Final Touches

Following on from the last post I spent a while looking at the final picture and knew a few tweaks were needed - the crown of the minor trunk was a long way back and did not really match up with the main one - it needed to be brought forward quite a long way, reshaped to a more mature rounded shape and the biggest thing I needed to sort was the fact the lowest branch and foliage pad needed to come from the minor trunk - a bit of a golden rule for a twin trunk bonsai.

The reworking of the minor trunk was understandable when I thought about it as it had been styled nearly a year ago when I was approaching the job with a totally different outlook. When I bought the tree home I thought I would be fine wiring every tiny shoot and twig to make it look 'finished and ready for show' straight away ! The learning curve of the past year has been nearly vertical and was perfectly reflected in this tree - hence needing to revisit the early branches and do them properly

  Over the last 12 months my bonsai outlook has changed a lot - just by going to several large bonsai shows you can spot the newly styled trees straight away and to be honest they usually look very disappointing, and upon reflection I now look at these 'just wired' trees and think what a shame they are debut way too soon. I feel they reflect the wrong type of impatience in bonsai, almost a desperation - any tree truly mature and beautifully refined has a valid place on a show bench as these are the trees to inspire us all to keep trying hard and to never stop learning.

The crown was guy wired to bring it forward a lot and the branches shortened and layered properly rather than snaked up to look like full pads. There are a few conifers doing the show circuit rounds here that have a perfect outer image with a birds nest of snaked and crossed branches hidden underneath...they are half the tree they could be and viewers with a good eye see it once up close.... One of the branches was re-positioned nice and low to give me the important first pad and now it is time to let the tree rest and develop the 3 dimensional pads from the back buds

Taking the slow patient route with the foliage and being in a rush to do the dead wood seems silly so I only keep a hand carving gouge and a pair of fine pliers nearby. I'm not going to start preaching all purist that machine carving is crap (even though often it is - even done well it can so easily look like a cartoon bonsai). I now limit machines to hollowing out as this is what they do best - the surface texture of naturally weathered deadwood is unique - the cracks are random in width, random in depth and the prized cork like texture is made up of cracks going in every direction. Machines and even scalpels make repetitive marks that are too similar - like a pen, hence my comment that they look cartoon like. I hollowed the lower root, a few of the thicker branches and the soft inner rotted wood fiber with the dremmel but tried to avoid touching the surface wood too much. Then the wood was fired with a blow torch and different wire brushes  -  stainless steel for the serious deep scrubbing and copper for the finer work. The blow torch is a great tool - it needs to be turned down low and the trick is to alternate between dry wood and wet wood, yet again keep revisiting the work on different days and don't fall into the instant "I can do the deadwood in 6 hrs mentality"........we are trying to make a convincing image of wood aged over decades or even centuries so set aside some time to do a good, slow and thoughtful job.

Here is the lower trunk section burnt & brushed 6 or 7 times - burning wet wood makes it shrink and crack more while actually removing very little wood. Burning dry wood gets is smoldering and removes the summer growth rings from within the winter ones. Eventually you must stop and let the weather take over to get a true finish - we have helped nature but you can see the actual surface is not faked with scratches as they are a very poor imitation of what we really want to see - it looks quite smooth now but yew will crack into a fantastic finish over the coming years without any more man made help.

I use the gouge to raise small wood fibres now and again and the pliers to peel them off - this gives far better hollows that really do follow the true grain of the tree and add some depth and interest to some of the newly cut branches. The lime sulphar is only one week old so still looking bright and new but winter is very close now so the silver gray we desire will form on those cold frosty nights ahead. 

The pads now will spend the coming years filling out while the wood weathers - next spring the growth will be explosive as the tree was repotted this year so has needed to recover from root pruning, wiring and hard pruning in 2013. Cuspidata seems to like it here - the feeding, climate and water quality have ensured the tree has maintained good colour and has made many new buds. I see a few trees that are very yellow/green and weak occasionally and if you get a tree like this don't be tempted to style it until the colour has returned to pure deep dark green - this is when the tree is showing maximum strength and will cope with a hard year or two of styling.

As the rain was well and truly set in today I unpacked two boxes of custom pots that Gordon Hunt dropped up to the shop. I had asked him for some juniper pots to suit the stock trees I'd styled that were still sat in training pots and he did me proud - nice natural colours and pots of a size that allowed a nice gentle Autumn repot without major root disturbance.

And one final pot deserved the pick of the bunch of small stock chinese elm brooms we have - this was the one little tree in about 500 that caught my eye for taper and nebari

great pot, great little elm and for £30.00 a broom with a potentially good future.

SOLD ALREADY - no surprise on that one!

The 11 month wiring job

September 2012 I managed to acquire on of the pieces of material lurking in the UK that had made me go all starry eyed and a bit drooly - the tree in question was a japanese imported yew - Taxus cuspidatta. It was a weird scenario - when I first tried to buy it I was told it was sold already so it was with regret and a little envy that I put the tree to the back of my mind. Then 2 years later I see the tree while walking into the bonsai nursery originally selling it...........it looked twice the size in real life (don't they always).....and due to goodness knows what circumstances the tree was back for sale again !

An earlier blog post  covered getting the tree home and winching the lower branch up to make a twin trunk tree a possibility - then we left that post with the tree resting and recouping from the major work where the live vein was splintered from the dead wood as the flat back branch was pulled up. This, and a little first wiring took place in Sept 2012.

here is a recap of the tree untouched

Over the weeks following the major bend of the second trunk some wiring was done in the winter and in March 2013 the tree was still fine so it was re-potted to the new front angle with a lot of help and guidance from Peter Warren at one of the workshops we hold in Cornwall. To turn the tree to the new front a lot of root had to be removed from some areas so the tree would go back in the pot so it was kept shaded and misted for many weeks after. The everlasting cold spring finally broke, the sun came out and the older inner needles yellowed and dropped off  but we kept a close eye on the new soft bright green buds as these were the indicator as to what the roots were doing.

Through the summer the tree was fed a lot of imperial fertiliser pellets - an organic feed rather than chemical but with a major difference in that elements in the feed are instantly useable by the trees. By combining the feeding with hard pruning the tree has made new buds all over the branches that dropped the old needles so the remaining wiring was put on hold so the new buds were not knocked off.

That brings us up to date and August Bank Holiday seemed a good opportunity for some bonsai work - on the Sunday I did a club visit and talk for the Exeter Society on Juniper and other conifers so Monday seemed a perfect follow on to finish the initial styling on the yew. Due to the earlier cutting back the wiring was quick and easy to do and after 5 or so hours the first styling is complete - a mere 11 months after the first wire went on !

Now we enter phase II, the developing of the pads and foliage masses that will take another 2 or 3 years of pruning, budding and feeding to see the image that is planned. There are buds on virtually every bare branch now and next spring will see huge growth as the tree is settled and fully recovered from the repotting. Feeding will continue through September and during late October the pot protected from excess rain - this is critical with Taxus as waterlogged soil will freeze into an ice block causing root damage but dry soil does not damage the roots in low temperatures. The black pines get the same treatment too.

A few trees for sale

Once in a while I'll highlight a few of the trees we have available for sale here - won't be doing it every post as it makes the blog quite boring, just now and again. i use ebay as a marketing tool to spread the word but their fees are getting higher and higher, so by contacting me directly you will get the best deal. please ask for delivery costs. Thanks. just message or email me for more info
info@aqualabs.co.uk 

sold

  002:SOLD

  003: Itoigawa juniper (sold)

 004: Kishu juniper £250

 005: Black Pine £SOLD

 006: Black Pine SOLD

007: Red Pine SOLD

 008: Zelkova SOLD

 009: Zelkova £80.00

 010: Cork Bark Elm £80.00

 011: Satsuki Azalea £165.00

 012: Crab Apple SOLD

 013: Crab Apple SOLD

 014: Flowering Honeysuckle £29.50

015: Itoigawa Juniper SOLD

 016: Chinese Elm SOLD

 017: Trident on Rock SOLD

 018: Korean Hornbeam £125.00

 019: Juniper Rigida SOLD

 020: Trident Maple SOLD

 021: Pomegranite SOLD

 023: Pyracantha £1250.00

 024: Mixed Ibigawa £750.00

 025: Juniper £5000.00

 026: Acer seedlings £5.00

027: Native Hornbeam SOLD

 028: Zelkova SOLD

 029: Cascade Itoigawa SOLD

 030: Zelkova 

 031: Itoigawa cascade (2) £135.00

 032: Beech Raft (Derek Aspinal pot)

This is a 7 trunk root connected raft - Most native beech bonsai don't catch my eye but this one certainly did £950 with pot, £450 without

 Chinese Elms £5, £10, £20, £65 +p&p straight ones, curvy ones

 Hinoki Cypress - 8 different trees £100.00 each

These mature Hinoki are all about 2ft tall, well branched and not leggy. 3 or more for a group planting £85 each. I've bought these to replicate the Kimura valley planting,  I need to make the slabs but until then they are for sale.

Here is the inspiration - watch this space .....

Call, email or message for more pictures of individual trees, sizes etc.

 And the cryptic song - this one takes some beating for a blatant sales page !! for best enjoyment click play then scroll to the top to enjoy the trees while subliminally hearing about shopping every day.....................

Juniper creation pt1

The juniper has to be one of the most iconic and desirable bonsai species for many growers. It is incredible that juniper were not considered for bonsai until barely 100 years ago - there were many 1000's in the wilds but collectors of the time passed them by to find the popular trees that were in demand - Red, White and Black pines, yezo spruce, ancient prunus.........

.....how times have changed and how lucky it is they were propogated, styled, field grown and are available the world over for bonsai enthusiasts to work with.

I stock some wonderful little starter Itoigawa juniper trees - grown in Japan they are started from cuttings, the trunks are twisted then the trees are fattened in a field for a few years by letting branches grow long before pruning back. After a couple of cycles of growing and pruning the trees are potted up and leave Japan - some arriving in Cornwall ! it is an incredibly small world really when you think about it.

Every summer junipers will go through a shedding of old inner foliage - it yellows, browns and then drops off, leaving the tree interior a bit more open . This is just part of the cycle where a tree tries to grow bigger - I've observed this annual cycle on my own trees for 20 years now and have seen how some years lots drops, some years virtually none drops off and it is largely linked to how you work with the tree in previous years. Juniper foliage has an inbuilt time clock - it will fall off - if you have allowed a tree free growth a lot of new foliage will result - the time clock ticks and in a few years a lot of foliage will drop off - it is just a simple cycle. In refinement years we keep growth short and compact so the new foliage mass is less and you've guessed it right.......less will drop off in a future summer.

When you receive a young field grown tree like these (or in fact a neglected un-worked specimen) there will be a reasonable drop of old foliage in the first summer - so the biggest mistake and instant way to set the tree back is to prune back to inner foliage - the worst case scenario is to prune back all newer growth and what you leave decides to drop off a few months later ! You get better results working with the outer newest growth on your tree - just prune off the long 'water shoots' but only to the base where they emerged from new growth.

Here we go - lunch time today

We have a dense ball of greenery - inner yellow and brown shoots - all will need removing - is there even a bonsai in this material ???  when confronted with these trees it can be hard to know where to start - this shows by the fact only 2 have sold in this raw state and yet every single one has sold when i've styled them...all will be revealed ,

Characteristics - what is Itoigawa?

Itoigawa is actually a city where the collected junipers from the immeadiate region were bought and sold - it is not a different species but a different variety. Other locations had wild junipers growing with untidy long hanging foliage but these trees had great trunks the same, just poor foliage for refined bonsai creation. Other mountain valleys and other islands had varieties with tight but thicker foliage - sergentii, kishu etc all occurred in the wild. The visible outer appearance of Itoigawa is finer thinner foliage growing in tight forms and the characteristics are a tree that grows many inner new shoots of juvenile foliage making the inner tree into a dense birds nest of shoots

Here we have old and inner shoots - the tree is cluttered, dense and in need of a total cleaning out with scissors and tweezers

Now, is there a bonsai in there ? looking hopeful 

Oh yes, we have something good to work with

Assess the trunk line, main branches and then pick an angle that works - these multi angle work tables make it an easy job to find the best angle and to keep the tree set while you work - we have 3 sizes in stock, £45.00 - £50.00 + p&p for a really handy item

Now we have a cleaned up tree set at a good angle - it's easy to see the bonsai now. The lower branches on the right were not needed so a section of trunk below them can be stripped of a thin strip of bark to make a curving shari...why?.....it will begin to make the live veins either side swell as they support the crown and it will give the eye a visual contrast, making the curving trunk stand out even clearer.

The initial wiring is very simple as it only needs to define the future foliage masses. The movement in the trunk is so good and the flow into the main branch was so smooth that I've kept the dropping branch as a semi cascade. In future years the new owner may keep it, extend it, shorten it or cut it off totally - When I style trees in stock these days it is a mistake to commit them to just one image as it limits the total number of customers who may like the tree - now I try to make the most of the best features and remove just the branches that are distracting.

The absolute essential key to juniper bonsai is to maintain as much new foliage mass as you can when styling the tree. The tree gains its strength from foliage - they can survive quite hard root pruning and will be absolutely fine is quite small pots with limited room for roots. There are old books and articles where the recommendation is that just about every shoot is reduced to a tiny tuft of green on the end - this may work in the high light level, high humidity long growing season of Japan and it makes wiring really easy and looks really neat......but this method really weakens junipers in the UK and probably elseware too. Above is our demo tree showing how the inner old and juvenile shoots are gone and showing how much foliage I like to leave on a first styling. The tree will remain strong and be happy when repotted into a training sized bonsai pot in the future.

Over the last hour we've taken the little ball of shoots and started it on the route to being a bonsai. the fine shoots are not wired and placed - why risk damaging them at such an early stage. Now we just scissor prune individual strong shoots back while the pads fill out with mature growth. I tend to remove inner needle foliage until the tree just sends out mature scale foliage shoots.

These great little trees are £65 +p&p (£70) unstyled, £80 +p&p (£85) styled in the plastic pots and once potted the price depends on the cost of the pot used.

I fell asleep typing this one so only one song will do !!
great to wire to as well ...............