MBA - the 2nd Magical bonsai accents show 2014

Yesterday was the 2nd show highlighting all the bits and pieces that can go alongside our usual bonsai trees and displays. The accents and accompaniments can be linked to a theme, made into a display in their own right or just used as stand alone pieces. A show is about pictures thought rather than words so here we go:

  

Great show, really good social catch up with friends - looking forward to the next one, I already have a few ideas ! 

sales benches on a drizzly july day

The current available stock

I won't fill the blog with endless pictures of sales material - so just a neat little link to the facebook page

While taking all the sales pics I took a few others as you do. Quite a grey day, bit of drizzle, quite atmospheric

 Variety is the spice of life - colour, texture, style 

 Trident and Palmatum defoliated within a few days of each other - a perfect example of the difference in vigour between the two species

 Common Juniper - repotted to desired angle in 2013, cut back lots of long branches this spring, long way to go though - but it lives and grows here OK  just like any other tree. 

 The weak white pine that was dropping branches pushed out so much strong growth after feeding last year with our bonsai boost fertiliser pellets - there were 24 baskets full in 2013, 6 this year, tree recovered now and ready to style this winter - from now on its only going to be fed in sept but will be watered once a month with our fish emulsion

 Taxus Cuspidata - needs a show pot and 2 more yrs refining - we are getting there with this one

 smaller trees, some styled but most are kept as good quality part trained material

 Cleaned up, thinned a bit, opened out to let light in - important to keep the tree from hollowing out

 Peeking through from the path

 Down the other end we have material trees ....some for sale, some project trees of mine - hinoki, beuvronensis, sabina, olive, rosemary

 More of the same - scots pine, prunus mume, potentilla, spruce, sabina, yew

 Kimura through the drizzle----- even looks nice from the back

Wrong type of rain (reign) but who can spell these days ! 

It's no good just guessing

Certain parts of our hobby rely on artistic tastes, free thought and individualality but there are other parts of bonsai that do not work within such loose parameters and need to be fixed, virtually set in stone in fact.

All the species we aim to keep have a ph band where the plant has evolved to survive, grow strongly and remain healthy. Along with climatic requirements this is the main reason we don't see every species in the wild all growing side by side.........but as bonsai growers of course we want the greatest variety of species in our collections, or in our sales stock, so the challenges are there to try and keep everything in top health. Soil ph will be governed initially by the soil components you use but it is the water you use regularly that will end up dictating the ph in the pot, so even if you have put an azalea in Kanuma soil (ph 5 to 5.5) it does not mean the condition will remain this way long term if the daily watering is neutral to alkaline. 

Summer time.............

The rain water butts are long emptied and we are relying on our tap water supplies and hose pipes......who actually has a clue what is coming out the end?........when I do club talks often people will say "I only use rainwater, so I'm fine "..... But rain can be acid, neutral (ph 7) or even alkaline so rainwater is equally as random as tap water in my book. We were relying on tap water twice a day this summer and I felt a few trees were the wrong green........guessing the reason is pointless, how long is a piece of string ? 

 

There we go...........my outside tap water after filling a 200liter barrel ! Water alkaline enough to slowly kill satsuma azaleas, to weaken pines and to make many deciduous trees pale. (Some wild collected junipers come from areas of limestone deposits so they could carry on ok) . You could never guess our tap water was so alkaline as we have absolutely no lime scale deposits in kettles, around taps etc - the meter was calibrated twice, tested on known solutions etc as I could not believe the reading initially. 

What clues to we get ?

Use your eyes as the trees indicate if they are thriving or not. Foliage colour is the biggest clue, paler or 'brighter' green on a tree that should be deep dark green is the first pointer. A tree that doesn't seem to respond to fertiliser the way it should is another fairly obvious clue as a tree in a wrong ph environment will struggle with nutrient uptake. Another pointer to something amiss is a tree that has been perfect with a previous owner that does into decline soon after you get it. A shock change from one water quality to another will often make a bonsai  unhappy. 

2ml of horticultural high quality acid and the 200 litres are now ph5.9, Perfect for the trees here. 

Watering is now all done by can of course ! But it is a more controllable way to water and certainly leads to better observation. There is always the option to add a pumped hose set up to the barrel in the future too. 

3 weeks in and the pine and yew needles are getting darker green, so are the beech leaves. A common juniper is now a deeper blue green rather than the bright green so the trees are slowly responding. As a tree settles into it's preferred conditions it will grow and respond to our methods and tactics far more predictably, but without measuring the basics how can anyone guess or even advise a grower on their trees?