Acer Palmatum ‘Arakawa’ cuttings

Tags

Arakawa, Cutting, Japanese Maple, Roughbark

Early Spring ’11, my friend was house sitting at a house with a large rough bark japanese maple, Acer Palmatum ’Arakawa’. Since I have not seen any bonsai ‘Arakawa’ maples in Australia, I decided that I needed to propagate some from cuttings. My aim in the end is to have some ‘Arakawa’ maples with large ‘plate-like’ nebari – inspired by Ebihara.

I didn’t take any pics of the ‘cutting’ process, but I struck them in one of two mixes, the usual way. The first mix was pumice and akadama fines and a little sphagnum, the other was pumice and chopped Sphagnum. I’d have to say that the Pumice/Akadama mix produced the better roots, but took more work to keep moist in Summer.

This year I decided to use a number of commercially available mini green houses rather than the usual plastic bottle. It made it far easier to monitor humidity and the number of cuttings that struck showed that it was a worth while investment.

Edit:- a pic of the mini green houses that I used

Even though I don’t smoke, I still have the quintessential bonsai measuring stick.

I used graded pumice in the bottom of the pot, then half filled the pot with a graded mix of Akadama and pumice.

Graded akadama and pumice mix

Out of the cutting tray

Reasonable root growth, not ideal though.

Hard to see, but this cutting has a one-sided ’root ball’. Definitely a problem in a future bonsai, but root work each year will see more roots emerge from the callus.

Cutting sitting in the pot ready for more soil.

Filling the pot

Tamping the soil

Done. I potted some into a coarse mix to observe the effect it would have on the growth, I have been told that a coarse mix leads to coarse/stronger growth due to more air being present in the mix. We’ll see if it makes a difference.

A good watering until the pots run clear

10 down,  50 more to go.

Japanese Black Pine Autumn Needle Work

Tags

Autumn, Bud Selection, Clean up, Fall, JBP, Needle, Pine, Pulling, Technique

I recently presented a talk on Autumn Needle Work on Japanese Black Pine. Many members of the Canberra Bonsai Society enjoyed the talk so I thought I’d add the notes here.

The following are the techniques that I use on JBP at this time of the year, having learnt them from Boon Manakitivipart.  I advocate finding someone with the best pine bonsai that you have seen, find out what they do, and do it diligently. If you try to follow everything everyone does, you will just get lost. Boon had the best pine bonsai that I had ever seen, now mine are getting better.

In Canberra, this work can be done anytime from mid-late Autumn (April-May) to when the buds are opening in spring (July-August). If you use these techniques too early the new ‘summer’ needles may be too soft and are very easy to snap off, even by brushing with your hand. Again, this work is not time imperative like decandling, it can be performed as long as the tree is dormant. It is better to wait for the needles to harden off than do it too early and have the tree’s health suffer.

The aim of this work is to clean up the tree for next spring. The tasks that we do are:

• Old needle removal;
• Bud selection; and
• New needle reduction.

 

Before work begins

One of the first things to learn in pine care is how to handle the tree. We don’t come at the tree with fingers spread wide, ‘Poking’ at it. Treat a pine like you would pat a dog, with the lay of the needles (fur). Use your tweezers to get into the tree, lay the needles down and make space for your hands. This avoids bending the needles, and causing them to snap. The needles will look fine, but in 2 weeks they will brown off and die. Learning the proper handling techniques is about respecting your tree.

Another tip for pine work is to spray a fine mist of water on the needles before you start working. This will reduce the amount of sap that will get stuck to your fingers and tools.

 

Old needle removal

This consists of removing last year needles. The idea is to let more light and air into the interior of the tree, stimulating back budding. Without back budding, the tree will get leggier and leggier.

We remove the old needles to promote adventitious buds. Adventitious buds are buds that break without needles being present, that is, on bare wood. We preference adventitious buds over needle buds because they can break along the entire length of the branch, needle buds will only ever break as far in as the needles go. Saying this, if you have needle buds close to the trunk, do not remove them, eventually you may cut back to this point to induce more taper in the branch. It is highly unlikely that you will get adventitious buds on the trunk, so don’t count on it.

The technique

• Firstly, when removing needles, start at the top of the tree and work down. As you work down the tree, the needles that you remove will stack on the lower part of the tree. As you continue, you will clean these needles off the tree. If you start at the bottom and work up, you will then have to go back and clean the entire tree of stacked needles.
• Remove all needles from the past spring, leaving only summer needles, and needles on weak interior buds.
• The way to tell a spring needle from a new summer needle, is the generally colour and length, but also the way it is growing. If it comes out almost straight from the branch it’ll be an older needle. Spring needles may be shorter and a brighter green.

Note: This picture details a tree that hasn’t be decandled

• A tip to ensure that you do not miss any old needles is to work systematically. Start at the left hand side of a branch and work to the right, this will reduce the chance of missing any old needles.

Bud selection

After decandling, we usually get between 1-4 buds. During summer we leave them to grow uninterrupted all season so no one bud gets excessively strong. Now is the time to thin back to 2 buds. We thin back to 2 buds to avoid excessive thickening, the same as in all bonsai, we want to avoid reverse taper.

The technique:

• Depending on the size of the tree, I mentally divide the tree into three sections. The top is the strongest, the middle and lower exterior is of mid strength, and the interior is weakest.

• Select buds that are growing left and right, and remove buds that grow up and down;
• Keep weaker buds in the strong top section of the tree, and the strongest buds in bottom and interior of the tree.

New needle reduction

Once we have completed old needle removal, and bud selection, we move onto new needle reduction. This task is again used to even out the comparative strength of different areas on the tree. We pull needles in areas that we do not want budding, for example the bottom of the branch.

The technique:

• We remove upward and downward growing needles, preference side-to-side growing needles.
• We remove more needles in stronger areas of the tree, and remove fewer needles in weaker areas of the tree.
• The number of needles kept on each bud depends on the vigour of the tree, on strong trees take more, on weak trees take less, but a rule of thumb is:
  • 7-10 pairs on the top, that is the strongest part;
  • 10-15 pairs on the middle/bottom of the tree, the weaker parts; and
  • All needles on the interior and very weak parts.
  • If you encounter a pair of buds, one significantly bigger than the other, take more needles from the larger one.
  • If you plan to wire the tree, leave a few extra pairs of needles on it, because no matter how hard we try, we will break some when we wire.

 

Additional Resources for Pine work

If you are after additional information on the seasonal techniques used in Japanese Black Pine care, I recommend Boon Manakitivipart’s DVD series in the subject. This four part series outlines all of the necessary care techniques for growing great Japanese Black Pine bonsai. The DVDs can be purchased from me (Australian readers) or at www.bonsaiboon.com

Japanese Black Pine Seedling Cuttings

Tags

Japanese Black Pine, JBP, Seedling cutting

One of the hardest things to find in the Australian bonsai world are small Japanese Black Pines with good roots, and branches low on the trunk.

An excellent way to get what is often so desired, is to make cuttings of newly sprouted Japanese Black Pine seedlings. The following is a description of this technique. One of the best detailed descriptions of the process can be found here.

Due to import restrictions, most pine nursery material cannot be imported into Australia including seeds. Over the last few years, finding seed locally has proven to be quite a challenge. During winter 2011, I found a local source of JBP seeds. I managed to get 20 seeds, not the amount that I was after but better than none. I planted the seeds in a purely inorganic mix – 1 part Akadama, 1 part Pumice passed through a 2mm sieve to keep out the larger particles.

7 sprouted!

The process is pretty simple: start with seedlings around 3 months old (look for the centre bud beginning to grow), and make cuttings out of them. I began the process by wiring mesh into small terracotta pots.

Pot wired up

Dry Boon mix was passed through a 2mm sieve to remove the fines, then added to the pots 

Pots watered well to settle the mix

The cuttings will be planted into a pocket of propagating sand. I used the handle of a small garden fork to create indentations into which I poured the sand.

The indentations have a diameter of roughly 30mm

Sand filled indentation

Sand filled indentations compressed to be level with the mix

Once I had filled the indentations, I used a small nail to create holes for the cuttings to slip into.

The next step was to cafefully remove the seedling one at a time, ensuring that no damage was done to the soft stem. I ended up using a chop stick to help dig out the seedling. I only selected the strongest seedlings, 6 out of the 7 that sprouted.

One seedling that I did not use, was too weak. I have let it grow, and might do it later. We’ll see how it turns out.

Removing a seedling

Seedling and roots. Notice that there is roughly 50mm between the roots and the needles. We create cuttings to reduce this gap.

The grafting knife I used to cut the roots off cleanly. It is extremely important to have a clean cut from which the roots can emerge. It increases the success rate of the cuttings rooting.

With no real guide, I ended up cutting the roots off about where the violet part of the stem stopped, the part that was above the soil line.

 Roots removed

The cuttings floating in water waiting to be planted

I then dipped the cuttings into rooting hormone to increase the chances of roots forming.

I took great care not to disturb the cutting after it was dipped into the hormone.

 The cutting was then carefully inserted into the hole that I made with the nail.

I carefully pressed down the surrounding sand to close the hole around the cutting.

The cuttings potted up. I trialled some with upside down drink bottles to increase humidity. I’ll let you know how they go!

Shimpaku from the southern highlands NSW

As mentioned in a previous post, I dug two shimpaku from the field in winter 2010. They are rooted cuttings from 1991 and have been field grown by a great bloke in  the southern highlands of NSW, Dean Wilson.

After digging them from the field, the growth really took off. Around half of the existing needles started to turn yellow. They then began falling off!

Often when trees are dug from the field and potted into good soil, there is an explosion of growth, and the tree drops old needles.

After a year of heavy fertiliser and growth, I did a bit of work on these trees, cleaning them up for a future styling.

Recently, the School of Bonsai club in Sydney invited Bill Valavanis out for a seminar, and two workshops. The workshops were held at Ray Nesci’s Bonsai Nursery.

I went along the the seminar, and participated in the morning workshop.

I had a pretty good idea what I wanted to do with this tree, and Bil confirmed what I was thinking.

Before work started

So that is where I got to at the workshop. The four or so hours went really quick.

We had a helper at Ray’s

Steven, the owner of the Australian Bonsai Forum AusBonsai.com, was also in attendance. Steven “at work”.

Steven had a great little Leptospermum that he was working on. This was the finished product.

When I got home I continued to wire

2011 Canberra Bonsai Society Show.

Tags

Canberra Bonsai Society, ROR, Seiju, Show, Trident

Last weekend, the Canberra Bonsai Society held its annual show. With the ‘retirement’ of the previous show manager, this year there was an ‘all new’ show committee, layout and backing material. Along with our regular potter Pat Kennedy, there was also new traders.

Shibui Bonsai

Silverhills Bonsai

I even managed to sell some stock trees, wire, Boon care DVDs, Akadama, and Kanuma.

The members of the public, traders, and CBS members all seemed to agree that it was a great success.

The people’s choice award went to a very captivating azalea in FULL flower, a little bit of a contentious issue for some, but the public voted!

It is a club tradition to display the previous year’s winner of the People’s choice award in a tokonoma at each show. It will be an interesting display next year, should the tree not be in full bloom.

The guest demonstrator’s award this year was presented by Megumi Bennett. Megumi decided to give this award to a Banksia Integrafolia, definitely one of the best Banksia Bonsai in Australia.

Megumi’s demonstration was on Shimpaku - Megumi went into great detail about the history of Shimpaku, and care advice. Megumi suggested that for tired looking trees, to include some lime on the soil surface. I hadn’t heard this before so am interested to hear your thoughts?

Before

After

Megumi was “assisted” by Grant Bowie, the interim curator of the National Bonsai and Penjing Collection of Australia (NBPCA), and he did an excellent job, even though he seemed extremely tired! The tree will be getting sold at one of the upcoming CBS meetings, if anyone is interested.

None of my trees were quite up to the standard that I wanted, so rather than not participate at all, I did a Sunday afternoon demonstration. Branch refinement on deciduous trees, I used a chinese elem that I purchaed as a little project.

Whilst chatting to some other CBS members it was agreed that it was good to see a showcase of trees belonging to both new and experienced club members, including trees at differing stages of development. To help foster the art of bonsai, particularly at a club level, it is good to let all club members enter their trees. A focus should be put on educating club members in further developing their trees and selecting the best one for the show, rather than refusing to include some people’s trees.

Over the few years that I have been in the CBS, I’ve noticed the great improvement in trees. Trees that I thought were a bit lacking a few years back have greatly improved, and the ones that I thought were great have improved year on year. One of the biggest improvements has been in the branch ramification. It makes me look forward to the next 50 or so years that I have left in bonsai.

Root over rock Trident

Shohin Seiju Elm

GIANT English Oak

Corky Bark Chinese Elm

Thanks to Nev for the use of his pics…my point and shoot was somewhat inadequate!

‘Field’ Trip – Robertson, NSW

In July 2010 (Winter), I called in on a friend that grows some high quality bonsai stock at Robertson, in the Southern Highlands of NSW.

Dean has around 3 acres of growing fields with most planted out to Japanese Black Pine, Juniper and Japanese Maples.

Growing fields

I picked up two Japanese Maples grown from cuttings in 1992, two Shimpaku grown from cuttings in 1991, and a Japanese Black Pine from seed in around 1999.

Shimpaku

Japanese Black Pine

Packed into the car for the trip back to Canberra

Japanese Maple

Japanese Maple

Japanese Maple

After potting the trees up, I let them grow for one season, fertilising every week in addition to organic fertiliser cakes. Only the old needles were removed on the Shimpaku and JBP, and a few large branches on the Maples we cut back to 3cm stubs.

These trees have progressed quite since then, most got an intitial styling this year to set up the main branches and all have buds extending well this spring.

My relocated bonsai bench

With my recent move I had to relocate my trees.

My last bench was made from milk crates and sleepers…So I splashed out and picked up some half sized concrete besser blocks.

Here are some pics of the new benches and an overview of the more presentable trees.

 

Newly adopted!

Tags

Japanese Black Pine, JBP

On a recent excursion to the south coast of NSW to help a friend repot an old Mugo Pine I finally got to collect a recent addition to my collection…

This JBP has been in a private collection since 1974, when it was grown from seed imported from Japan.

As can be seen, the bark is a good indicator of the tree’s age.

Although the tree has been repotted this year, I feel that this front would be a better fit. What are your thoughts?

New front?

Current front

The plan is to let the tree adjust to the cooler/drier climate of Canberra and grow throughout Spring to gain strength.

I will decide in early Summer if the tree is strong enough to decandle.

I will keep you posted on the tree’s progress.

Autumn pine work

Tags

Clean up, Fertiliser, Pine, Soji

Recently, this old Pine has come into my care. My aim is bring the tree up to show standard in the next few years, and then further develop the refinement of the branches.

In early Autumn, I noticed that when watering the water would often pool on the surface and run off the edge of the pot rather than penetrating deep into the pot wetting the entire rootball. In light of this, I decided it was time to perform Autumn Soji on the tree.

Before Soji:

First thing I do is get out the bent nose tweezers and rake the top of the root ball outwards. That it from the centre of the pot to the rim. (I just realised i didn’t capture pictures of this)  the reason that we rake outwards, is that it only damages the crossing and unattractive roots. It should also be noted that if there are any small roots crossing or growing upward etc this is a great opportunity to cut them off. Large roots are cut at repotting.

To help the water penetrate the rootball more thoroughly I ‘cored’ the rootball

Next, I added some Osmocote

I then sieved the new ‘top soil’ (Akadama/Diatomite/Zeolite with a little charcoal and granite added, it would be 33:66 Akadama/Pumice but I have run out and need to get back to Sydney to pick up some more)

Next, new soil was added

Fertiliser replaced and watered thoroughly

Just prior to winter, I completed some more autumn clean up work. The work consisted of removing old needles, and cleaning out growth that was in the wrong areas blurring the outline of the tree.