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Has anyone had any experience with manzanita bonsai? I wanted to try for a local species and heard they were easy - I've bought a few full-size bushes from garden stores, ones with thick trunks, and after making sure they were healthy and stable tried for the aggressive initial prune-back, but not one has survived it. Is there just a certain amount of attrition that happens or is there something to the prune-down step that I'm missing? I'm being impatient and trying to skip the initial "grow from seed, wait five years" steps.
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Sep 27, 2013 06:08
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I think this question goes here. During the holidays this year, a lot of stalls were selling small potted "lemon cypress", which is a cultivar of the local Monterey cypress (Cupressus macrocarpa), as a sort of mini Christmas tree for apartments and cubicles. The one I have is about a foot tall, trunk is a quarter-inch diameter, pot is about 3.5 inch diameter. I'm getting concerned because I didn't realize this was a full-size tree, I assumed it was a dwarf or something. It's a small cultivar, but grows to around 5 feet under normal conditions. My concern right now is that the lady told me if I left it in this pot it would "stay small" but it has become extremely potbound and I'm worried about its health. I'm in zone 8b so in theory if I went and planted it on a hillside or something it might just grow into a normal tree. Should I move it to a bigger pot and let it get bigger, or is there some bonsai method I can use to keep it healthy in this pot? eta: from perusing the thread it looks like it needs to move up a pot size. Is now a good time to do that? I've been watering it but it seems dormant. After repotting I'm used to withholding water for about 2 weeks to avoid stressing the plant - is this ok for a tree or will it die from drying out? fuzzy_logic fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Jan 5, 2014 |
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Jan 5, 2014 20:26
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My garden of rejects says hi. My weird little hinoki: The picture isn't saturated or anything, I'm having some weird discoloration that I think is from the sun/wind going after it a little too much. It's still happy and growing, albeit slowly. This one has some kind of genetic mutation that makes the foliage grow all twisted and droopy like that. The local bonsai society says this poor guy is never winning any awards but I like it and it's weird looking - going into a proper bonsai pot and getting a haircut in January. The trunk is already so stiff I'm not sure it's going to be trainable at all but I think the nebari is already really neat.   Chinese black pine, my current favorite. Nobody wanted this one so I got it for free, maybe due to the pretty extreme bend in the trunk, but I plan on getting it pretty big so it'll disappear in a few years. Going into a bigger pot and getting trained once the weather cools off but has had a little haircut. I think someone also decandled it which annoys me because it's kinda too young for that and the trunk is hella wispy.  Meet Bruce! A Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) and another unwanted freebie and I'm discovering why. Already trimmed the roots and given 2 haircuts, and he will NOT stop outputting biomass at a terrific rate. He's currently suffering somewhat from the high winds in my area but leaving him out there entirely untethered has thickened his trunk up real good. Nobody seems to know what to do with a metasequoia bonsai so I'm playing it by ear for now. Currently I'm too scared to cut the leader but am hacking off branches and seeing a ton of rebound growth, so it's entirely possible I can chop this guy down entirely and get a nice family ring. Vague plan right now is to get some good trunk thickness going and then hack him down some distance from the ground and kill the remaining trunk (which will be a challenge, metasequoia is drat near unkillable and I may end up dremelling it hollow in the middle) and training the resulting family ring around the jin. We will see. Leaving him entirely unstyled right now because he's growing like a motherfucker and I also think redwoods are really beautiful because of their naturally very straight trunks and symmetrical branches, don't want to mess with its natural shape too much. Maybe not technically a bonsai then, more of a potted experiment. 
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Aug 23, 2017 01:04
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kedo posted:I'm unfamiliar with the term "family ring," and a quick and lazy google search turns up no results. What is that referring to? Sorry, should've been "family circle" I guess. At least with the coast redwoods here in California (and I should really check that the dawn redwoods do it too, they're a different genus), if you chop the tree down or it's otherwise knocked down or damaged, the burls on the trunk will send out a bunch of new shoots that will become full size redwoods. So you'll find these rings of usually 8-10 huge trees but they're all genetically identical because they're all really the same tree. Redwood burls are kinda like their stem cells I guess, you can chop the burl off entirely and put it in water and it'll grow a whole new redwood.
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Aug 24, 2017 03:50
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Double-posting to say if you're in the SF bay area, the BSSF is having their annual fundraiser auction on September 14th, it's open to the public : http://www.bssf.org/project/bonsai-auction/ There should be a lot of styled and unstyled trees as well as flowers, orchids, California natives, whatever else gets donated, tools and other supplies.
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Aug 25, 2017 03:27
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They're incredibly cool trees. My only advice is to get a seedling instead of seeds, getting them to germinate is difficult from what I hear. Dawn (deciduous) or coast (evergreen) redwoods will be much easier than the big sequoias, those are much pickier about climate I believe. They won't even grow this far South. Either way you get the great smell, it's very distinctive. Even just my little guy has a really strong redwood smell that lingers around after I've worked on it.
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Sep 4, 2017 01:01
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I'm gonna keep bumping the thread if it's not against the rules. I got some cheap bonsai material at the auction - this awful Monterey pine that everyone hated:  It looks much nicer since I cleaned off the dead needles, but someone still dubbed the "Charlie Brown Christmas Tree." It has a lot of problems but it's neat to work on a bigger tree - plucking old needles and trimming dead/dying foliage and buds took a few hours. I plucked the four tallest leaders and trimmed each one to two terminal buds. It's crawling out of the pot so it'll need to be repotted this winter but other than I don't know what to do with it. Might wire the bottom couple branches for practice. The trunk's so bad it may never be anything promising, on the other hand it might be a candidate for an experienced person to chop up and drill down into something interesting. Looks like it was collected from the wild and then ignored for about three years, poor thing. It has scars on the trunk where someone was practicing using scoop-shaped trimmers so that's why it has no low branches. My roommates called it "the bait dog of trees." This half-dead yew I got for five bucks has a pretty cool trunk (didn't realize how bad this exposure was, oops) with some deadwood:  It's badly potbound but should pull through. Also the redwood seems to be responding really well to pinching, here's its normal leggy foliage versus ramification from stuff I pruned earlier this year:   Once the foliage drops off I'm going to wire it for formal upright and go from there.
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Sep 24, 2017 22:42
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kedo posted:Welp, my redwood seeds came in! At least I think they're redwood seeds. Oh nice, what species did you end up getting?
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Oct 2, 2017 04:49
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Well poo poo. My Monterey pine has red band - I just stripped off nearly every single two-year-old needle because they're all either browned or browning. Nothing I can do about it this year but hope the poor guy pulls through. I was going to trim roots this winter but it looks like I'll be trying to move it gently to a slightly bigger pot with some fresh soil and hoping it recuperates. With so many needles gone I have to remove some needle-less limbs and now my pruning options are even worse than before. -_- I mean I knew the tree wasn't healthy when I bought it so this is what I get I guess. In other news I've heard varying opinions on 0-10-10 fertilizer for winter - what do people think about switching or should I stick with the usual plan? I'm curious what the rationale is for the zero nitrogen, is it because there's no actual photosynthesis happening?
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Oct 20, 2017 22:58
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Crocoduck posted:Winter is not the time to repot. Spring is the standard advice, fall is also OK, but unless you are in an emergency situation winter is to be avoided. I use cleary's 3336F, a copper fungicide and mancozeb to control fungus, with an infected tree I'll spray once a week alternating between several of the sprays, but spray once a month preventatively. Heavily diluted lime sulphur is also a good preventative measurement if you spray them before you put them into winter storage. 0-10-10 is unnecessary - plants will take what they need and leave the rest to be washed out of the pot. Photosynthesis continues to occur until 35F I believe... Thanks for the info! I should've been using a preventative, Monterey's particularly susceptible to this I guess. I added a note to its schedule. Luckily this year's needles seem to be hanging on, I'm actually shocked how decent it looks considering the apparent problems it's having. The notes for San Francisco say not to repot pine until the candles lengthen around February, I'm kinda of concerned about waiting that long but I guess I will keep an eye on it. Are there danger signs I should be watching for that'll indicate emergency repot time? The pot seems more full of root than soil at this point but if the tree's ok with it I'll defer to the schedule. Unless I should pull the trigger now while the sap's still running? Also holy poo poo that hinoki, I thought my stupid pine was big. fuzzy_logic fucked around with this message at 07:06 on Oct 24, 2017 |
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Oct 24, 2017 07:04
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Crocoduck posted:I don't really know Monterey's pines at all tbh, I'd repot once bud swell sets in, but that's my kneejerk reaction. In terms of emergency repotting, it's kind of a 'you'll know it when you see it' situation. It takes a lonnnnnnng time for a pine to be in a pot for it to show urgent repotting needs. My guess, without seeing your tree mind, is that you're likely ok. Danger signs would be lack of growth, weakness, lack of vigor, etc. Hinoki is a sexy beast. :] I guess I just need to get used to seeing a big tree confined to a small pot. Vigor's not a problem, the two main candles this year are well over a foot long. Also picked this one because the needles are weirdly short for a Monterey but that may be the pot being too small and general neglect. When I got it the needles were all very pale green, sort of neon colored, and clung against the branches like a folded-up umbrella looks. Since it's been outside it's darkened up considerably and is fluffing out so I'm taking that to mean it's happier now. Even the branches have relaxed down from the trunk somewhat, I have no idea what its previous arrangements were. Already have kind of a love/hate relationship with it, the trunk is so absolutely lovely, straight as a broomstick with baby-smooth bark, but it's plenty thick. Branches are also bone-straight and ugly but still flexible and seem vigorous so maybe it'll just be a happy hideous tree. It's borderline "native" to this area so I think 99% of it is just "don't do anything, leave it the gently caress alone, keep watering and feeding it" but I can't help wanting to gently caress with it all the time.
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Oct 28, 2017 01:46
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Holy poo poo baby pines bend really far, I kept waiting for the snapping noise that never came. Amateurish as gently caress but we'll see:  
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Nov 8, 2017 01:41
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We're having weirdly warm weather here in CA and all my trees have woken up ahead of schedule so I've been frantically buying pots and soil and repotting. Luckily this means I finally got to repot my yew. After chopping through all the dried up dead stuff I found there was a plastic mesh in the pot that had been entirely eaten by roots, and had to carefully cut that off. The entire center of the dirt ball was SOPPING wet even though I hadn't watered it in two days, and it stank. I dug out all the rot and removed everything that wasn't alive and hopefully it can start actually growing and doing well, because this tree has a very pretty trunk and roots and a thick line of deadwood that goes all the way down the biggest root. I'll get a pic of it once my camera finally charges. The whole thing stressed me out a bit because I keep hearing about how delicate yew roots are and how rot is basically the only thing that can kill a yew. I kept all the exposed roots damp the entire time I worked on them, and repotted into akadama and gravel with a little bit of lava rock, so hopefully it'll be happy for a few more years like that. The Monterey pine is getting repotted too this weekend into a bigger pot. It's pretty impressive how much wiring the other pine stunted it, it's just barely staring to think about maybe making some candles now, and the black pines in my neighborhood are already putting on needles.
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Feb 18, 2018 03:05
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GAZE UPON MY YEW! CLICK FOR HUGE!   I got this tree for five dollars because it was actively in the process of dying. Removed dead twigs and needles, repotted, ripped out rotten and dead roots, gently repotted (in the same lovely pot but next year I'll find a nicer one) and manually removed a scale infestation and she's really bounced back. All the pale green is new foliage. Check out the lovely jin and shari I dug out of the rotten-rear end soil it was drowning in! That shari near the base extends all the way down one of the bigger surface roots and look really cool, although I'm not sure if the jin can be saved since it's pretty damaged. She's got a date with a more knowledgeable person than I and some lime sulfur this year I think to clean that up and stop it rotting. Surface bark still looks like poo poo, there's some reverse taper and rot damage going on but I really like this tree.
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May 7, 2018 04:47
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Crocoduck posted:The azalea is probably 20-30, the sierra juniper 40-50.  I've tried to be very gentle with it so far, just trying to keep it from rotting to death.
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May 9, 2018 03:20
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Decandled the little black pine awhile ago and it's already budding again - here in SF pines have 2 growing seasons and it may need another prune in October. Of course I overwatered it all of once and now it crawling with fungus gnats, barf. I know they're harmless and all but it's gross to pick up your little tree and just a cloud of bugs comes flying out.  This is why I deliberately cultivate spiders on you, you drat trees!
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Jul 12, 2018 02:55
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lemonslol posted:Any place online to buy prebonsai stock? I don't havr access to nurseries in my area if you have even a home depot or similar nearby you'd be amazed what you can do with a stock juniper or other shrub. My yew came from Lowe's or something afaik. Just be prepared to look like a weirdo digging the trunk bases out on every single blue rug they have in stock and not buying anything. It can be faster to work with something in a 1-5 gallon pot than the tiny 4" pots some places sell as "prebonsai" but are really just regular seedlings that are effing tiny. Ed: speaking of being a weirdo I just got a mugo pine for 20 bucks in the clearance section. Seven inch circumference at the base and completely crawling with aphids. I'll take some pics tomorrow
fuzzy_logic fucked around with this message at 01:03 on Jul 14, 2018 |
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Jul 13, 2018 01:04
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I love this mugo so much I had to take some crappy phone pics. Dug it out from the sale section, spent a few hours clearing out dead needles and a massive aphid infestation (I didn't even know aphids could eat pine sap!), it's looking better but still in rough shape, no work for it outside of water and love for awhile I think. Outer foliage is so dense it's hard to get good pictures of the trunk but THAT TRUNK. Also if you live near Monrovia, they know what's up, the crown was clearly decandled last year before it went to the garden center and went to poo poo. 
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Jul 14, 2018 04:08
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This is weird - I assumed the aphids on my mugo were a fluke from the garden center, like maybe they jumped off a tomato plant, but when I went out this morning the trunk was teeming with ants - I have a full blown aphid infestation in the new candles! How weird. I'm just going to keep crushing/blasting them with the hose and hope they don't come back, but I think these candles are toast, they're limp and floppy where the aphids have damaged them 
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Jul 23, 2018 23:07
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The bugs on my mugo pine seem mostly under control now, between some ant bait and a lot of dish soap. The current container it's in is a (I think) 2 or 3 gallon tub mostly filled with wood chips and potbound roots. Vance Woods and everything else I've read advises repotting mugo right around now. Should I go ahead and repot into bonsai soil do you guys think? The substrate its in now is just awful. And should I trim back and go to a bonsai pot or just put it back in the current one with nicer soil/dead stuff removed? Not planning on barerooting because well, pine. I don't need the trunk any bigger but I don't want to act too rashly.
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Aug 6, 2018 22:15
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Gorgeous! We had a full size paperbark in front of my old house and I remember wondering if they could be mniaturized. The bark is so cool. There's not much to do with trees this time of year so maybe more people can post more pictures of what they have going on 
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Sep 20, 2018 05:14
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Crocoduck posted:Are you Northern or Southern hemisphere? Plenty to do in Northern. I'm in California, we're just entering indian summer so I'm really just watering and fertilizing. Needles don't need pulling for another month or so. My mugo has also decided to list slowly into the sweet embrace of death so I'm trying to fight that off.
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Oct 16, 2018 03:29
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At what point do I decide my Mugo is dead and not coming back? it's mostly brown needles with some green and I'm seeing no new growth. I water it but th soil stays wet and the needles stay dry, which to me says it's not taking up hardly any water. Is it worth trimming off the dead stuff and trying to coax it into a comeback or should I call it now and resign it to compost?
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Oct 30, 2018 04:19
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Crocoduck posted:s deadfuck I don't know what this means. Harry Potter on Ice posted:This is the fun part of bonsai! It is?!? Anyway I cut away the totally dead stuff and soaked the foliage and bark and it looks like some sap is still moving so I'll hold out until all the needles are dead I guess.
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Nov 6, 2018 05:36
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RIP the mugo. When you get trees half off from the clearance rack it happens sometimes I guess. Other trees are chugging along and since I have nothing but conifers I figured I'd pick up two naked little maples this weekend. Mikawa yatsubusa on the left, shirasawanum 'Aureum' on the right. The lighting in my living room is awful but because of the smoke it was even worse outside. I put them in the yard and plan to mostly ignore them until they wake up in spring. The aureum does have these onboxious sucker-looking shoots all over it, though, they're mostly all coming from the same spot and look awful. I really want to cut them off but some reading says they're a symptom of overpruning (I can see some big removal was done near the graft) and I should leave them totally alone and then gradually remove them over time. I'm concerned about a gross knuckle forming in that spot but please convince me to keep my hands to myself.   (obvious graft is obvious) The yew is also perfectly happy, although I'm going to need to do a little work to balance the weak and vigorous sections, the disparity is pretty shocking in terms of backbudding and needle length.   vs 
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Nov 12, 2018 03:29
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Crocoduck posted:Were the suckers underneath the graft union? Might be the root stock trying to get some foliage of its own. They're up at the top of the tree but I can see some big wounds below the graft where those suckers were recently removed. ed: wiser minds than I opted to remove the 2 most problematic shoots and remove the apical buds from the rest. fuzzy_logic fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Nov 18, 2018 |
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Nov 14, 2018 05:37
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Harry Potter on Ice posted:The bonsai is not you working on the tree; you have to have the tree work on you I recommend getting super high and then just sitting down and attempting to communicate with the tree for like an hour. I do it like every other week and it works great.
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Nov 22, 2018 04:32
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In California we repot whenever we feel like it: Also if you're reading this go get a taxus baccata you fool! The left is the missing rootball where the half of the tree died, the ramen-noodle stuff on the right is all brand new roots it grew since last year. The compacted rootball is all there used to be for roots. These things are effing unkillable.  I don't know why these are sideways, I am apparently too old to function on imgur anymore
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Jan 13, 2019 03:45
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I'm going to the mammoth auction next weekend, they put up previews of the lots - what looks good goons? https://bonsailakemerritt.com/mammoth-fundraiser/2018-mammoth-auction-items/
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Feb 9, 2019 23:19
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fuzzy_logic fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Mar 4, 2023 |
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Feb 14, 2019 05:02
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The amur maple is mine! Gaze upon my thicc boy:  I could've had the cascade crabapple for 400, but a number of trees from that donor, including the other crab, were found to be dead or dying, and were auctioned for "pot price" only and I didn't want to take the risk. I'm very happy with this guy  Should I note what some of the others went for or would it break Crocoduck's heart?
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Feb 17, 2019 02:00
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Crocoduck posted:Y'know, to be honest most of the literature I've been exposed to has been on trident and Japanese maples. I'd treat the Amur more like a trident - defoliation multiple times a year, hard pruning, hard root work, etc. but I'd also expect it to be a bit more cold tolerant (could be wrong). Oh good, this is what I'd heard too. The volunteer at the auction also told me it'll leaf out this early every year, and go red and drop leaves early as well. It's from Russia so it's on its own little schedule. It's actually pretty droopy in that picture, being inside at the auction all day stressed the new leaves out, so I took that pic and basically threw it outside in the rai and it's perked up a lot today. Waiting for shoots to harden off before I do anything with it. So, general impressions from the auction, which was absolutely packed: - the trees were all way bigger in person than in the photos, I immediately struck 2 from my list for sheer size considerations. The commitee promised to add a reference into the photos next year since apparently I wasn't the only one who was confused - the most $$$ lot was #015, a massive pomegranate, for $2200, this was also the most aggressive bidding war of the day - cheapest lot was the ginkgo grove, which went for $90 - the two massive blue atlas cedars were the belles of the ball and each went for about 2 grand after lengthy and exciting bidding. After they went a lot of people left. - there were a bunch of mid-size black pines that were very healthy and nice but needed work - these all went for between $250-350, I think the purchasers got some really good bargains there. - the exceptions were the lovely, sickly-looking ones with only a few needles - these went for around $150 and people were very reluctant to bid on them. Any one of them would be a great tree if pulled back from the brink, so good luck to the buyers. - crabapple #82 made it to the block but the cryer halted bidding to point out it was probably dead, and was about to strike it from the auction but someone asked if they could bid on the pot so bidding went ahead. #086 looked better but was also potentially dead - people here normally go absolutely bonkers for azaleas (we have a show coming up that is entirely satsuki azaleas) but the 2 here looked kind of sick so people were surprisingly reluctant to bid - there were a few small root-over-rock tridents that went for around $550 - 800 I had my eye on: - #022, lumpy space elm clump, went for $400 - #029, little SanJo juniper, also went for $400 - #057, my amur maple, I got it for $450, which is maybe a little high but I was a little miffed after missing my first 2 picks by one bid. The lady I edged out for it was *mad* at me lol - #086, cascade crabapple, went for $400 so I think my appraisals were dead on! I also really loved #026, the twin trunk CA juniper, that went for $475. Really stunning tree in person. The vast majority of the lots I think went for between $350-650 but that's purely subjective. I badly misjudged the cascade black pine, #091, which I figured wasn't so great but bidding on that started at $500 and it went for nearly a grand. Crocoduck's picks I made note of (I stepped out for a bit to take a break because auctions are pretty overwhelming tbh): #031 the Utah beast went for $1400 #039 a big beech went for $500 #056 a nice twin trunk pine went for $500 which I think was really undervalued. It's a really nice tree in person, but the bigger ones attracted fewer bids, I think maybe because of the difficulty in moving them. One club very wisely brought a pickup truck and were strapping their bigger purchases into the back as I left.
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Feb 17, 2019 20:55
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bessantj posted:I don't know if anyone who posts in here is from the U.K. but does anyone know of a decent place to buy pots? I'm pretty sure I have a tree that needs a new pot. Not sure how close you are to them but this place ships throughout the UK: https://www.kaizenbonsai.com/ Crocoduck posted:Repotted 5 trees in 6 hours, including two very stressful yamadori first repots and one very expensive, very old tree with dead air and dead roots in its rootball. Things are good. Everything's healthy. Most have a shitton of roots. We're ready for a decent growing season with a ton to do in the spring, summer, and plenty of trees to style in the fall. Right now though, some of my trees are finished bonsai in their own right, with aesthetically matched pots and largely perfected pads. That's... that's a first for me. Other yamadori have just been styled and found their direction, some have seen some dramatic transformations over the years. Photos tomorrow. I am VERY EXCITED fr evryone's spring pictures! I'm checking my maples literally every day waiting for leaves to open.
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Mar 16, 2019 23:35
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My yew recovered nicely from the repot and looks like it's taking a stab at flowering this year - last time it did that the buds all shriveled and fell off immediately before I could even sex it but it seems to be pushing pollen cones this year so, unfortunately probably male. At least it's finally healthy enough for me to start thinking about how I'm going to style it.
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Mar 26, 2019 19:15
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I won a couple shohin pots in a raffle that are signed "SR", anyone know if this is Sara Rayner's signature? I don't want to claim that's what they are if they aren't.  The detail is so beautiful:  There's a shohin show here in June so maybe I can find a little pine to put in here. This one has such cute detail on the feet. I put some little succulents and rocks in there for the moment to make a little landscape, but I'm slowly reducing a Japanese mapl to go in here eventually I think:  
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Mar 31, 2019 00:03
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Crocoduck posted:Those are deffo Sara Rayner pots. Woo! Now I really have to find a nice enough tree to put in there.
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Mar 31, 2019 20:32
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Crocoduck I think your suggestion on the Amur was correct, I pruned a little over half the new growth 2 weeks ago and it's back budding like crazy. I also hit it with some chelated iron and the new leaves are much thicker and greener. The first flush was sort of yellow and thin like tissue paper, several people suggested it was chlorotic but it seems better now. Should I keep dosing it with iron or is fine for the season do you think? The chlorosis might be due to it's being potbound or I think maybe all the loving rain we had this winter just washed all the fertilizer out of the pot so it got nothing. I checked the pH and the tap water and they're fine but other people had lovely maples this year too.
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Apr 13, 2019 00:28
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Crocoduck posted:What's your preventative routine like? You should either go the neotraditional route of spraying all the loving time, or the organic hippy Ryan Neil route and go organic... There haven't been a lot of adopters of the Ryan Neil method yet, but he's loving Ryan Neil. I don't spray with anything, my rationale is usually that a vigorous tree will fight off a lot of stuff on its own. I do an inspection every weekend and remove any scale or whatever manually. I do need to start spraying my pines with antifungal in winter though, they look lovely this year. Fertilizer-wise, the conifers get Superfly Bonsai pellets that are like, 5-7-3 I think, and then every 2 weeks or so everybody gets MaxSea 15-15-15 liquid fertilizer. My house plants get that year round but the bonsai only when they're growing. The thing with the Amur is it was sitting waiting for the auction over winter and I don't think anyone expected it to leaf out in January so it maybe didn't get all the stuff it needed. So I'm playing catch up. The good news is one of Michael Hagedorn's apprentices is coming in July for a deciduous talk and it says it'll include a critique. I'm hoping that means I can bring my maple to show him and he can give me some guidance on how to move forward with it, I've been too intimidated to do much other than clean up new growth and wire all of 2 branches.
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Apr 14, 2019 00:27
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Crocoduck, is this by you? I didn't know you guys had such a huge range of species available to you! https://bonsaitonight.com/2019/04/16/prize-winning-bonsai-at-bonsai-on-the-bayou-an-american-bonsai-summit/ https://bonsaitonight.com/2019/04/19/a-closer-look-at-the-bonsai-on-the-bayou-exhibit/ Blaziken from what I know cherry are tricky but I find people tend to be willing to put in the time and effort for whatever particular species they're most fond of. For propogation you don't need any special bonsai-specific texts, start with regular horticulture on how to get cuttings and go from there good luck!
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Apr 21, 2019 03:00
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 16:35 |
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Doubleposting but the flaky outer bark has started sloughing off my yew in sheets which is great for multiple reasons. First, I assume that outer bark breaking up --> trunk is swelling rapidly which is great. Also, if you look up any taxus in a show environment, they're never displayed with the outer bark, it's always removed to expose the red under layer. The contrast between that and the white deadwood is *the* big feature of any taxus bonsai, and also is good for their health because the flaked outer layer can shelter bugs and hold moisture and infection. I've been removing anything I can easily lever off with my fingernail: This part of the nebari is going to look really nice once it's cleaned up:  And the Amur says hi, it's backbudding like mad. In the bottom right you can see one of the old chlorotic leaves from the first flush compared to the new, darker and shinier ones after applying iron chelate. Huge difference! The iron won't fix any of the old foliage, just new leaves, so I removed most of the yellow ones so it can focus on healthy leaves. 
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Apr 21, 2019 22:38
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