The Bonsai Dilettante

Farewell Amador Bonsai Society

“This is the end | Beautiful friend .”― Jim Morrison, The Doors

California has lost one of its bonsai clubs. After 20 years, the Amador Bonsai Society has disbanded. According to the club's website, which is not yet off the web,

During the Fall of 1996, two Bonsai enthusiasts, Miguel Chavoya and Frank Luiz, met over coffee and donuts at O’ Henry’s Donut Shop in Pine Grove. These two dedicated individuals spent a couple of hours getting to know each other’s interests and skills related to the living art of Bonsai.

They quickly found that they had both trained under the tutelage of Johnny Uchida, a Bonsai master and owner of the Grove Way Bonsai Nursery in Hayward, CA during the same time period some twenty years earlier. Miguel and Frank found a bond between them that has lasted to the present.

Both of these enthusiasts studied Bonsai under the direction of John Uchida, but both also had other prior trainers. During one of their meetings, Miguel mentioned that he had been thinking about forming a Bonsai group in Amador County, and of course, Frank was intrigued and fully supportive. They then discussed the purpose, goals and strategies for putting the group together.

At this point, Helen Kendall was brought into the picture, and the three of them agreed to move forward. Other people were contacted and soon they had a small group. Miguel suggested the name of Amador Bonsai Society, taken from his membership in the “International Bonsai Society.” Soon after Miguel wrote the Bylaws for the Amador Bonsai Society and presented them at the first meeting of the Amador Bonsai Society.

That all came to an end on December 31, 2015. Bonsai enthusiasts in Gold Country still have a couple of options.

Motherlode Bonsai Club meets the first Saturday of every month at 10 am at Oak Shadows Mobile Home Park
Clubhouse 1330 Calaveritas Road, San Andreas CA, 95249.

Gold Country Bonsai Club meets on the 4th Thursday of each month from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm at the
Cameron Park Community Center, 2502 Country Club Drive, Cameron Park, CA.

Bonsai in Other Languages

“The limits of my language are the limits of my world.” ― Ludwig Wittgenstein

Do you like to surf YouTube for good bonsai videos? If you are limiting your searches only to English language videos, you're missing out.

I haven't mastered Japanese writing yet, but I've found a few characters that keep showing up in bonsai-related videos, and they've led me to all sorts of interesting videos that I wouldn't have found just looking for keywords in English. For example, here is a screencap of my search results for a Japanese Kanji symbol for bonsai: "盆栽"

There are some great videos there, like this one, showing a Japanese fellow repotting his mame,

 

even if you don't know what the guy is saying, it's great to see his trees and great to watch him work.

I learned a new method of layering, as well as an alternate way to anchor a tree in a pot, from this video featuring the same guy:

 

I also don't understand a thing the guy is saying in Álvaro Martins's video entitled Dragões - Penjing - Shimpaku (Pedras Artificiais). In fact, I'm not even sure what language he's speaking. I think it's Portuguese, but it could be Spanish or something else for all I know. I just know I found it interesting to see him put the bends into this penjing before potting and completing it.

 

So go try a few non-English videos for yourself. You might see things that no one else around you is teaching.

Unconventionality at the Convention

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”― Ralph Waldo Emerson

 There are more than seven billion people alive on our planet right now. That means that even if you are a one-in-a-million guy, there are more than 7,000 other guys just like you. So it's really interesting to have a chance to learn from someone who really is different from all the rest. This fall, I had a chance to sit in, as a silent observer, on a Dan Robinson workshop at the Golden State Bonsai Federation Convention. It was a great workshop, even though it was held outside (due to all the flying sawdust and wood chips) and it was a day for Santa Ana winds in Riverside.

The one disappointment is that I was not a participant, but I had three very good reasons not to sign up for this workshop. First and foremost, the GSBF Convention runs Thursday to Sunday, and this workshop was on Friday. I signed up for the whole convention, but I didn't really block it out at work like I would for a vacation, so I knew that any workshop I bought for Thursday or Friday might go to waste. In hindsight, Thursday workshops would have gone to waste, but I totally could have done this Friday workshop with Dan. Second, still being a dilettante, I wanted to be able to spend some time popping in and out of the other demos and workshops running concurrently. And third, I didn't know exactly what to expect, and I wasn't at all confident that any tree I chose for my BYOT would have been suitable.

Carving is a skill I'm still working on. I say this with no false modesty. My carving still sucks. I recently tried carving an ugly stump on a collected bougainvillea and ended up with what can best be described as looking like the tortured fingers of a man currently being tasered by the police. So this workshop offered me two very good opportunities - the chance to learn more about carving, and the chance to listen to a bonsai artist who was not like all the other triangle-upon-triangle instructors.

Like Walter Pall, Dan Robinson doesn't really set out to make trees look like outstanding bonsai. He looks at trees in nature and tries to make his bonsai look like something you would find in the wild. Or, as John Naka would say "don't make your tree look like a bonsai; make your bonsai look like a tree."

This was a tree that Dan brought as an exemplar.  Look at the carving on this. There are no smooth lines, obvious patterns or indications of design. It is meant to look wicked and gnarled as only a tree in the harshness of open nature can ever be. It has, at fairly random intervals, hollows, holes and broken tips of jin. Aside from the pot and the wire, it shows no sign of human interference whatsoever. That's the good stuff, isn't it?

So what did I learn?

In addition to getting to watch, up close, exactly how Dan uses a dremel or die grinder (he didn't bring his famous chainsaw to this one) to accomplish his goals, we got to hear Dan offer what he called his four "principles of bonsai":

1.    All bonsai trees deserve to have some deadwood, which should be sculpted and refined to add value and not simply fill space.

2.    Signs of human intervention should be avoided at all costs. Lost branches should have hollows or broken jagged tips. Flat stubs and concave-cutter "bulls-eyes" should be eschewed. Whatever changes you make, let them appear to be from the forces of nature, whether that be winds, animals, lightning or some other force other than a person and his tools.

3.    All trees deserve wicked gnarly crooked twisted or undulating branches. Only the young ones have straight branches.

4.    Finally, train with wires, but don't just wire your branches and twist them into long bows. Make sure the branches move like and look like old trees in nature. And use guy wires for your heavy bending. Not too far from the trunk, because that will make a bow. Not too close to the trunk, because that won't give you movement unless you apply so much force that your branch could be broken off.

Apply these principles, and your trees can have dramatic transformations not only from unrefined to refined, but from common to uncommon.

Here's the bougainvillea as Dan started exposing live veins and deadwood, poking holes all the way through the trunk, and leaving hollows and busted branches.

For a lot more on Dan Robinson, his experiences, techniques and best of all, his trees, I recommend getting a copy of Gnarly Branches, Ancient Trees by Will Hiltz. You can find it on Amazon or purchase it directly from Dan's business, Elendan Gardens. I got mine for $50, including an inscription and signature from Dan.

 

 

 

California Bonsai Society 58th Annual Bonsai Show, March 28-29

“I was in the show for 21 days once - the 21 greatest days of my life..”― Crash Davis

You can only be in this show for 2 days, but it's one of the best in California. Every year, the California Bonsai Society hosts a bonsai show at the The Brody Botanical Center located at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. This year's 58th annual show is this weekend, March 28-March 29, 2015, Saturday–Sunday, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.

Discover the timeless appeal of an ancient horticultural art form as the California Bonsai Society presents its 58th annual show, featuring more than 100 beautiful specimens created by bonsai masters. 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, CA 91108 (626) 405-2100.

Here's a gallery of last year's trees.

If you go, don't approach the geese. Take their word for it.

Monthly Bonsai Tasks - March 2015

“The afternoon is bright, with spring in the air, a mild March afternoon, with the breath of April stirring.” ― Antonio Machado

Spring is upon us. The dead branches of winter are giving way to the fresh new growth of spring. Officially, it doesn't start until later this month, but it feels like it's here. Here's a list of some of the things I can or will do this month:

• Maintenance - The weeds are back. Bugs, too. I'm spraying for bugs, as needed, and plucking weeds as part of my normal watering routine. I think I have spider mites this year, so I have some special bug treatment planned for them.
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• Placement - Anything deciduous that is not sprouting by the 10th will get moved into full sun unless it just got repotted. When we get a major heat wave, anything with a lot of new tender shoots will get moved into shade. All of my plants get rotated from time to time, for a variety of reasons, such as adding or reducing sunlight exposure, adding more automated watering, or even just going into an area that I mostly leave alone so they can grow without being harassed by my bonsai scissors every week. This month and next month are prime pot rotation times for me. Almost every tree will get moved.
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• Watering - Watering will be ramped up this month, especially for the fast growers. If I want to slow the growth of some plants, I'll withhold water a bit. I'll be letting my bougainvillea dry out a little more this month, too, to encourage flowering. Because of the drought in California, I'm starting to look into some water conservation systems for my watering. That'll be a big project that will probably have to wait until after I'm done repotting.
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• Feeding - I'm resuming regular feedings, initially with a low-nitrogen mix, like a 3-12-7. To reduce alkalinity, I'll add some soil sulfur or iron tone, particularly for any trees that develop good fall color. If I lived in a place with a lot more rain, I'd be reducing acidity with wood ash or gypsum lime.
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• Wiring - I'm removing wires from most of the junipers that I wired late last summer or over the winter. I'm already late with one of them. I'm going to keep a close eye on the wires that are on my deciduous trees. I'm going to start wiring some of the growth that hardened off over the winter.
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• Pruning - New growth will be clipped back as needed, and root suckers get clipped almost immediately. On flowering and fruiting trees, once the majority of the buds have blossomed, I'll remove the flowers and remaining buds to avoid losing too much energy to the fruits and flowers. Now is a good time to do severe pruning on my elm seedlings and sweetgum seedlings.
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• Grafting - The time to graft junipers and pines has passed, at least in our zone. This is the best month to graft deciduous trees. But I'm not grafting any of those this year.
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• Repotting - The next two months are prime time for transplanting, soil replacement and root pruning. All of my deciduous trees will be repotted this spring except for some trees I collected in the Fall. All of my conifers that are still in nursery containers from purchases last year will be repotted. Other conifers need to be repotted only every 3 to 5 years, so none of mine that are already in good soil are on track for repotting. I have 80 large boxwoods to repot this year and move into smaller pots, so I have a lot of repotting work to do.
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• Collecting - It's a very good time to start collecting. I'm holding off collecting tropical species from landscapes, though. Perhaps in late April or May.
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• Cuttings - From now until May is the best time to be taking cuttings of junipers. I'm told that it's an especially good time to make pomegranate cuttings, and I plan to do quite a few of those this spring.
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• Seeds - Toward the end of the month, I'll start bringing out the seeds I started cold stratifying around New Year's. I have trident maple, green Japanese maple, sweetgum, coast live oak, red oak, blackthorn and hawthorn seeds stratifying right now. I hope I marked them well or can remember what's what. Otherwise, they'll be like a box of chocolates.
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• Planning - With the repotting comes the chance to choose pots, placement and trunk angle. This year, I have dozens of trees that will look much better once I move the position of the trunk. We're coming upon the point where selective pruning of buds can really shape a tree that we want to avoid doing anything drastic to, like my maples.

The days are getting longer. Soon we will have more than 12 hours of daylight each day! Such a relief.

Bonsai-A-Thon XIX 2015

"Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting." ― Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Last year, Harry Hirao styled this California juniper with the assistance of David Nguy.

This weekend, if you live in Southern California, you have a great bonsai opportunity - the 19th annual Bonsai-a-Thon put on by the GSBF at the Huntington Library in San Marino. I went to both the Saturday and Sunday sessions last year, and it was a great opportunity to see beautiful trees, to learn for free from great teachers, and to buy things I needed for my own collection. Bonsai-A-Thon XIX is held on the ground (to the right of the main entrance, inside the grounds, at The Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens Saturday, February 28 & Sunday, March 1, 2015, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, California.

The full schedule is:

I'll be there Saturday. Maybe not Sunday this year. I hope to see you there, too.

Monthly Bonsai Tasks - February 2015

“[W]ith the first faint scent of spring, I remember life exists...” ― John Geddes, A Familiar Rain

Spring is just around the corner.

January brought really cold weather to much of the U.S., but once again, Southern California had mild to warm temperatures and several days of high winds and highs in the 80s. Outside of our weather zone, February heat presents hazards to your potted plants. New growth is triggered, only to be destroyed in cold weather to follow. But this is less of a threat here in Zone 10. We will not have freezes and frosts destroying any new growth that the Santa Ana winds have teased out of our dormant trees.

Buds are swelling and leaves are starting to pop. I'm already well into repotting season and grafting season is almost gone. Here's a list of some of the things I can or will do this month:

• Maintenance - I'll watch for disease and pests, especially aphids, as the weather starts warming up. I bought 2.5 gallons of lime sulfur to mix for dormant spray on deciduous trees and to whiten up my jins and shari. I'll scrub a few trunks with a toothbrush to remove algae and moss buildup. Weeds are already making a comeback. I try to pull them all out by the roots when I can. A couple of pots have too many weeds, so I'm going to scrape the top layer of soil off and replace it will some weed-free bonsai soil.
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• Placement - Many of the deciduous trees are sprouting early. As that happens, I move them into more sun to avoid pale, leggy growth. If a massive storm is forecast, I'll move some of the more fragile trees under cover. If we expect a frost, I might move some stuff into the garage for a night or two.
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• Watering - I'll check the pots daily, but try to water only when the surface is dry. The tropicals get water every other day unless it rains. My native species (except the California junipers) are still down to watering once a week. But when it is warm and windy, everyone else drinks every day.
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• Feeding - Buds are swelling, so I'm fertilizing already. Right now, every other week, so I do half the plants this weekend, half next weekend. I may mix in some soil amendments like sulfur or iron-tone for pots that have built up alkalinity from our tap water.
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• Wiring - It's a good time to wire bare deciduous trees, but the heaviest bending needs to be delayed until the tree is more active - and flexible.
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• Pruning - It's still a great time to prune pines and junipers. It's also a good month to prune fruit trees, either before or after blossoms.
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• Grafting - This is another good month to attempt grafts, particularly in conifers. This year, in our area, it might not be safe to graft after late February.
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• Repotting - We are in peak repotting season for many species of tree. The time to repot deciduous trees is when the buds begin to swell, and that time is already starting for many of them in my yard. So I'm already in the middle of repotting season for the deciduous trees.
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• Collecting - I'm putting off collecting warm-weather species like bougainvillea and ficus this month, but if the opportunity comes to collect junipers, pinon pines, oaks, boxwoods or deciduous trees, I'll do it, especially if the trees will become unavailable if I wait.
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• Cuttings - From now until May is the best time to be taking cuttings from conifers. I'm doing them in bunches of 72, under big plastic domes that you can get at OC Farm Supply or the hydroponics stores.
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• Seeds - I can still start stratification of seeds this month, and will for a few more trident maples, but I got most of my seeds into the refrigerator last month. I'm also growing some peppers and rainbow eucalyptus seeds (only one sprouted last year), but those won't make good bonsai.
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• Planning - I still have plenty of my organic mix in a 32 gallon can. My organic mix is made of high quality potting soil, fine orchid bark, compost and small quantities of worm castings, insect frass, mykos and azomite. I'm washing pumice and diatomite, which I run out of much more quickly. I'm totally done with turface.

Soon, we will be in my favorite season for bonsai - spring - and we're less than a month from Daylight Saving Time.

A Hedgerow Bonsai

“Eschew the ordinary, disdain the commonplace.” ― Chuck Jones

Ordinary bonsai is actually pretty cool, in my opinion, but I really love unusual and creative bonsai. I liked making my crash bonsai, and I enjoy the odd works like the Hobbit Hole bonsai. This month, however, the coolest creative bonsai tree I've seen is this hedgerow bonsai:

"It took about six years to create. I started with a slab planting featuring one maple tree and a bunch of cotoneaster seedlings. Now it looks like this. Spectacular. I am working on something similar myself. I'll tell you all about it in a couple of years."

For now, check out this link to see how Joe Selworthy created this extraordinary bonsai display.

Monthly Bonsai Tasks - January 2015

“Nothing burns like the cold.”― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

[Photo "Bäume im Winter" by Rosa-Maria Rinkl]

We are now fully into winter. We even had some snow - near sea level - in Southern California this season. Fortunately for me, we don't get snowy winters like you see in this photo, but we do get some nights that drop into the 30s or even the 20s.  When that happens, my bougainvilleas and serissas need a little protection, but most of my trees don't need any protection or overwintering. Very little is happening with most of my trees, which is good because there's so little time to work on trees before dark except on the weekends. Here's a list of some of the things I can or will do this month:

• Maintenance - Because our climate is so mild, there's no need for me to protect the trees with mulch or put them into a greenhouse for the winter. Deciduous trees benefit from a spray of lime-sulphur dormant spray. This stuff is pretty expensive if you buy it in 4 oz. or 8 oz. bottles (suitable for treating jin), but for a price that's just a couple of times over, you can get between 1 and 2.5 gallons of it, and you can use it straight for jin whitening, or diluted as a dormant spray.
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• Placement -  If we expect freezing temperatures, I will move some stuff into the house or the garage for a night or two. I lost a mimosa last year because I didn't know it was only hardy from Zone 11 and we got into the low 30s overnight. If a massive storm is forecast, I'll move some of the more fragile trees under cover. Pay attention to how water drains from your roof, trees or other overhead objects. If drainage is concentrated over one of your pots, you might come home to find a tree bare-rooted!
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• Watering - I'll check the pots daily, but water only when the surface is dry. The exception to this rule is the tropicals. They get water at least every other day. My natives are down to watering every other week (or two weeks after the last significant rain, whichever comes later).
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• Feeding - For many of my trees, and all of the deciduous trees, no feeding this month. I'll add some soil amendments (softening hard soil or adding acidic components to alkaline soils) as needed; nothing else until our first February heat wave, or until I see buds swelling, whichever comes first. Exceptions: I'm giving the junipers and boxwoods some 10-10-10 every couple of weeks. Last year, I used 0-10-10, but I read some stuff this year that caused me to reconsider that practice.
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• Wiring - It's still an excellent time to wire, especially the bare deciduous trees. Some trees are more brittle during the winter, and thus averse to heavy bending, but you can generally tell when that's the case by bending them a bit by hand before wiring.
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• Pruning - This is a very good time to work on shaping trees, particularly pines and deciduous broadleafs. January is when I do the major pruning on my pines.
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• Grafting - This year I am going to start doing a lot of grafting. I bought a good grafting knife and some mother trees. I went to three grafting demos last year, and I have a teacher willing to help me. Right now, it's possible, but not ideal, to graft, but later this month, and hopefully all of February, I will be grafting shimpaku and itoigawa scions onto other juniper stock, and it will take.
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• Transplanting - Aside from pines and putting bare-root saplings into sand and diatomite, I'm doing no transplanting this month.
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• Collecting - I'm putting off collecting this month unless the material will become unavailable if I wait.
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• Cuttings - Hardwood cuttings can still be taken this month. It's still a good time to root juniper cuttings.
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• Seeds - I started a lot of stratification of seeds this month. I'm doing tons of trident maples this year, along with a few Chinese elms, liquidambars, hornbeam, hawthorn, and blackthorn. Anything that goes into the refrigerator or wine cooler this month will be planted in late March or April, which is good timing. The blackthorn is the exception. It won't go into the cold for another week or two, and it will remain there until the end of May.
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• Planning - This is a good time of year to organize soil materials, sift soil ingredients and start mixing soil for March repotting. I've phased out my use of turface, but I have a couple of large covered garbage cans with washed pumice and diatomite. I still have a ton of my organic mix left over from last year's repotting season. It has high quality potting soil, small orchid bark, compost and small quantities of worm castings, insect frass and azomite. I'll go through 150 gallons of pumice and DE before I use up the organic mix, though, and I think I have a lot less than 150 gallons of soil to replace this year.

It's a bummer to come home from work in the cold and dark, unable to do much with my trees, but at least the days are finally getting longer.

RIP Jimmy Takeda (1928-2015)

“Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.” — Seen on an Irish headstone

Southern California bonsai lost another master this week. Jimmy Takeda passed away suddenly on January 3, 2015. He was the original sensei and last remaining founding member of the Orange County Bonsai Society.

[Photo from Orange County Bonsa Society]

When I first got into bonsai, when I was a very young man, I didn't meet very many bonsai people. I talked about why in my first blog post, but the reasons aren't really that important. What is important is that there were a couple of people I did meet, and remembered, who were still into bonsai when I got back in. John Naka and Jim Murata were gone. Three guys - Harry Hirao, Everett Bassin and Jimmy Takeda - were still around. Jimmy was the one I saw the most. He was almost always at the OC Bonsai Society meetings, and he was still very active and willing to share his years of experience and knowledge with anyone who wanted to learn. He is going to be sorely missed.

December Bonsai Tasks 2014

“Winter is coming.” ― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

Brace yourself. Winter arrives this month. Even here in Zone 10, almost everything is dormant - even the evergreens are nearly dormant. We don't get snow or any of the joys of winter here in the flatlands of Southern California. It's just colder, darker much earlier and sometimes rainier. My bonsai care is mostly limited to weekends, since I come home from work in the dark. Most clubs don't have regular meetings this month, although a couple of them have winter banquets with pretty good raffles.

Here are some of the things I can or will do this month as we move into winter:

• Maintenance - By mid-December, there will be less cleaning of leaves to do. At the end of the month I apply a monthly winter dormant oil or lime sulfur to guard against infestations of insect eggs and fungal diseases. My dormant spray for deciduous, fruit and flowering trees is volk oil and water. For conifers and other evergreens, it's lime-sulfur (which I'm trying to find locally) and water. I'll use about 3 tablespoons per gallon.
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• Placement - I'm mostly just making sure none of the more susceptible trees are exposed to heavy rain. We rarely get a frost here. If we expect one, I might move some tropical trees into the house or the garage for a day or two. I'm putting the pines into the sunniest spots in the yard.
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• Watering - I continue to provide less water, avoiding the temptation to water every day. If we have an uncommonly hot or windy day, I'll check the pots to see if more water is needed. If there is an overnight freeze in the five-day forecast, I'll completely withhold water for a couple of days.  Some of the trees only get water twice a week now, and a handful of natives are getting so little water that, depending upon the rainfall, I might not bring them a watering can all month.
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• Feeding - Everything but my tropicals are dormant. I'll give tropicals and some other evergreens one light feeding this month. No other feeding will take place until our first February heat wave, or until I see buds swelling, whichever comes first.
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• Wiring - I will wire some of my bare deciduous trees this month. It's okay to wire the conifers, too, but this must be done carefully, as the branches are more susceptible to breaking.
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• Pruning - My deciduous trees are bare. The flowering species will not be pruned until they've bloomed - if I prune now, all the potential blooms will go into the trash. I'm removing burned pine needles. Any unexpected new growth gets pinched back right away. It's getting to be time to start heavy pruning on junipers and pines, but I'll wait one more month. I have some radical pruning to do on my pines in January. I'm not reluctant to prune any broadleaf evergreen this month, but I don't have many that need it.
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• Grafting - This is a good month to graft conifers (especially later in the month) because the trees don't put out sap to get between the scion and the understock, but I'll probably do most of my grafting in January and early February.
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• Transplanting - Aside from putting bare-root stock into sand and diatomite, or digging up native species and potting them in diatomite or pumice, I'm doing no transplanting this month. Later this month, it gets to be an appropriate time to start repotting black pines, but I have none that will need repotting this year.
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• Collecting - It's still okay to collect native species in Southern California, and the return of rain makes it much easier to find healthy material that will survive the relocation to your backyard.
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• Cuttings - It's still a good time for hardwood cuttings. I'm cutting pencil-thick woody shoots, cut horizontally below a node or bud to a length of 5-10 inches, dipped in rooting hormone and planted in rooting mix underneath my benches. Mostly my sweetgum, maple and bougainvillea.
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• Seeds - It's a good time to begin stratifying the seeds that need cold stratification. Any seeds that need stratification are going into the wine cooler this month or at the beginning of next month. This year, I have coast live oak, liquidambar, Japanese maple and trident maple and Chinese elm seeds ready for planting.
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• Planning - I'll walk around my trees and ponder what to do with them next. Update my task list. Assess my trees' health. Are my trees all doing better now than at the beginning of the year? Almost all of them are. I have a computer folder of tree photos entitled RIP, so I'll spend a little time thinking about those trees (a shimpaku, a black pine, a needle juniper, some seedlings, a big nana and a collected elm), why I lost them, and how to reduce the risk of losing others in the future.

As the year winds down, I also reflect on that adage I mentioned in my first post. There are 20 year guys, and there are first year guys who have done their first year 20 times. Have I advanced beyond second year guy status this year? Did I have a year of actual growth as a bonsai artist? I think I have. 2015 will be my fourth year back in the bonsai art, and it's starting to show.

Naka Books Aren't Cheap

"Read, read, read." — William Faulkner

The first bonsai book I ever read was the Sunset Books series on bonsai. But the first bonsai "textbooks" I read were Bonsai Techniques I and Bonsai Techniques II, by the late John Yoshio Naka. Today, they are out of print and hard to find. Impossible to find cheap.

John Naka was one of the most influential bonsai masters in America and is considered the founding father of American Bonsai. His books contain many hand-drawn illustrations and black and white photographs, but the only color photos in the book are found at the beginning, in 16 color plates showing John Naka's trees and bonsai garden. If you are looking for a coffee table decoration, this will not do. If you want to feel like you are sitting in on a $500 a day private lesson with a bonsai master, this book is what you are looking for.

It contains detailed, easy to follow instructions on every aspect of bonsai development. Topics include tools needed and how to use them, soil composition, pruning methods, potting and repotting methods, trunk and root development, branch development, daily maintenance, monthly tasks and much, much more. If I only had room on my shelf for a single book about bonsai, this is the one I would want.

This book was Naka's followup to Bonsai Techniques I, written specifically for more advanced bonsai artists. It includes chapters focusing on advanced concepts in developing nebari, trunks, advanced styling techniques, working with native species, shohin, preparing trees for formal display and more. He also goes into detail for selecting and displaying accent plants and suiseki. Fifty years from now, people will still be using this book to guide them beyond the novice and intermediate stages of their bonsai education.

This book deservedly received 5-star ratings from almost everyone who reviewed it on Amazon, and the one person who gave it a 4-star rating said that he did so "because of the print quality." If you are looking for knowledge concerning advanced techniques in bonsai, and are less concerned about pretty pictures, this is the best book to put on your shelf. If you encounter usual problems with your trees and nobody at your local club or nursery quite knows how to address it, there is probably a discussion of that problem somewhere here in Bonsai Techniques II.

 

The Drought

“I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought.” ― Hosea 13:5

California has been dry for the last four years. The lakes and reserviors are emptying. I went digging for California junipers recently near Lake Matthews, and the water level in the lake was shockingly low. Last summer, California water regulators approved daily fines up to $500 for wasting water. What can the bonsai enthusiast do to avoid using too much water? There are a few suggestions I've seen being passed around in some of the clubs:

1. Change the soil mixture. When you repot, consider adding more bark, perlite, soil amendments and other organic elements to retain water in the soil. This will let you water those trees less frequently, although you will lose some of the benefits of an extremely porous soil if you use something like "Boon's mix."
2. Hand water trees rather than relying on sprinklers and other automatic watering systems. As you water, skip trees that don't look like their soil needs water. If you use a hose, turn off the spray as you go from tree to tree or bench to bench.
3. Use Cloud Cover or Wilt Pruf to reduce transpiration, especially when foliage returns in Spring.
4. Recapture runoff and recycle the water. You can capture rainwater and divert it from gutters and into storage barrels, or just put some mixing tubs under your benches while watering, and pour the drainoff back into your watering can for the next bench.
5. Reduce exposure to sun. Consider moving trees to locations that get less afternoon sun, or putting them under shade cloth. Cooler pots and soil need less water.
6. Wrap pots (especially darker pots) with cloth or burlap to lower temperatures in the soil and reduce the need for water.
7. Cover the soil with sphagnum moss, or use soil covers after watering to keep the soil moist longer.
8. Remove trees from pedestals or high benches to reduce air circulation beneath the pot. You might get more spiders, slugs and bugs, but you'll use less water.

If you're still using too much water, consider donating some of your less favorite trees.

Or pray for an El Niño.

The So-Called New Easy Method of Bonsai

“A rolling stone gathers no moss." ― Publilius Syrus

If you watch instructional bonsai videos on YouTube, you've either seen or soon will see a series of videos by Dr. Gerald M. Levitt regarding his  "new easy method" of growing bonsai trees in sphagnum moss instead of bonsai soil. Dr. Levitt's channel Bonsai9723 has almost 4,000 subscribers and his videos have more than 3 million views. Have you seen them? What do you think about his methods and his results?

 

Here are my thoughts.

First and foremost, I'm not convinced that his new method is easy. I find it easier (and unless you are a heavy user of akadama, cheaper) to get suitable bonsai soil ingredients like pumice, DG and DE, than to get a bunch of sphagnum moss. Once I have the soil, I find it easier to repot with that soil than using this method where you have to wet the moss, jam it in, work the roots in and use an edger to finish the job.

Second, I don't think it's easy to keep trees alive in this stuff. Some trees seem to thrive, but if you flip through his YouTube channel, you'll see that he seems to have a bigger problem than most of the rest of us when it comes to trees dying for no apparent reason.

Third, the guy talks about Brian Batchelder, who developed this method, without telling people that Brian Batchelder actually died from an unusual lung infection caused by sphagnum moss spores, called sporotrichosis. That puts up a huge red flag for me. If this disease is rare, but can be caused by exposure to sphagnum moss, and the guy who used sphagnum moss all the time happened to get this rare affliction, that's enough of a coincidence to convince me to be cautious and to use a little more discretion when choosing my potting medium.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it doesn't look like his trees are developing into good bonsai. For example, in his first video, he takes what is basically a sad little mallsai and pots it up in the moss, boasting that his method allows faster growth and development of the tree. Video #1 shows the tree in 2004. Video #3 shows the tree in 2007. It's added some foliage, but it's leggy (like the foliage on almost all of his trees) and unattractive, and the trunk is still pencil-thin. The primary branch is pencil-lead-thin. Another year later, same story, just a little more foliage. The most recent time he showed it was in 2013. At this point, the tree has been in training for at least 9 years. And it's still a sad little mallsai. Worse, what little trunk thickening he's gotten is a few inches up, and he now has reverse taper. It's an ugly tree. I'm sure that has at least as much to do with his refusal to use wire and his unorthodox pruning preferences as it does the planting medium he uses, but I blame the moss/soil for the lack of nebari and the everthin trunk.

I've used sphagnum most as a growing medium. Like coarse sand, it is good if you want to encourage root growth on a young, weak tree, cutting or seedling. However, if you want to develop trees that have the qualities that bonsai enthusiasts value - apparent age, thick trunks, root flare, taper, etc. - this method doesn't seem to work.

It's also worth adding that this medium probably works a lot better in Florida (which is hot, but the summer comes with almost-daily thundershowers) than in other places. If I lived in a dry climate and didn't have time to monitor my plants more than daily, or if I lived in a cooler climate where the moss would stay wet all the time, I'd be especially nervous about using moss. If it dries out, your tree is in a world of hurt. If it stays wet, your tree is in a world of hurt. Given that watering is one of the trickiest things to learn when you are earning your stripes in bonsai, the sphagnum moss method sounds to me like it's harder, not easier, for beginners.

Look for the Nebari

“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”― Matthew 7:7

A few months back, I watched a boxwood demo on YouTube by Larry White, a speaker at a Redwood Bonsai Society meeting. (You can check out the video at this link.) During the presentation, Larry talked about "finding the nebari" and he explained how nursery boxwoods are propagated. He said that most boxwoods are produced from hardwood cuttings, and he showed how they often will put out roots along several places, over several inches, on the cutting. But the strongest roots are sometimes a couple of inches down. So if you scrape down only to the first point where you start to find nebari, you might think that a tree has very weak nebari, like the tree above seems to have.

As you can see from the trunk coloration, I had originally found a trunk with no nebari at all, but I dug down about an inch (the lighter colored lower part of the trunk) and found a little bit of surface flare in the roots, and I thought I'd found the nebari. But if you dig down a bit deeper, to where some of the lower roots first sprang from that cutting, you might find some much better nebari. So I tried that on this tree. Here is what I found:

Same tree, just about an inch and a half lower. And with some moss added later. Here's the view from the other side.

So now I have three different colors on the trunk, but that's only temporary. More importantly, I now have much more attractive roots taper, just because I looked a little harder for it.

 

Using Leaf Mulch

“If there’s a magic bullet in gardening, it’s mulching twice a year.” ― Marjorie Harris, How To Make A Garden

Gardeners love mulch, particularly a naturally composted leaf mulch. Generally, what is good for the gardener is good for the bonsai grower, too, and to some extent, this adage also applies to the use of mulch. While some of the benefits of mulching (such as reducing erosion on slopes) do not apply so much in bonsai, there are some benefits to using mulch with bonsai, such as regulating the soil's pH balance, adding trace elements to inorganic soil mixes, reducing the need for water, especially in very hot, windy conditions, and insulating the soil over the winter.

A pH balance is impossible to determine by just looking at a tree or the surface of your soil, but it is important to the health of your tree. A neutral soil has a pH value of 7.0. Most trees prefer slightly acidic soils in the 6.0 to 6.5 range. This helps the roots absorb nutrients, whereas highly acid or alkaline soils can cause nutrient deficiencies. Pines and azaleas prefer a soil pH between 5.0 and 6.0, maples and junipers like soil in the 5.5 to 6.5 range. Leaf mulch is slightly acidic and it slowly releases acidity into the soil when you water. If your soil is not acidic enough, add a thin layer of leaf mulch. Over three to six months, the mulch will lose its acidity and it will need to be refreshed. Just scrape off the top 1/4" of soil and mulch and put a new layer on top.will release slowly into the soil every time you water.

Mulch also adds valuable trace elements to your soil. If you use an inorganic soil mix, as most people in the bonsai world recommend, the only nutrients your trees get from the roots are the nutrients you introduce with fertilizer. If you use a chemical fertilizer, everything washes out after a few waterings. Leaves are rich in the elements your soil needs. As trees extract minerals like calcium, magnesium, potassium and phosphorus from the soil, between half and four/fifths of these elements find their way into the leaves. Gathered at the right time and composted properly, leaves can be made into a mulch that can help replenish these elements into your soil. Gardeners often put 1" to 2" of mulch on the surface of their soil. That would not be ideal in a bonsai pot. Put too much organic material on top and you risk reducing your soil's drainage. A thin layer will do. If you test your soil after a month or two and find that it is still too alkaline, then add some more.

Mulch is also an excellent way to insulate the soil and keep it from drying out during hot, dry periods, or to protect the soil from a frost while overwintering. If you are adding mulch to protect your trees during the winter, a layer of more than an inch may be advisable. This is not an issue for me here in Southern California, but in colder climates, trees that are subjected to extreme cold in cycles of freezing and thawing can suffer all sorts of damage, including literally heaving out of the pot as the freezing soil expands. To protect against this, some people will bury their pots in the soil over the winter and insulate with a heavy layer of straw, bark or leaf mulch.

I do not do this. However, for certain trees, especially in smaller pots, I may use mulch in lieu of more expensive sphagnum moss as a moisture insulator when we are expecting high Santa Ana winds for a period of several days. This is also a useful insurance method if I am going away for a weekend and can't easily make arrangements to have my trees watered.

November Bonsai Tasks 2014

“November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.”― Emily Dickinson

I'm not sure exactly what Emily Dickinson meant by that. Though she is one of my favorite poets, I've often found her message to be obscured at first glance. Norway isn't such a bad place, and in fact, has some very good native bonsai. So I don't think she meant it as a slur. Perhaps she just meant to say that November is beautiful, but cold. If so, I must agree.

We are now well into fall. Growth is slowing down and fall color is showing here in Zone 10, particularly in my liquidambar trees and my dogwoods. Here are some of the things I can or will do this month as we get into the heart of autumn:

• Maintenance - I'm still cleaning up leaves in the pots to discourage slugs and insects from taking up residence. I'm plucking any new weeds that pop up, too. I'm applying insecticide as needed. At the end of this month, and again at the end of December and January, I apply a monthly winter dormant oil or lime sulfur to guard against infestations of insect eggs and fungal diseases. My dormant spray for deciduous, fruit and flowering trees is volk oil and water. For conifers and other evergreens, it's lime sulfur and water, as soon as I can get my hands on some more lime sulfur. I'll use about 3 tablespoons per gallon. I know people that use as much as ten TPG. It's kind of a pain, as I try to keep the spray off the roots using newspaper or a hand towel. I'm also peeling off a little soil from many of the trees, to expose more roots on some trees that were buried a little too deep during the growing season. I'm going to poke some of the soil with a chopstick to aerate things a bit, especially with the pines and junipers.
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• Placement - Trees that were kept out of full sun in summer due to transplanting or heavy root pruning are getting full sun locations now. Deciduous trees are going into shade or mottled sunlight to encourage dormancy. I've put all of the tropicals in one place, so that if we find out that the temps are likely to dip into the low 30s overnight, I can bring them into the kitchen or the garage for the night. If we get a multiple-front series of winter storm systems, I will consider bringing the pines inside, too, to avoid letting fungus take hold of the needles.
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• Watering - I continue to provide less water, avoiding the temptation to water every day. If we have an uncommonly hot or windy day, I'll check the pots to see if more water is needed. I'm keeping the colorful deciduous trees a little on the drier side.
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• Feeding - Most of my trees get their last feeding of the year this month with a 0-10-10 fertilizer. However, I've been reading up on the "no/low nitrogen" concept and after reading Michael Hagedorn's article on the topic, I'm considering going back to a more balanced formula, like 7-9-5. My tropicals and some other evergreens will get light feedings about every third week, so maybe the weekend before Thanksgiving and then the second week of December and then that's it. Thereafter, I'll discontinue feeding until our first post-winter heat wave, or until I see buds swelling, whichever comes first.
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• Wiring - Trees are becoming more brittle and less suitable for wiring. I will remove most of the wire from most of my trees this month. I have a couple of deciduous trees that need shaping, however, and those are best-shaped in winter, when the leaves are gone and you can really see the branches. I'll wire those up soon, even though the wood is more brittle than it will be when the sap starts flowing again.
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• Pruning - By Thanksgiving, any remaining deciduous tree leaves will be clipped off. The seeds and fruits are already off. I'm removing burned pine needles and giving my black pines a second trimming. Removing the pine needles properly is a bit of a pain, as they must be removed with tweezers, one at a time, to avoid popping off the bud in the sheath between each needle pair or cluster. Any unexpected new growth on just about any other tree gets pinched back right away. I'll snip any up or down growing branches I see (except on the boxwoods, because I like the up/down branches on some of those), but no major pruning.
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• Transplanting - I'm going to avoid most transplanting after this month. Conifers can still be repotted, though, as long as the roots aren't pruned too severely.
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• Collecting - This month, collecting native species is possible in Southern California. I might take a trip up to the Mojave Desert, Pinon Hills or my recently-discovered secret location to collect some pine or California junipers. If someone has a hedge that needs to go, I might try to take those, too.
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• Cuttings - This is a good month to start hardwood cuttings. In addition to my juniper cuttings, I might try some pine cuttings from trees in the mountains, which have experienced a few hard frosts already. I'll take 4-5 inch tip cuttings, with needles stripped from the bottom two thirds. I'll dip them in rooting powder stick them in a mix of sand and diatomite, an inch or two apart.
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• Seeds - If I can find any, I'll collect some more acorns and maple and liquidambar seed pods.
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• Planning - I'm making to-do lists (using workflowy.com), taking pictures of the trees I plan to repot this spring. I'm going to also take pictures of trees that I plan to restyle next spring, to do some "virtual pruning" in photoshop or picasa.

That's a long list, but it's actually not a lot to do, and since I don't have much daylight in which to do it, it works out. Next month, there will be even less to do, and with Daylight Saving Time ending tonight, I'll have even less daylight in which to do it.

Bug Warning - Goldspotted Oak Borers

"Why didn't Noah swat those two mosquitoes?" ―Unknown

And for that matter, why didn't he swat the Goldspotted oak borer?

Agrilus auroguttatus is an invasive pest contributing to the ongoing oak tree mortality occurring on federal, state, private, and local Native American lands in Riverside and San Diego County. If you have California Black Oak or Coast Live Oak, you need to watch for signs of this pest. Evidence of an infestation may include a weakening of the top of the tree or small “D” shape holes in the bark. As the weather warms, the insects exit the trees. They lay larvae that feed beneath the bark of oaks and damage the movement of nutrients in the tree. They do not kill the tree quickly, but they will weaken the tree and eventually kill it.

There are currently no effective tools for protecting trees once infestation occurs.

The only good news is that entomologists believe that trees larger than 20 inches in diameter seem more susceptible to them.  Officials are still testing to determine if any insecticides are effective against this pest. If I find it in any of my oaks, I'm going to seriously consider burning them and isolating any other oaks that do not yet show signs of infestation.

The 2014 GSBF Convention

"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." ― Benjamin Franklin

David DeGroot at the 2013 GSBF convention.

Here's a great chance to be involved with some of America's top bonsai artists.

Golden State Bonsai Federation and the American Bonsai Society presents 2014 Convention 37 “Bonsai Visions of the West” at the Double Tree Hotel, 2001 Point West Way. Headliners include Peter Tea, Kathy Shaner and David De Groot, ABS Learning Seminars with Ted Matson and Jack Sustic, Joshua Roth New Talent Bonsai Competition, and Special Tribute to John Naka – 100 years. Demonstrations, seminars, critiques, workshops, excursions, benefit drawings, vendors, and much more. I went to the convention last year, only on Saturday, and it was pretty awesome.

Vietnamese Bonsai

“Summer ends, and Autumn comes, and he who would have it otherwise would have high tide always and a full moon every night.” ― Hal Borland

This vista showing some mountains in Vietnam, as seen from Laos, explains a lot to me about Hòn Non Bộ.

Hòn means Island, Non means Mountain, and Bô means a combination of water, mountain range and forest, or it can also mean "imitating the way the scenery looks in miniature". Looking at this scene and then looking at some good examples of Hòn Non Bộ, I can really see what the Vietnamese artists are trying to convey.