Bonsai - A New Beginning

Hello all and welcome to Spring. The weather is finally warming up and I couldn't resist going to one of Bonsai West's classes. I decided to go to the Intro to Deciduous class now that I have some experience. While all of my previous trees are tropical and stay inside in the warmer climate during the winter, deciduous trees require cold weather to stay alive.

Early Spring is the perfect time to work on deciduous trees. This is largely because the trees still have no leaves at this time. Take a look at my brand new Chinese Elm. I thought this tree was pretty cool because it needed a lot of work, but had a great structure underneath. Since I've taken a few of these classes, I wasn't afraid of cutting away most of the scraggly branches to leave a solid foundation for my new tree. This type of heavy pruning shouldn't be a problem as most of the buds haven't formed yet. Here is the picture after all the hacking was complete. Believe me, I cut some heavy branches off of this tree. The photos do a good job of showing the tiny branch removal, but a few conflicting larger branches were removed as well.

You may notice that the last picture shows the Elm outside. This is because it needs to stay cold still. If the temperature is going to approach freezing, I will move it into the garage for the night, but it is important to keep deciduous trees cold for as long as possible. This way they can put forth a large surge of energy when it finally warms up enough. I can't let it freeze because that could kill many of the new buds and potentially the tree itself. In a month or so, when the temperature stabilizes above 50 degrees F, I will put my other trees out to join this one for the summer.

Bonsai - General Update

Wow, it's been a long time. However, I come prepared with pictures of all my trees. While the pictures are simple front views, it will at least provide a map of where each tree is.

Ficus

Here's my first tree in all its glory. You may or may not be able to see the left side of the tree separated from the rest of the tree because of the wiring. I plan on wiring it again late winter or early this spring to pull it apart more. The tree is happy as always and growing well this winter. However, it needs repotting as the soil is very compacted and the roots are beginning to come out the bottom of the pot.

Plum

The plum is doing excellent as well. You may notice that the leaves are colored again. I failed to learn from last year and did not adequately water this tree as the summer closed, turning to fall and winter. It didn't lose too many leaves though and you can see the progress of my spiral. Below is a top view to show off some of the color and the fruit this tree produced.



Cherry

My cherry tree had an unfortunate accident this summer and has recovered well. I went away for a few days and put my trees in bags to conserve moisture while they couldn't be watered. This is important because they were all taking water every day. The bag over the cherry fell a bit and contacted a large section of the leaves. As moisture condensed on the bag, it became a magnifying glass and cooked a large section of leaves. This section had to be cut out to promote new growth and is why one side is slanted. Hopefully, my spring pruning will defoliate enough of the tree to hide last years error. I also had a melee bug problem this summer on the cherry. This was treated with some pesticide and by spraying alcohol throughout the branches. Despite these problems, this tree has completely recovered and is one of my happiest and most rewarding bonsai.

Pine

This is one of two trees I got for Christmas. It is in a starter pot with mostly peat moss and I frankly don't know much about this tree yet. It seems happy though and I can see some new growth.

Flowering

This is the second new tree I have in my collection. I haven't researched this tree yet, but it had just finished blooming when I picked it up after the holidays. I'm very excited to add color to my room in winter with this tree and the styling is very interesting. This tree has been aggressively shaped and I look forward to adding my touch to it where necessary.