bonsai apprentice

Apprentice Bob - “It’s my first day of the apprenticeship, we should do something profound and meaningful.

Mater Brent - “We’re going to so something mundane and necessary.”

And thus it begins. Today was cold and wet, which I’ve come to discover is pretty normal for Northern California. Better then freezing and snow, which is what I had back in Chicago. I arrived at the nursery a little past 9am and got right to work.

The first thing Brent had me work on was transferring trident maple seedlings from the flats where they were all growing entangled to individual 2 inch pots. Here are some pics that didn’t turn out really great because it was cloudy and I have no flash on my palm zire camera.

So what I had to do was tease apart the tangled seedlings using the root hook you see to the left. They needed just a bit of root pruning, and sometimes a bit of top pruning. Then I put them into the 2 inch pots using Brent’s soil mix which is pretty much just perlite and bark - about 50-50 if I’m remembering correctly.

Some of the trees were too big to fit in the 2 inch pots, so some went into 4 inch pots, and one big guy jumped all the way to a 1 gallon can. Here is the final result of my mornings labor (there is one more flat of 36 that didn’t fit on the cart, so there is a total of 123 tridents.)

After a quick lunch of a ham sandwich prepared by master chef Brent, we got back to work. The afternoon session consisted of transplanting white pine grafts from the 2 inch pots they were in up to 1 gallon cans. The weather started getting nasty, so I only finished 18 of them. Here’s the before shot - I didn’t get an after shot, sorry.

These were a little more difficult than the tridents. In addition to transplanting them, I had to cut off the understock above the graft, and work on the roots a little to improve the nebari. As you can see from the pic they had a good number of roots, but they needed to be combed out and positioned correctly to give a nice radial pattern. Then I had to hold all the roots out with one hand while filling in around them with soil using the other hand.

So what did I learn today? In a bonsai business time is money, so you have to do things rapidly. But you can’t cut corners, because quality is of the utmost importance. So you find the most efficient way of doing things that will end up with a high yield of good quality trees. Fortunately, Brent has spent 20 years doing just that. So all I have to do is follow his instructions, and do it enough times that it comes naturally.

I also learned that Brent makes amazingly nice looking grafts. Wish I had a better camera to show you some close ups of the graft unions. Flawless.

So, other than being cold and wet at the end of the day, it was all good.

Well, it’s been raining non stop for the last 3 days. I guess I shouldn’t complain - it could have been snow, if I was still in Chicago. Prior to these 3 days the weather was fantastic. Sunny and 60s every day.

I finally got my schedule at the clinic straitened out. It looks like my day to spend at the nursery will be Fridays. So I will actually be starting my first official day of apprentice duties this week, Dec 31st! That is assuming it’s not still pouring down rain.

I also finally got internet access at home (no more running to the library.) So I will be getting back on the boards. I feel like I’ve been away forever!

So look for the first apprentice report this weekend!

So we arrived in Lake County and started looking for a place to live. We had checked out a few places over the internet, in addition to the looking around we did when we were out here in June. We decided it would be best to rent for a year so that we could take our time looking for property to buy.

We found a duplex with an incrdible view of the lake. We will be renting the top half, the bottom half the owners are keeping as a weekend/vacation home. I will add a few pics of the house and the view later this week.

Right now I have my tropical trees in the garage. Outside temps are in the 50s-60s during the day, and low 30s to upper 20s at night. But the garage is pretty well insulated and only drops to the upper 40s. Today I am picking up a lode of lumber to build stands for the trees and lights.

The hardy trees I have dropped off over at Brent’s. There is actually pleanty of room in the yard here for them, but it is not fenced and there are alot of deer around. So Brent has allowed me to house them over at his place. My 50 or so trees are easily lost among his 40,000!

Driving across Nebraska in a truck without cruise control is torture no one should have to go through! No offence to anyone who lives there, but that state is just way too long!

And speaking of trucks - we were in a 15 foot rental truck towing a car trailer. The flyer from the company said we needed to stop every 50 miles and check to make sure the car was secure. Yeah, right. Oh yeah, and they recomended not exceeding 45 MPH! We’d still be on the road!

Other adventures along the road . . . well, we left Monday at 4:30 pm and drove all night except for 2 one-hour naps and arrived in Loveland Colorado around noon on Tuesday. We spent the rest of the day lounging with my wife’s family there. About noon on Wednesday we hit the road again. A little snow through the mountains of Wyoming, but not too bad. Then in to Utah, through Salt Lake City and onto the flats.

Up ahead was a glow on the horizon. What could it be out here in the middle of nowhere? Ah - it’s the glow of the casinos on the Nevada border! Stayed at one real cheap, and even won $150 playing Blackjack.

So now it’s Thursday and we hit the road again across Nevada, which looks alot like the surface of the moon. Then we hit Reno, and the California border. I was a little worried about getting through inspection - but turns out there was none! Sign said “no inspection today.” Apparently the Ag department ran out of money to man the inspection stations. So - all that work bare-rooting for nothing.

So next was Taho, which was quite beatiful - nice to see trees again. Then Down the mountain to Sacramento, where after being in the state for about an hour already I was pulled over by CHP. Apparently they frown on trucks with trailers going 70 MPH in the left lane. Who knew. Luckily, we escaped with a warning.

After Sac, we headed northwest to the promissed land - Lake County. Here’s a link if you are interested.

http://www.lakecounty.com/

OK, so I’m still figuring out how to do this blog thing.

Somehow the allow comments thing got turned off, and I’m posting now to see if it is back on.

If anyone actually reads this, please leave me a comment so I know its working.

I’ve spent the last few days packing and painting. The house looks great now - too bad we’re leaving lol.

Tomorrow I’ll start bare-rooting my trees. Hope the temp stays above freezing.

Well, things have gotten pretty crazy with all the packing and fixing up the house to put it on the market. You don’t realize how much junk you’ve collected until you have to pack it!

I haven’t had much time for my trees, but I did give them a pre-inspection going over today. To get them in to California I will have to have them inspected by the Dept. of agriculture. The inspector is coming next week. I will have to bare-root all my out door trees before the inspection, and keep them bare-rooted until I arrive in CA and can re-pot them. A risky process, but thats the only way to get them in.

10 days till we hit the road. It feels like we are in limbo - between our old life and our new one. Lots of sad goodbyes next week with all our friends here in Chicago. And then all the exitement of getting settled in a new home. So much to do.

I’ll be starting my apprenticeship officially on the 17th of January. Stay tuned for posts on how it goes.