bonsai apprentice

This Spring I did alot of repotting of Brent’s more developed trees. He had hired someone to do some of the grunt work, freeing me up to work on some of the more advanced projects that had been neglected. Brent had been so busy over the last 5 years with moving and re-building the infrastructure of his nursery that he had not had the time to devote to working on his own collection of trees.

Here’s a few before and after shots of some of the work I did.

This first one is a Contorted Mullberry (Morus bombycis ‘Unryu’). He had 2 of these, this is the smaller one.

As you can see on the pic, there is a large area of exposed deadwood. It appears that there was a large trunk chop, then the live bark from there down died back, as it didn’t have any foliage to support it. What you can’t really see in the pic (and I couldn’t see it either until I started hosing it off) is that the deadwood is actually just a thin shell on the surface. Underneath is was all rotten.

When I hit it with the hose, the top part broke away and the rotten wood washed right out, leaving a large hollow area that went from the base all the way up the trunk of the tree to the second branch.

I repotted this one back into a nursery container, as it still has some time to develop.

Next is a very nice white pine. It has been in this pot way too long. You can see by the yellow tinge to the foliage that the tree is not happy.

<=before

. . . after=>

looks better already, doesn’t it?

Next is Susie’s (Brent’s wife) favorite tree. It is a crab apple, the cultivar called Marry Potter. This is another that had been in its pot too long.

First I removed all the suckers.

Then here it is in a deeper pot.

More to come.

In some of my free time between seeing patients I've been doing searches for others blogging about bonsai. Here's what I've found so far (not including Brent's blog which is already in my links section to the left.)

First, some actual bonsai blogs:

http://bonsaihungary.blogspot.com/ A bonsai blog from Hungary. I can't read it, but the pictures are good.

http://flowerpot.iwritethecode.com/ This is a friendly blog by a beginner bonsaist. Stop by and say hi, she's nice.

http://www.bonsaiblog.com/ Another beginner blog.

http://blog.ncircle.com/archives/2005/02/network_as_bons.htm this is actually a blog about network security, but the author is apparently also a bonsai guy and has posted a very well written essay comparing bonsai to computer network security.

Google has a new service in beta stage that searches blogs. I did a search on one word – bonsai. Guess how many hits I went down before I actually found a blog about bonsai – 150! Lots of bonsai cats and other crap – but no actual blogs about bonsai until over 150. I think they need to keep working on it. This next one was the first real bonsai blog link I found. How many hits until I finally got to a post from my blog? Almost 170.

http://sandiegobonsai.blogspot.com/ – pretty self expalanatory. Mostly news about club stuff. Not alot of pics.

Tree blogs (non-bonsai):

http://fundmyshort.blogs.com/tree/ This is a blog from a film maker and animator who is apparently making some sort of movie about a tree. He has a gallery on this site where you can email him a pic of a tree that is meaningful to you , and explain why it is, and he will post it. No bonsai there yet, so maybe we should send him some.

http://arboreality.blogspot.com/ this one is about regular trees. Lots of good info there – but no bonsai.

Next, blogs that sound like they might be about bonsai, but actually aren't.

http://smuggy4.blogspot.com/ this one is called "where the bonsai grows", but in my scan of it's 2 1/2 years of posts, I only found one post about a bonsai – and it was a dead one. Full of lotsa poems and pictures though – but not about bonsai.

http://www.samurai69.net/mt/archives/000436.php This one cracks me up – it apears to be a Japanese blog about japanese stuff. This particular link is titled "bonsai!" but I think they actually meant "banzai!"

http://bonsai-times.blogspot.com/ While this sounds like it might be a bonsai news mag, it's actually some sort of spam-ish site about cell phones. No reason to go there.

http://www.insideplantslive.org/archives/000667.php This is a pretty cheesy site that is trying to sell some sort of alternative plant soil or something – haven't quite figured it out yet.

Anyone else found any other bonsai blogs?  If you have, leave a comment with the link. 

Darrell was wondering about how the upper part of the rootstock is removed. Today I snapped a series of pics of grafts at various stages of development, so you all can see how it looks.

First, we have one that was grafted fall of ‘04. The scion is growing nicely, but the upper part of the rootstock is still attached. It will probably stay on till next year.

The next one is a graft from ‘02, so this is 2 years farther along in development. You can see that the upperstock has been cut back to a stub. It’s almost impossible to see the graft union – it’s fused so well.

Next is a graft from 2000. The stub has been carved down and it’s starting to heal over.

This is another from 2000, it’s grown more vigorously, so is a little fatter. As you can see, the graft site is practically invisable. Brent really has perfected these grafts. The only thing you notice is a subtle change in bark texture. No line, no bulge. This is great stuff. Once the scar from removing the upperstock heals it will take a very trained eye to fine the graft union.

So, I hope this has helped to clear things up for Darrell, and anyone else who was curious about the process.

Darrell had some questions on part 2, so I thought I would attempt to answer them with another post. Hopefully Brent will chime in with some added info as well.

“Hi Bob,

I was just mostly curious about exactly where one would cut off the top section. I’m also curious about the “plumbing” of grafting in this way. It is probably covered somewhere, and maybe thinking about it as plumbing is the wrong thing, but it seems like the upper side of the scion would be connected “backwards” into the rootstock, as far as “flow” goes. Does only the lower side really fuse with the rootstock?

-Darrell “

Both sides of the scion do fuse. I think I understand what you mean by connecting backward. If you think of the 2 cut sides of the scion as one side facing “downstream” toward the roots and the other facing “upstream” toward the canopy, then yes, it would seem that the upper side would not be receiving nutrients from the roots.

However, I believe that this is an eronious way of thinking about it. The cambium is the vascular tissue that needs to connect to make the graft take hold. As long as this connects in one place there are cross channels that will transfer nutrients all the way around the scion. Obviously, the more places that connect, the more likely the graft is to take. Here’s a pic I lifted from another site to give you a cross sectional view of what is happening.

The website I borrowed this from is here.

Here’s a pic of the “crosschannels” I mentioned.

That pic came from an excellent article here.

So, once the cambium fuses, and the scion is growing, and has developed enough needles to produce enough food to keep the rootstock alive, the top can be removed. This is done just a bit above the graft site, and after some time the wound can be carved down a bit and will heal over.

I hope that clears it up for you.