bonsai apprentice

Two posts down is the link to the video of Brent grafting a one year old black pine. This is the meathod he uses to reproduce his vast selection of black and white pine cultivars. Because of his tedious attention to detail, and the very low placement of the graft, these trees will be very suitable for bonsai. The graft is just above the nebari, which should make the union very natural appearing when the tree is larger.

This first pic is Brent getting ready to make the cut on the understock. He is using a grafting knife that he has sharpened to a very fine edge. This fall I will get some video of his sharpening process. He uses 3 different sharpening stones in addition to a leather whet strap for the final step. He also uses 2 different knives – one for theunderstock and one for the scion. (Right Click to enlarge photos.)

Here's the understock after the cut is made. As you can see, the cut is perfectly strait. If there was any curve at all, the scion would not fit flush on both sides.

The cut goes about 1/3 the width of the understock.

Next comes the scion. He picks one that has aproxametly the same diameter as the understock. The cuts on the scion are even more crucial than on the understock. I'm struggeling to describe the exact geometry of the 2 cuts. Remember the X.Y and Z axis from highschool geometry? The Y axis goes down the center of the scion. The X axis is perpendicular, and the Z axis comes out at a right angle up off the table. The plane of each cut must exactly cross the Y axis, without any angulation into Z. Otherwise, they won't be flush with the cut on the understock. If the second cut doesn't match the first, he recuts until they line up. I wish I had one of those 3-D drawing programs to show you how important this is, but you'll just have to take my word for it.

The next pic is the scion snugly in the understock. Both sides are flush, even before they are tied together. The tape just keeps it from being disloged. If the tree could be kept from moving, the graft would probably take even without being taped.

I'll try to get some pics of grafts that are a few years old, so you can see how nice they look.

This is series of pics of a mame Japanese maple bonsai. I purchased it in August '05 from My former teacher, Ivan Waters, in Chicago. I'm not sure how old it is, but it did originate in Japan.

This is the tree as it appeared when I purchased it. Right click on the thumbnails and choose "view image" to see the enlarged pic.

It's obviously a very nice little tree. It's in an antique Chinese pot, and double potted to keep it from drying out too rapidly. I liked italot , but there were a few problems I saw right away. The first branch to the left (highlighted in red) appeared way too thick in relation to the trunk of the tree. The first branch to the right (highlited in blue, actually it comes off the back and swings around right) was also too thick, and the top section of the trunk line (highlighted in yellow) was too strait and too long. The treeneaded to be just a touch shorter, and with a more rounded apex.

What you can't see because of the leaves is that each of these branches had a major fork right after coming off of the trunk. So I removed the larger of each fork, which did decrease the visual weight of each branch.

After a partial defoliation, you can see that the two offending branches appear smaller now. Probably next year I will try to carve the backs of the branches a bit, to see if I can get them even a little smaller. The upper trunk section is still too long and strait. The following pic shows where the branches that were removed used to be.

This is pretty much how I left it for the rest of the Fall and Winter. In early March the buds were starting to swell, so I new I had to take my next step. The treed needed to be shortened and a new apex with more movement and taper developed. So I clenched my teeth, grabbed the concave cutters and had at it. I made the cut right above a small bend in the trunk where 2 small branches were coming out.

These 2 branches will become the new apex of the tree, giving it a more rounded crown. The area in red is where I need to do some more carving. The branch highlighted in blue is actually coming off the back of the tree, it's not really as close to the branch above it as it appears in this pic.

Here it is now, 6 weeks later, fully leafed out. In another month or so I will defoliate again and do some more work on branch structure/ ramification. Stay tuned.

comments, suggestions?

Wow, has it really been 8 months since I've updated this blog? Incredible how time flies. I am going to strive to get back in the swing of things.

To get things off to a good start, here is a video I made in October of Brent demonstrating his grafting technique. Enjoy!

Bonsai Graft Video

Unfortunately, the automatic viewer that worked over at blogspot won't work here, so you have to hop the link back to youtube.