Dec 20, 2016 | General
Underneath this brusque socially inept exterior is a little lad who just wants to live in a decent world. I believe we reap what we sow and doing good wherever possible will always come back to us one way or another. Now I am older I have swapped out my rose tinted glasses for shades, I don’t want to see a lot of the things that are going on in this increasingly insane world we have created. I have made it my mission in life to try and spread a little understanding and, hopefully, respect for the world around us particularly in relation to trees. Few things generate a love of trees more than bonsai does. Without trees we are all doomed. I always think you can judge the ‘health’ of a nation by how they treat their trees and forests. There are several cases in history where invading forces laid waste to territories by cutting down all the trees prior to their retreat. A country without trees is indeed a desolate wasteland. I am constantly saddened by the almost total loss of trees in our country compared to what was once here and the scant disregard for which ancient survivors of those better times are treated.
I also think you can judge the ‘health’ of a nation by how they treat their animals. Sadly there is a heartbreaking story being written at this exact moment right here in Blighty. Visit any dogs home in the land and you will see row after row of sad neglected and abandoned faces staring out at you. These belong to various types of so called ‘bull breed’ dogs. In particular at the moment the nation has turned it’s face against the Staffordshire bull terrier, commonly known as the staffy’. Personally I adore these dogs. My first, Max, was with me his entire life and in a turbulent time was my rock. My daughter was born prematurely and could be laid in the palm of my hand, Max loved her as much as I do and in all his days was noting but a joy to live with in spite of the hysteria being spread by the ‘views media’ just now. A while back we opened up our home to George who many of you will know. Earlier this year we had a lovely lady visit for the day but she was terrified of dogs and staffies’ in particular. However by the end of the day she was in love with our George.
In the summer we took a good friend of ours to the local dogs home as she wanted to re-home a dog (seems like the place to go). I am a big softie at heart and seeing all those beautiful sad faces choked me up and bought a tear to my eye. The result was a new charge and, whilst not exactly being a Staffy’ he’s suffered the ignominy of being abandoned thanks to the current shit storm of hype around dogs. As if life was not busy enough already!
So, I am pleased to introduce little Harley. He’s now settled into his new home and taken to his job of door security like an old hand, not a single step is taken on the property that this little fellow does not know about. We have no idea what sort of dog he is but an educated guess is a staffy’ crossed with a bit of whippet and something else. All we know is that he’s the sweetest mannered little boy (10 months old) and smart as a straight razor. HOW could anybody abandon such a beautiful little boy?
There was another Harley turned up this summer of the wheeled variety but that’s not half so interesting.
G.
Sadly we can’t always have what we want.
Dec 14, 2016 | General
The trouble with bonsai is that everything takes so long to achieve, but then that’s what we love about it. After all there is very little satisfaction in achieving anything that is easy. Without wishing to sound maudlin most everything I have ever done has been difficult. Maybe that’s because of my lack of talent, maybe it’s because I set myself too high a standards or maybe that’s just how the world is. I am no philosopher and leave the deciphering of these things to others and as we say in these parts, ‘just keep a troshin’.
In order to make the creation of bonsai a little easier I have spent the last twenty five years figuring out better ways to do things including improving the growth rate of plants in pots as we grow them. Back in the day a bit of garden soil, grit and leaf mould and an occasional dash of Phostrogen was all that we were told was required. However we have come a long way from that and just look at the results. Comparing the average bonsai of today to those of thirty years ago is quite an eye opener. Part of that equation is obviously fertilisers and what we have today is vastly superior to what we had years ago. It’s not that the technology has changed, after all plants still grow exactly as they did since the beginning. The difference is that today we can tailor our fertilising regimen very closely to the plants needs in relation both to what we want to achieve and what the plant needs to make that happen. This is all such a fiendishly complex area that much of modern science is still a bit in the dark. However little by little there is an understanding beginning to emerge.
As a mad bonsai gardener I want to see my trees grow to the best of their ability and because they are all so dammed expensive I want to see them do well but am not prepared to just throw something into the soil hoping for the best. As a business owner what I want to be able to offer my customers is simple solutions to complex problems, after all most of us do not want to have to go back to school and become amateur scientists just to grow a few bonsai trees. On the other hand it’s quite hard for most of us to trust the producers and purveyors of products these days on account of all being up to our necks in hyperbole and bullshit. After all WHO can trust an industry which came up with such an equivocation as ‘plant food’.
Over the last two years I have been working on a couple of new Green Dream products. Green Dream has, after more than twenty five years, become the UK’s most popular bonsai fertilising product selling many tons every year. We think it offers the best value for money whilst categorically NOT containing ANY SHIT in any form. We KNOW it’s the best product of it’s kind available because we have, and continue to, test it alongside all it’s competitors. Green Dream gives the best results in the safest form for the best price, No SHIT! However as the process of developing bonsai goes, it’s very hard to offer one product that does it all. Plants have different nutritional requirements at different times of the year and at different stages of their development and to that end I have been testing and developing various elements in order to create a couple of entirely new products which, finally, are now available.
Green Dream™ Nitro + is a high nitrogen (15%) natural organic fertiliser with the full spectrum of nutrients but higher in organic nitrogen than the other products in the Green Dream range. Perfect for developing raw material and yamadori and increasing the growth rate of all your plants. Traditionally used in spring and early summer high nitrogen feeds produce good firm growth. If you need to see rapid dynamic growth of any potted plant this is the ONLY product you will need. For further details follow the link above.
USING GREEN DREAM NITRO+, FOUR MONTHS GROWTH IN A POT, IN THE UK. THIS TYPE OF VIGOUR WE CAN WORK WITH.
Green Dream™ Soil Source Micro-Biological Soil Additive is an exciting new product that we have developed over the last few years. This is a ground breaking microbial soil additive product unlike anything else available that is simply added to your chosen soil mix or growing media at repotting time. The product, which on the face of it looks like our Green Dream Original product (small dry crumbs), is packed with beneficial micro-organisms like Trichoderma harzianum which are very well documented as being supremely beneficial to the cultivation of plants and the development of roots in horticulture. In the last two years we added this unique new product to well in excess of four hundred repotted plants at various stages of bonsai development. The results were surprising to say the least. Every plant has thrived, regardless of the growing media or species involved, every plant started growing much earlier than normal and much more strongly and once good growth was under way we noticed a significant improvement in the plants uptake of nutrients from fertilizers with improved growth rate, foliage colour and robust appearance. Over the summer period we also saw a dramatic reduction in problems with pest and disease reducing our use of chemical sprays by over 75%. For further details follow the link above.
Green Dream™ dry fertiliser products in large pack sizes are currently available with a half kilo free of charge as we have changed the pack sizes for buckets from 7Kg to 7.5Kg at no additional cost whilst current stocks last.
G.
Dec 9, 2016 | General
Styling bonsai using wire has, in some quarters, always been a bit controversial. I guess it could be viewed as quite invasive but done properly it can work wonders. It would be nice to just sit and look at our yamadori and clip over it from time to time, given enough years this COULD make a nice bonsai. However when you have as much junk around your garden as I do a little clipping is just not going to cut it, excuse the pun. These days I don’t get anywhere close to the time I would like to spend working on trees, there is always just so much to do. However we have sold so many trees this year that the garden is looking a bit thin and so I am having to mobilise my old arse to get some of the old lags whipped into shape.
Over the last couple of weeks, as well as having a few interesting dental challenges I have been trying to work up this old scots pine. Sadly I had to break out the big wire, which I try to avoid these days but this lump needed a strong hand to get it squared away. It never ceases to amaze me doing this type of work. About half way through the wiring I had a picture in my head of exactly how I wanted this to look, the final result is not even close, I’m sure these old trees have a mind of their own. It’s a bit of a weird one and it took way longer than I had thought at the outset but squint at it a bit and I think it worked out Ok.
More coming soon.
G.
Dec 8, 2016 | General
When you work from home there isn’t much peace to be had, it’s pretty much seven days a week. The only time I can find a bit of peace is by being out before dawn which at this time of year is not too hard. After my tribulations of the previous week a little escape for an hour was very much needed. Last weekend I headed out with the dogs to a little spot just down the road where a little grove of evergreen oaks overlook the sea from the cliff tops. Ignoring the cold and squinting a little I could just be in Italy.
Enjoy.
G.
Dec 3, 2016 | General
It’s been a pretty rough week just gone and one I would like to forget pretty quickly.
I am no stranger to pain, for example when I was a young teenager we used to have a big rope swing that all the towns kids used to play on. Down by the harbour are some low cliffs with big trees. Some bright spark nicked a 3″ rope from the docks and strung it up in one of the trees creating the mother of all tree swings as it reached out over an extremely steep slope with a fifty foot drop below. We put a couple of hugh knots in the rope and one fellow would jump up onto the highest one and swing out, on his return another foolhardy fellow, in this case me, would grab the bottom knot and swing out at arms length. With a good push this put you into space, or at least that’s how it felt. On the second swing outwards from terra firma we got into a spin and once we got out towards the horizontal I was launched into the aforementioned space. Back then my head was probably the heaviest part of me (no longer sadly) and not unlike a shuttlecock i tumbled towards the ground head first. After about twenty five or thirty feet, with my arms outstretched I plugged myself hands and face first directly and neatly into the ground ultimately being stopped by my face before the rest of me followed, not surprisingly I was knocked out cold.
Some time later as i regained my whits I noticed some kids at the top of the hill being very amused and some others looking on in horror. Remember this was a time when it would have been Ok to hurl abuse at me for being so feckless. Nobody came to help and in my dazed state i didn’t really know what was going on so I got up, wiped the blood and mud from my face as best i could, climbed back up the hill past the onlooking crowd and threw a leg over my bike in order to go home. As i pushed into the road and attempted to steer something went wrong and I face planted into the road over the handlebars. When I got back up i noticed both arms were broken and the right one was about six inches shorter than it had been earlier and had a huge bump in the middle. Unperturbed I picked up my bike and pushed it way from the scene. Apparently I got about half a mile before I collapsed and passed out in pain. Next thing I new I was surrounded by police who had been looking for a bunch of troublesome kids before finding me all busted up. Turns out I completely snapped my right arm in two and smashed one bone in my left as well as grinding a lot of skin of my face and other extremities. I ended up with both arms in plaster for six weeks, then just for good measure I unset the right arm again even though it was in plaster and had to go back to hospital and have it re-broken in order to straighten it our.
Overall this was one of the more painful experiences I have had. However getting high-sided on a very large bike at over 70mph was up there too, So was the time I hit three cars at over 60mph before landing full weight on my chin, ripping the skin off it and smashing a whole bunch of teeth. This week some of that came home to roost. A tooth, most likely damaged from some silly escapade or other had died and developed a massive abscess which failed to make itself known to be before quite literally blowing up in my face. I ignored it for a couple of days, as best I could, but eventually it bought me to my knees howling in pain and floods of tears. When I did eventually get to the dentist begging for needles it took eight to ten injections before the pain subsided. Out came the tooth along with a small bucket of horrors but not before I came off the bench at least three times. Another couple of hours of that pain and I would have taken a header off a high spot.
Be that as it may business goes on and for the self employed there is no choice but to keep on working and soldier on through. Sorry if you got a hold of me this week and I was a little more grumpy than usual.
Anyway I did manage to get some work done between popping pills and swilling crap out of my new cavity. A new article on carving tools, their use and selection.
Graham’s Guide to Selecting and Using Carving Tools
This was first done in about 2008 but is now all new.
I also managed to secure an exciting new shipment of yamadori, 30-40 trees in total I think. Should be here next week, stay tuned!
G.
Nov 18, 2016 | General
In the light of my previous blog post about price rises I am very happy to say we have good news about our range of carving tools previously branded as Termites. We have invested heavily in this range now known as Saburrtooth® wood carving tools. The range has almost doubled and now offers a great deal more scope for all you carvers out there. As well as increasing the range we have managed to drastically reduce the price increase we were facing to less than 10%, it should have been a good deal more. The price of these has remained unchanged since we first introduced them in 2009.
When I was first sent samples of these tools back in 2008 I have to say i was extremely sceptical about how useful they would be for bonsai work. Now I never carve a project without using these for at least a few operations. I really couldn’t work without them these days. The cutting action of these tools is second to none in it’s smoothness and controllability. There is NO better tool for removing dead bark or rotten wood which is easily cleaned away without cutting the underlying material. I have also found many of the larger burrs to be supremely efficient for external shaping and sculpting, nothing else comes close for that type of work. So, if you have not used Saburrtooth® burrs before, buy one, there are options for every power tool out there, you WILL be delighted.
Our new range of tools includes the Extra Coarse 1/4″ shaft items that are superb for getting to grips with large projects and those requiring rapid stock removal with a minimum of loading. This range includes some larger tools for die grinders that I would certainly not want to be without.
The 2″ range of Buzz Out wheels includes new abrasive grades making this versatile tool even more useful.
For Dremel size machines there are additions to the Small Shaft range including an extremely useful new Needle Point tool.
If you have an Arbotech machine we have a superb round faced edge cutting 2″ Disk option in a variety of abrasive grades.
For those of you who like to tackle big projects, carve big lumps of wood or ever work with fibreglass there is the 4″ option for angle grinders. Incredibly efficient cutting tools with the very nicest of manners, even for inexperienced wood carvers. These are BY FAR the cheapest option open to those who want a big but safe carving tool.
Saburrtooth® wood carving tools are 100% made in the rust belt of the USA where supreme manufacturing skills second to none still exist. You can be sure that every tool you buy is going to do exactly what it should. Ours is the largest range of Saburrtooth® burrs currently available from stock in the UK. These tools are very rapidly gaining an excellent reputation amongst the worlds leading wood carvers. Put some in your tool box today, you’ll be glad you did.
G.
