and they fly the nest.............

This week a friend who is building up a collection of very nice acer bonsai found that persistence can certainly pay off....in the nicest way....He often asked if my Shin Deshojo was for sale, and I often said I could not find an equal replacement so No, it was one of the trees I was keeping..........

Over new year greetings the request came through so I thought why not, he really wants the tree, would totally appreciate it and I have had a good few years fun and enjoyment bringing the tree on so we did the deal and I dropped it round - 1200 miles from my home !!!! Posting trees is ok, but trees you really care about need face to face service as it would be such a dis-service to the bonsai if it was broken by an unknowing courier or unprecedented accident. The car was loaded with the tree, pots, bags of our soil blend, fish emulsion, bonsai boost pellets and a few accessories - plus Relentless and blueberry Red Bull  

The Tree

Shin Deshojo, imported in an unknown year, and I stumbled across the tree walking into Willowbog Bonsai Nursery on day.

 The tree had been hit by late freezing winds so had defoliated itself in most areas so even though it was July we had a new crop of red leaves, much smaller than normal, but with random big leaves from the first flush. We fed the tree, enjoyed it and waited until the next spring to repot so the mound of root under the trunk could be reduced and the planting position gradually flattened out. The tree was the same width all the way up so I decided to grow the lower branches wider rather than prune the apex narrower so we used a much bigger growing pot for 2 years

This caused a push of vigour that needed checking so the next repot put the tree in a stunning Japanese Tokoname cream oval barely 3cm deep inside

Deshojo are run away growers and will extend node length to 5cm or more in the blink of an eye and this is too big a gap between buds when fine tuning a tree really so the shallow pot and small amount of feed plus correct watering (minimal) helps to shorten node length. Now the outline was getting closer to my desired image the first leaves were allowed to open then the tiny new shoot that appears was pinched out to stop all extension growth on the exterior of the tree. Inner, weaker, shoots are allowed to grow and the bottom branches are allowed a small amount of extra extension growth too. Later in summer one from every two outer leaves is cut off to halve the shade effect of the canopy and if the single remaining leaf is still too big it is cut in half

This is a constant ongoing process but the unplanned sale of the tree has finished my time with the tree and moved it to another person to do their thing from now on. I offered the tree with or without the pot but both have stayed together and now will love the pure clean air in the foothills of the Austrian mountains

Bye bye to the unit for a few days ! 

SOIL MIXING

Repotting time is nearly here - Cornwall. SW UK is a little bit milder than the rest of Britain and we dont get much in the way of frost - we have sensors on the bonsai benches and so far this winter we had one night of minus 2 and one night of minus 4 but either side of these two clear nights it has been plus temps. Days have been hitting 15 C regularly, roots are active and early acer buds and larch buds are swelling visibly now. 

We stock all the essential soil components and also, if the customer needs enough of one mix we offer to blend them to suit the tree collection and predominant climate. The key points of getting the soil mix right are correct water retention, good aeration, soil PH can be important too

We use

Akadama - 2 line, hard type, holds onto water well
Kiyru Grit - allows hard feeding, drains well, heavy component
Ezo Grit - superb light, warm airy grit - drains well, superb root development
Kanuma - acidic lightweight volcanic grit - soft, holds lots of water
Black Lava - very hard, will not compact or breakdown in hard frost, drains well, contains lots of minerals and some trace elements

We dont use
Compost (apart from our chinese elm mix - they like a bit)
garden soil / leaf mould
Bark - depleates nitrogen making balanced feeding difficult to measure
granite chips / potting grit - freezing cold, very heavy, can be silica based

 80 liters are best done in a proper mixer - less effort and nice consistent results

Akadama is £12.50 a bag, the others £14. Blended is £14 a bag too - (Collected) - Next day courier delivery to mainland Uk is competitive and can be quoted for.





First and foremost I am a bonsai enthusiast and I love nothing more than hunting out mature japanese trees that can be refined so selling one of the good ones from my personal trees leaves a gap that I need to fill. As a maple went I wanted another to replace it, and I know there are no Deshojo's available that come close to the sold one so I broadened the search a little and came up with a 13 trunk fused clump style Acer Palmatum Yatsusa Kashima

Earlier this year we sold the 5 trunk Kiyohime clump that appears in the late  Peter Adams maple book and also in Dan Bartons bonsai book from when he owned the tree. The kiyohime has dwarf tendencies in its extension growth and is weaker in the apex but grows very strongly from the base branches so they go wide but stay low

The Kashima can appear very similar in leaf and extension growth but it grows like most trees - strong apical and upward growth and weaker in the lower areas.

Here was the find - it has been maintained in a healthy state for about 25-30 yrs in the UK, maybe a bit longer than that now but the tree has not been wired or styled for a long time. The top strength and upward tendencies can easily be seen here, the pot is way too heavy too but I have a good Tokoname cream oval - 4.5cm deep- ready for a fairly hard repot in a month or so.

Lots of guy wires will then go on, outer branches will be flattened with normal wiring and then some areas will be cut back harder to put a tree shaped silhouette back rather than a mushroom dome. The trunks need cleaning, the nebari cleaning out and defining and then the foliage pruning begins

The tree will be fed well with Tribolar pellets - 2 applications and a 14 day cycle of using  our fish emulsion after the leaves harden off until they just start to turn for Autumn. Hard feeding is essential on a tree if you plan on cutting losts off but keeping it strong and healthy.

A 2nd maple will be here soon - a large trident maple with 5 trunks that are rising from a fused plate the size of the pot nearly. This tree it a 'start again' project........it has a documented history from 1910 but is now tired and gone beyond simple recovery - health is fine, the branches are long leggy things with twigs on the very end so i'm going to bang in the fertiliser (Tribolar, fish emulsion, algae & seaweed extract and a couple of special compounds) then cut off most of the branches and grow them again - A great project as you cant find tridents with such age and maturity to import anymore, and even if an equally old but refined japanese tree came onto the market it would command quite a price.

The project is at least 5-6 yrs to see even half a result though

Pics to come once the tree gets here

Other than that it was lovely and sunny in the garden today - white pine that needs styling  seems happy with good winter colour, Zelkova to the right and a true yamadori Japanese juniper trunk grafted with Itoigawa foliage ready for a first refine session after a workshop with Ryan Neil a few years ago to give it its first styling from raw material. Plenty to do !!

The Crenata Chronicles III

Continuing our work with the Japanese White barked Beech bonsai it is time to do some basic early winter prep work

As we want to see the structure of the tree, assess the ramification and do some work all the brown leaves are removed. Now we can see just how dirty the trunk has become over the Autumn. Dirt, fertiliser residues and green algae make it all look a mess

As we can see the tree is in serious need of a good clean - -  and at the top of the picture is a small side branch coming across the trunk . . .it should be cut off  but we'll se if it can be moved first.

Trunk cleaning is down to some water and vinegar and some plastic bristled brushes. Start at the top, work down and then wash the whole tree with hard spray from a hosepipe.

All scrubbed, now the branch.........

The old stub is removed, hollowed and the edges cleaned up with a sharp knife

Two 3.0 mm copper wires are placed in the curve, temporarily held with wire while they are wrapped with raffia and plastic tape. This is a backbone for the branch we hope to move and being coper wire it will actually hold the bend in place

Twin copper 2mm wires are put on for added protection to the outside of the bendand the branch that was crossing the trunk now goes the right way ! 

All exposed bits of the cut are sealed and I quickly worked up the tree adding a few guy wires and wiring a few branches that were starting to creep up at the tips

Finished tree - repotting planned for spring, I want to boost the vigor as the next stage is to massively increase the number of shoots and to thicken some new branches that are just thin new shoots coming out of the trunk. This tree has a stunning nebari - it would have been airlayered in japan over 30 years ago to be this mature.

Tree wired in copper - its all i use on every tree - Because we produce all our own annealed wire fresh in small batches it is lovely and soft to put on, and because we do it in half kilo rolls you dont get stuck with old rolls of hard wire - (it stiffens up over time and not many people use up full kilos very fast). The copper is so much thinner to do the same job as aluminium so the tree looks better, the job looks neater and as we dont really have any price difference there is no reason to use an inferior wire. 

Pot resurection

We've been looking for a pot for the large Japanese yew I have here for a year or two now as the tree is getting close to ready for it. This particular pot is a Dereck Aspinall pot that has had a fairly hard life with a previous owner but it was the ideal size, colour and shape for the tree so I decided to buy it a few months ago.

Most damage was to the feet where all the edges are chipped off - this comes from sliding the pots around on the benches, tables or in your vehicle and is a commonly seen form of damage. I see it a lot on European pots and less so on Japanese pots so I suspect the clay used or the techniques in manufacture may have something to do with it, but that is a bit of guess work based on observations.

First thing was to clean the pot well and assess all the damage

 

There are several chips in the rim too, both inside and out - the pot certainly has had an active previous life but I'd had a good look at it a few months before deciding to get it so none were surprises. 

First job after washing and drying was to rough up the edges with a file, then apply an exterior 2 part epoxy filler

I left this for 24hrs in the warm and the next day began gently sanding with very fine wet and dry sand paper. Following the sanding I mixed a colour match from my paints, and gave the areas 2 coats, followed by an ink wash to blend it and finally a sealing coat. The entire pot was oiled and left to dry for a week in the warm. I'm very pleased with the results and will certainly plant the taxus cuspidata in the spring.

And here we have a lovely UK made pot back in its prime

Dereck Aspinall  - Soft Rectangle - unglazed, 23" x 16" x 5"

Ramification Pt 1

Autumn is nearly here and the leaves are starting to drop on many trees, letting us see clearly how the summer growth effected or improved the ramification of our deciduous bonsai.

I enjoy experimenting a bit with bonsai methods and I find quite a lot that many recommendations in books are not that specific, at best are generalised and often don't work that well in our climate. The first year I had the Zelcova broom I followed the book method - cutting extending growth back to a few leaves, total defoliation of the outer half of the canopy in early summer and then pruning back the new shoots to a few leaves. This was an incredibly labour intensive way to look after the tree - the defoliating alone took nearly 7 hrs in total and the results were perfectly ok, the inner leaves stayed green etc.


This year I wanted to do what felt right, so I decided to treat the pruning differently.

First cut was made as the new shoots are opening and extending while they still were soft and red. This cut was back to one or at most 2 leaves over the whole outer canopy. In effect this stopped all extension growth.

The pruned shoots changed from red to woody, the remaining leaved continued to grow a bit and they hardened off. Now I cut all these leaves in half just like a beech or palmatum so lots of light could penetrate past the outer canopy and reach the inner tree. This gave a huge advantage as the terminal buds have stayed dormant - (defoliating makes them open and the tree outline gets bigger). Over the rest of the year I've just cut any strong shoots that extend past the outline and thats it.

The picture shows the tree from underneath - all the leaves inside the tree are perfectly green and it is amazing to see the whole tree is full of living inner shoots - quite funny when another bonsai 'expert' was overheard at a show saying this tree would have no ramification under the dense outer canopy of leaves ! haha.

Proof of the pudding - I've never had a deciduous tree reach Oct with this many perfectly healthy leaves on it from virtually the trunk to the outside.

Feeding has been our Bonsai boost pellets - 2 baskets at a time but only 3 times all year....and our fish emulsion about 12-15 times after pruning. No feed was put on before the leaves were cut in half.

This pic shows how we've kept the whole tree open and airy all year - this has let loads of light in 

Tree was repotted to a better front this year too

And the music..............

Doing our bit

Following being nominated by fellow bonsai friend Jim from Scotland here is my challenge


https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10204656030790803

We were away from home so had to improvise quickly at the inlaws ! While having fun it is also important to remember this is to raise awareness and money for charities close to your heart

The wonderful bonsai merry-go-round

Bonsai is never static - the trees evolve, the people on the scene change - some give up, some change direction and newcomers are always finding the hobby. Our collections will often reflect this too - maturing, evolving, improving hopefully and usually increasing in size ! pun intended

Obviously we have the small but growing (oh stop it, your killing me) bonsai sales side to our business and this is now very much entwined into my personal tree collection. It was 27yrs ago I bought a £5.99 chinese elm - then a month later a £35 elm, then a slightly bigger elm............that was it, hooked...many changes, houses, wives, friends, experiences....all different - but that 3rd elm is still here ......

This was the tree back then - another house, another life - blimey a bottle of 0:10:10, not my   kind of approach these days - chemical fertilisers that are also unbalanced, no thanks. The grey mica pot still here too - a pot that has established many trees since

Human nature (mine anyway) is to push hard, aim to improve and to grab an opportunity when you can even if it means some sacrifices - bonsai is a great hobby to fit this ethos as there is always a desirable tree out there, a better example of a tree you may have or sometimes material that has to be secured if at all possible. Luckily we also have our personal tree collection as currency so upgrading is often easier as the tree you may have at home will be someone elses bonsai of desire - they then make a few sacrifices to get it and the merry-go-round turns another bit.

Last week the chance to buy a substantial tree arose - it has pedigree and has been seen and photographed / filmed by visitors to Masahiko Kimuras garden over quite a few years - A slanting planting of Hinoki cypress - here is a pic of my friend with the tree in the background

So now the challenging bit - buying it !

We are all now probably fed up with 'Sales'. the word means nothing on the high street or in the super stores as they run one into another and the sale price is the full price anyway. But the only way to move closer to the object of desire was to offer some good trees up for sale to a few people who would really appreciate them, at a price that was very fair and good enough to ensure they didn't dither about - I said "you snooze you lose" last week to one friend - and the guys who stayed very on the ball have achieved a few of there own objects of desire

To get even halfway close to the goal I put up for sale some of my nice trees and used the method I find works - i offered more nice trees up than I wanted to sell, let fate decide which ones went and which ones stayed. It took about 8 days until i called halt as the right trees were going to new owners - some will be maintained as they are, some will continue to be changed and refined but most important all will be appreciated

It was bye bye and onto pastures new for:

The Hinoki.......

A lovely firethorn from Taisho-en Nursery

Top quality maple

My Elm - the tree from 27 yrs ago

Uk history tree - The Kiyohime clump from Dan bartons bonsai book

A simply beautiful trident forest

Admittedly there is a bit of space here now - but it means more time to devote to the trees that are left here - and we still have 60-70 trees in the shop sales stock to look after and 16 personal trees that are all on the path to becoming or remaining of showable standard. 

The survivors of the sale were the junipers and pines, I'm not unhappy about that as one was in a very unique and never to be found again pot and the big red & black pines would be quite hard to replace  - plus we have the 12 trees that were not included - they mostly show how my bonsai tastes are changing now - unusual species like bittersweet, more elegant styles reflected in the literati and deciduous trees, and the irreplaceable yamadori trees.

Objects of desire deserve sacrifice - 

The Kimura Hinoki rock planting looks secured to stay in the UK for a while longer - although it is a tree that will sell one day to someone who desires it - it has been bought to remain on the open market and not to be shut away and lost for ever - the nice thing is we can share it at a few carefully chosen bonsai events in coming years - who knows - we may do a flower show or two ! just for a change of scenery once in a while

the pots my trees live in

Slowly we are getting some nice pots to complement the trees as they mature and warrant them.
Some have actually come with the trees, some have come with different trees in them and others I have traded for trees, just one in the selection was actually bought up till now

Old green glazed Tokoname pot housing a pyracantha 

greens and golds in this beautiful pot holding a satsuki in training

Delicate pot for a delicate tree - Zelkova broom

a special pot made and inscribed by one of greatest unglazed pot makers ever.  The inscription is to pay homage to the ascension to the throne of the new emperor of Japan. Yamadori  juniper with grafted itoigawa foliage

Antique chinese - late 1800's or very early 1900's. Yamadori white pine in residence

Antique chinese cochin ware - mid 1800's would be fair estimate of production - 130 -160 years old

holds an oriental bittersweet

amazing delicate large oval - perfect lines, no warping - deshojo lives in this 1" of soil

Waiting for am acer........

lovely old pot from Anne swintons book - been used at Noelanders and will home a very nice juniper in spring