)
Bonsai Eejit 