I have had a busy weekend working on my bonsai trees this weekend. This includes re-potting, root pruning and just basic cleanup work of the shoots in some. My Siberian elms are starting to leaf out. This is not a surprise; they are usually the first anyway, but it has been a very warm winter. My flowering quince cutting was flowering in late January, which is really early for a year-old cutting that is only 4 inches tall. However, it was nice to see something like this on my bench. The quince in my yard, from which I took the cutting, was blooming as well in January.
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| Not much to show for, but this is my flowering quince. Yes, it was flowering a few weeks ago. It is a cutting I took from a larger bush I have in my yard. I am trying to develop it. Nothing to show for yet! The two others here are my New Mexico privet and my crape myrtle. |
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| This picture of me was taken two weeks ago. I was working on my Siberian elm (not yet pruned) and now it has leafed out and it showing it first leaves. In other words I did not do this too early. Global warming is even affecting us; in fact if was in the low 70s that day. |
Having more than 25 plants that I am working on, it was quite a task and this past Sunday I worked from around 10:30 until 3 pm on some of my trees. I started on one of my Japanese maples. I am playing with two that are the same age. They were seedlings I got from my neighbor Bob; he had dug them out from underneath his older tree. I am growing one of them in a small pot like a shohin (smaller plants that are less than 10 inches). My daughter bought the pot as a present for me in China. The other is growing in a regular flowerpot and twice the size already. Its trunk is thicker as well. I am experimenting with the two as a comparison the see the difference in growth when you restrict the roots.
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| Maybe not the best picture, but this is the little maple in the Chinese pot just after repotting. Hopefully it will do great this year. |
I also worked on three pyracanthas that I have growing. All three came out of my father-in-laws yard. He has a hedge and somehow they had seeded out. We had pulled them out of the ground. Two of them barely had any roots and I just stuck them in a pot with some potting soil two years ago. They survived and it was time to do something with them. They will most likely become shohin bonsais. I do not think I will grow them like mames, which are less than 4 inches.
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| One of my Pyracanthas, it has a great root system, but now it needs a canopy. In the background you can see an azalea that I got from a friend (butchered to the max) and a nursery shrub) that I potted down in the hope to eventually bonsai. |
I also worked on two air layers of an azalea from my yard. Two branches were buried in the mulch and when I freed them, they had rooted. What to do but cut them off and stick them in a flowerpot with my regular bonsai mix. Two years later, it was time to split them and pot them up. They had a decent root system and branch structure. I will see what develops.
I did many other plants, but my pride and joy was a crepe myrtle that I have been training for the past three to four years. This was the first repot, and I was amazed by the wonderful radial root system that this plant was developing. I am feeling much better letting it grow. I was keeping it at 6” but after yesterday, I think that I will let it grow a bit larger to a foot and a half to two feet. It has a root system that will be able to support it. This should also give it a much bigger diameter trunk and nebari (or exposed spreading surface roots).
Concluding, I am not done yet, but it was fun being busy with my plant. I had little time to think about anything else. Things like the Corona virus, the upcoming primaries or other political crap. Coming back to work, it all came flooding back. Honestly, I cannot wait for the weekend to be back playing with my plants again.
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