Jun 26 2011

Fuji Cherry Update

I did a bit of an experiment on this Fuji Cherry back on the 23rd of May.

I hadn’t heard of a cherry being defoliated and this one was prime for it as I needed to de-wire it. This is the tree now over a month later. It was slow at first but has really pushed hard this last week. It’s been in my Poly Tunnel in this time and seems to love the humidity.

I’ll keep you posted with details on how the Autumn colour turns out this year and if it has any affect on the flowering next Spring.

Jun 25 2011

Trident pushing on after defoliation

My Trident is opening nicely after it’s early defoliation. I’ve been known to defoliate this fella twice in a year but after repotting this Spring I’m going to leave it alone now for the rest of the year.

Jun 11 2011

Trident Defoliated

I took this Trident Maple to the club meeting last night and a few of the guys were good enough to defoliate it for me.

This afternoon I took a few minutes to go over the tree and remove extended growth and unwanted branches.

Jun 9 2011

Japanese Maple Branch Structure

This is a Japanese Maple that I have had for a few years. It has gone through a few years were the growth has been weak and I have lost a branch or two. I have placed it into a training box to gain vigour and it has worked.

As part of the bonsai school with Peter on Saturday we defoliated the tree to examine the branch structure. I had shortened the overall branch length to encourage back budding. It was severely lacking in secondary ramification and I was hoping to find new growth on the interior.

Peter talking through the structure after defolation.

This is the tree now.

Here you can see strong new growth in the interior of the tree. These have been left long to encourage the branch to thicken. A branch like this on the lower limb should be one of the thicker branches and at least as thick as the one on the other side. Ideally we should have left the leaves on it to aid it’s strong growth. We got carried away with the defoliation 🙂

Jun 8 2011

Chuhin Maple Defoliation

Managed to get my Chuhin Japanese Maple defoliated today. I must admit, I’m very pleased with it so far.

May 23 2011

Cherry Experiment

I wired this Fuji Cherry over the Winter and now it needed it removed due to rapid growth. This posed a problem due to all the dense leaves. I remembered that a few years ago it was attacked by caterpillars in early Spring and it responded by producing new leaves. I decided that I would have a little experiment and defoliate the tree. I could them trim back the extension growth to the first couple of nodes and remove the wire with ease. It had only managed to hold onto one cherry. I left this on for enjoyment.

Here it is before. I had already trimmed back the strongest growth as this stage.

and after defoliation.

I looked as best I could to see if cherry bonsai were ever defoliated but couldn’t find anything online. I’ll be interested to see what happens and what Autumn colour I have this year, if any!!!

May 12 2011

Shohin Maple Update

I posted this maple back on the 21st march HERE

(Loving this online diary. Great for checking back when tasks were done.)

Here’s an update on the tree. Every Spring is grows vigorously and has large leaves. I defoliate as soon as they harden off. That’s today.

The next flush of growth will have smaller leaves and a shorter inter-nodal length.

The wounds that I reopened and resealed in March are obviously healing strongly as you can see from the cracks in the cut paste. I’m hoping that by the end of 2012 I have no wounds at all.

Apr 28 2011

Bonsai eejit & Son

…I hope.

Continuing my manoeuvring to keep my son on the bonsai bandwagon, I spent an hour or so this afternoon working on a tree. When my friend Stephen donated a few of his to the cause, I asked Matthew which ones he liked. He was drawn to this Root over Rock Trident. ( Not really a root over rock, more like a growing against a rock Trident.)

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.

After defoliation we wired a few branches into place for practice and discussed the shape that the tree will take in future.

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 didn’t set out to do all this today, I think we got carried away!! I am confident that this tree will bounce back in a few weeks. I’ll even post an update here to prove it 🙂