I have spent most of the year so far bitching about not re-potting bonsai or at least not re-potting too often. The whole notion of Bonsai trees and free draining soil seems to be one of the top mis-understood aspects of bonsai tree cultivation but I’ll save that for another day. Why we actually re-pot bonsai and when that should be done, by and large, seems to be deeply immersed in ignorance. However what we call bonsai trees and their long term maintenance and the situation with trees in development towards becoming bonsai are two entirely different things.
Where development of bonsai is concerned, the most important aspect is that of developing a ‘bonsai’ root system. By that I mean a pot full of fine dynamic feeder root mass largely free of big chunks of wood or old mountain or field soil. Anyone who has re-potted an old Japanese bonsai tree will be familiar with this. Developing such a root system can be very easy with something like an elm or maple but in the case of evergreen varieties and in particular pines I regularly see folk struggling. Trouble is most of what is written about re-potting pines is based on working with existing bonsai trees. Working with yamadori seems to scare a lot of people in my experience.
Day 1 for this scots pine to begin it’s bonsai journey and obviously we start from the bottom up – roots.
Simple rules apply here. Never mess with the roots of a tree that is not showing strong growth and annually improving vigour. If you have not owned the tree long enough to do this or cannot read the signs wait until you have or can. Secondly never work on the roots of pines that are dormant. Fast swelling buds and thick fleshy white root ends are good indicators if working in spring. Summer re-potting is also a good prospect particularly with European natives like scots and mugo pines.
White root ends and extending buds = green light. Look at that mycelium too!
Root work for yamadori such as this big scots involves the complete removal of old mountain soil. This is an important step in order to develop that valuable ‘bonsai’ root system. Many folk go white at the prospect but in my experience a pine will never grow properly in a small pot OR develop that root system until this is done. Where first root work with yamadori is concerned simply allow the soil to dry out prior to beginning work. Then patiently pick out all the old soil right back to the trunk. NEVER wash the roots at this stage unless you really want to kill your tree. Then all that is required is to cut out as much thick wood as is possible and shorten large thick roots where they exist, cut back to where roots emerge closer to the trunk. Be patient, this is going to be as long process and this shortening MAY have to be done in several stages. Finally gather up ALL the root and put it into a suitable sized pot and work it into a suitable soil mix.
Three hours later, not much different but the future of this pine is assured and with half the soil volume the growth rate will rocket.
This work will increase a pines growth rate, make larger needles and more back budding very quickly. All important factors in pushing a pine tree down the bonsai road. Subsequent potting can focus more on root pruning for development of fine root mass and having cleaned out the old soil completely this becomes the work of minutes rather than hours as in the case of this beast I did yesterday.
Folk often ask me about mycelium in relation to pines. In my opinion those of us who keep pines do not actually keep pine trees we keep their mycelium. If that fungi is happy your pine will be happy. If a pine tree has no fungi present chances are the root system is too wet or full of junk not conducive to it’s well being. In the case of this tree the original mountain soil was largely devoid of hyphae but the pumice and perlite around that was solidified by a huge mass of hyphae. Now that the growing medium is consistent and correct mycelium will colonise the ENTIRE root ball. Seeding mycelium is not necessary, creating a good environment for it to thrive absolutely is.
Few things in bonsai are as simple as the cultivation of pine trees. Sadly few things are less understood in bonsai that the cultivation of pine trees.
Back in the day, when I had more hair on my head and less on my chin I thought life would work out a certain way, probably not unlike my father perhaps. Then I stumbled ass first into bonsai and, given a few years it ran away with me and became a business. I had hoped that by now I might be taking life a little easier, trouble is the bonsai business doesn’t make shit and so here I am working harder than when I was a spotty teenager with no prospects other than a life of drudgery and grunt work, got that right then. Because of bonsai Catherine and I have never had a holiday in any way despite being together for well over twenty years now. Both of us are working like slaves every single day 24/7/365 as modern parlance goes. I don’t mind, men were made to work, not retire to an easy chair and die of boredom and the doctor said, just last week, I am in very good shape. Don’t laugh, round is a shape! So the hard graft must be paying dividends in some respect.
Bonsai is a hard task master and making a business of it puts one under the iron fist of a slave driver. What saddens me a lot is that I don’t get the time to spend on what I love the most, doing bonsai my way. I rather wish I had kept bonsai as a hobby which I have now lost. Just yesterday I spent fourteen hours straight working on bonsai trees but that was all commercial stock (some of it very good). In the last four days I have spent forty four hours working on trees, good for honing one’s skills (and aggravating my tendinitis) but not exactly rewarding to my artistic sensibilities (don’t laugh). However I guess most of us spend the bulk of our waking hours at work, it just happens my work is everyone else’s hobby. There are worse ways to make a living!
Recently we had a rather large delivery of new bonsai and material turn up at the house. At a guess I would think this lot is over two hundred pieces. It’s certainly the most money I have ever spent on something not made of bricks. This year we have a lot more small and mid sized bonsai, ideal for all the old blokes who keep telling me they can’t lift much these days 😉 Quality is good this year but increasingly we are seeing top quality costing a lot more. Simply put, the demand for quality bonsai is outstripping supply and as always in that case prices are rising. Even the cost of legitimately collected yamadori is going through the roof. Collectors costs for things like permits are rocketing and since demand is high stock is going to the highest bidder. Like for like I would estimate prices have risen this year by a high single figure which considering exchange rate movement is pretty impressive. That’s great news for anyone who owns good bonsai trees and bad news if you are in the throes of building a collection. But, in comparison with a lot of the mass produced, ultimately worthless shit we fill our lives with bonsai trees still represent astonishing value for money considering the time invested and skill expended in their production. Buy a new car for a good five figure sum and watch that money dwindle to nothing in ten to fifteen years. Spend that same amount on a good bonsai tree, take care of it properly, allow it to enrich your life and in fifteen years sell it for a bonafide index linked real world profit.
Here I have taken a few snap shots of what arrived. There really are all sorts here, good, very good, average and even some ugly trees too. Within the next two weeks we are expecting a (literally) lorry load of yamadori. This lot is, by and large Japanese bonsai, Chinese bonsai and other nursery produced stock with a smattering of yamadori and even a few pieces from a private collection and some PX stock too. This year I have also lifted a hundred little trees I was growing in the ground. There genuinely is a lot more but so far I have not had a chance to drag it in from the drive way. By the time spring actually arrives I would estimate there will be close to three and a half thousand plants in the yard. This will all be for sale sooner or later. Perhaps if I sold it all and didn’t replace it I could retire like my old man did at 52 but that ship sailed already. There might be the kernel of an idea there though, where’s that calculator?
G.
P.S. If you need to know the prices of anything shown below and are too impatient to wait until I list it on our web site send an email to – [email protected] – include the image you are interested in, no image no reply. Then be patient and respectful it may take me up to a couple of weeks to reply. Ranting, raving, being arsey and wasting our time on the phone will ensure you do NOT get what you hoped for. We get sick of being treated badly and abused, politeness and respect go a long way around here!
It’s been more than thirty years since I bought my first indoor bonsai tree and began my journey into this amazing hobby. One of the things that has helped me enormously is a funny quirk in my head that allows me to remember all the little details. Even now I remember everything about my special trees. Where they came from, every little thing I did along the way and how they responded to my actions. This also includes the effect of weather which, especially in the UK is an ever present phenomenon that has an impact upon our activities. Don’t assume that good weather is good for trees and bad weather is bad. Most hardy trees need the winter as much as they need the summer. What I have learned is that the weather is not to be trusted but trees are and will thrive regardless of what the sky throws at them.
Where that goes wrong, on occasions catastrophically so, is when we start messing with things we don’t really understand. Putting our impatience upon a tree and expecting a certain level of ‘performance’ allied with an ill founded and inexperienced understanding will cause problems. I despair at the amount of desperately sad plants I see being slowly tortured to death by fumbling hands, it genuinely breaks my heart, right at the outset I got into bonsai because I have a powerful love of trees and their place in the world and because I believe they can teach us how to be better people. Every day it saddens me to see suffering trees in our hobby wether that be through ignorance or the strutting pride of their owners. Since the advent of the internet things have become much worse as ignorance has spread faster than time honoured and long understood wisdom. Bonsai really is an anachronism in this fast moving modern age, though i would argue, so are we.
In my experience the single most destructive activity in bonsai cultivation is the unhealthy obsession folk seem to have with re-potting. I have written at GREAT length on the subject of Repotting Bonsai and the requirements of the growing media we choose to use in Choosing Soil For Bonsai Trees. I have also covered correct timing in When to Re-pot Bonsai. What I didn’t really cover was the effects of weather on the process and that’s where a good memory comes in handy.
Just a few days ago I was advising folk hang fire on re-potting. In the UK SPRING IS NOT February despite what the weather looked like and in spite of climate change pundits telling us that’s now normal. It’s certainly not unusual to have something of a false spring here. I have seen it in five of the last six years here on the east coast. As we all know it’s more likely to snow at easter that at Christmas. Creating beautiful bonsai trees is all about doing the absolute best we can for our trees and that means every choice has to be our best. Re-potting bonsai early will NOT make spring happen any sooner no matter how much we wish it would. When I started bonsai we would re-pot around end of March going into April and May. Today folk start right after Christmas and by end of March (still the optimum time for most deciduous species) it’s all over.
Most re-potting work is entirely unnecessary, especially for older trees, many of which will give their best after five or even ten years in the same pot undisturbed assuming we have the appropriate skill required to cultivate bonsai at that level which is rare. The obsession with ‘free drainage’ is entirely unhealthy and largely only appropriate to accelerated growth regimens used with raw material. Any recently re-potted bonsai has, by default, a well draining soil. For mature bonsai this phase has to be managed so as not to encourage too much coarse fast growth which can ruin a trees maturity and fine ramification. In time drainage will reduce as pore space within the soil is filled with root and normal care can resume. For mature bonsai, re-potting once drainage reduces looks like the work of a mad man to me and guarantees ultimate failure in the quest for old mature and magical bonsai.
Before I run myself down a rabbit hole with all that let me get back on subject. The weather was unseasonably warm here a couple of weeks ago but now we are back to normal. Gales, freezing rain, heavy daytime rain followed by hard overnight frosts and constant temperatures in single figures. Normal fare for an early British spring time. So if you were seduced into re-potting bonsai too early because of the nice weather some consideration needs to be given to those trees now. What might that be?
In the case of most, simply moving into a greenhouse seems ideal. If you have the facility it’s a good course of action. However be aware that warm temperatures may bring on fast growing varieties too soon and then moving them outside later in the year can cause problems, certainly not ideal. A closed greenhouse with little air circulation is also bad and will encourage fungal problems, particularly with overly wet soil and freshly cut roots. Putting trees in the shade is a seriously bad idea in the UK, they need sun to recover. The ideal situation for most species is under a light open cover with direct natural sunlight protected from the wind and rain. Soil should be kept just a little more dry than normal. In this situation the cold (for hardy plants) is immaterial. The primary concerns should be the wind and the wet. Control these aspects correctly and all will be well. As foliage develops a preventative fungal and pest control spray is a very good insurance.
Think carefully about re-potting, it’s important but largely misunderstood, mis-used and unnecessary and can prevent bonsai trees reaching their full potential. Learn your horticulture, time your actions correctly and consider after care, it’s just as important as the task itself.
Insanely busy we are completely swamped with orders every day. It’s a living nightmare just now. Please bare with us, we’re doing our best but we don’t have any more hands to call upon.
Thanks but that really is enough now 😉
G.
I have been threatening to do some workshops for a while now. Problem is actually twofold. First I am old, really busy and mostly worn smooth out. Secondly the workshop is actually full of old motorcycles and I don’t have a place to put them. However, my sense of duty has got the better of me and so here are some dates for 2019. Only available first come first served, paid in advance. I have been taken for a fool too many times and so payment is strictly up front and non refundable in the case of a no show. My weekends mean a lot to me and I don’t give them up easily. Thanks for understanding.
Folk in Britain are morbidly obsessed with the weather. Turn on the news today and all you will hear are stories about the cataclysmic conditions. The BBC found a spot of snow up on the moors where some folk who can’t drive abandoned their cars and ended up billeted in a school hall. It’s a good job we don’t get weather like that being suffered in parts of the U.S just now, there would be mass suicides if we did.
Here in Norfolk the weather is beautiful, the sun is shining and today I have spotted the first signs of spring. Aconites, snowdrops, daffodils and bluebells. Today I have seen little faces poking out of our nest boxes and the greenhouse is filled with the beautiful scent of Prunus blossom. It may well be a long time until spring gets fully under way but I for one am always happy to see these early harbingers of better things to come.
G.
P.S. I remain somewhat surprised, given all the political insanity going on here that either the government, Brexit or the oppressive masters of the EU have not cancelled spring but I guess it shows just how important the machinations of men really are. This will all be going on long after we gone 🙂
