You’ll guess from the title of this post that it’s been a Busy Few Weeks at Kaizen Bonsai. Not that we have been selling much particularly, just enough to keep the wheels on. Feels to me like our collective personal finances are beginning to look a lot like our country in general, in a word…. ailing.
The bonsai business has, in my experience, always been largely recession proof. Take 2008 and all that banker malarkey, despite it all folk spent money on what really mattered to them which in our context was bonsai. Whilst things generally were falling apart, our little business doubled it’s size. This time things seem a different, a lot more serious, I might say darker. Things in Blighty are not good, our once proud country seems to be tearing itself apart. But enough of that maudlin shit, i know you came here for enlightenment and to enjoy my sunny disposition and uplifting prose and hopefully some nice pictures of bonsai right?
In the last month it’s been nice to welcome in a whole host of new Japanese trees and raw material. Thankfully the cost pressures on import have eased a little as shipping costs have fallen a bit. However demand for bonsai trees and material in all their forms continues to outstrip supply worldwide so on balance don’t expect tree prices to be falling any time soon. Here are the first few I listed for sale this week. Details here>
Japanese juniper bonsai available now.
Dwarf foliage white pine bonsai material on sale now
Craggy Japanese white pine ready for styling.
We have had a great few weeks producing some new videos, yes I finally have time again after several years and my software is working too, which it did not for a long time. Being an OLD clod-hopper I need something pretty simple to do this work. Editing video is still less attractive to me than breaking the ice off the bird bath with my bare ass first thing in the morning but I guess we all have to do things we don’t really want too. I think it’s what they call ‘being a grown up‘.
It was a great experience to collaborate with me ol’ mate Kevin (follow on Instagram) on what we both believe to be currently the best scots in the country (unless you know different, let me know). There are a good number of similar projects earmarked for the coming months. We have also been getting heads together over some other interesting possibilities…… stay tuned.
We have been very busy with importing ALL SORTS of bonsai soil products. Since Brexit this has become so difficult, time consuming and expensive that next year I will start importing aggregates from the moon, it’s easier and cheaper.
As a result our warehouse is bursting with thirty to forty tons of bonsai growing products ready for what we affectionately call ‘soil season’. We have massive stocks off all the usual favourites like Akadama and Pumice in a number of grades including an all new Pumice Fine Sand.
NEW GRADE. Pumice Fine Sand
Other new products include a very fine clean grade of our popular expanded clay Supalite Fine . Also pleased our popular Lapillo Fine is back in stock.
NEW Supalite fine. Beautiful clean bonsai substrate available from stock.
Lapillo – Fine Grade – Volcanic Lava Bonsai Growing Media
NEW! Premium Bonsai Compost – Shohin Soil Mix
Also on the soil front, for months now I have had folk asking what happened to our amazing Shohin Soil Mix. Well, after covid many manufacturers dropped a lot of products that we needed to make that and it’s literally only the last few weeks some are starting to return. As a result I’m very pleased to say we now have an ALL NEW and much improved NEW! Premium Bonsai Compost – Shohin Soil Mix. This is at a great price considering the work it takes to make and how many elements we have to bring together in order to make it happen. Do not leave it to the last minute to order as if we get insanely busy it will disappear again should our workload preclude it’s production.
NEW! Premium Bonsai Compost – Shohin Soil Mix
There have also been new deliveries of pots ready for the spring season along with Japanese tools. I have also been busy securing supplies of some of our most popular Bonsai Carving Tools. Popular tools like our little Pencil Bit, as Kevin calls it. Securing supplies of all sorts of things is now much harder and more expensive than it was but pleased to say this popular little tool will be available at the same great price for a long time to come now. There are a few new tools and some returning favourites too so please check out the web site.
The legendary Pencil Bit. Supply and price secured for the foreseeable future.
Much like bonsai trees themselves we never really get time to rest. The world has become a very uncertain place over the last few years and doing what we at KB do has become increasingly hard but rest assured we have got ya’lls back and a literal mountain of stock ready for the new season when it starts. Some smart folk have already been taking advantage and buying their re-potting supplies in advance, to those who have we thank you for easing our workload in the new year.
Over the coming few weeks I have a number of video projects I am hoping to get done if time and weather allow so do stop by regularly. Next up is a monster privet I collected 7-8 years ago and has been untouched since, should be a good one. If it does not work out or looks crap of course you won’t see it, i don’t need help to look like a chump now do I?
I keep getting requests to do a garden walk-around which of course I am not going to. First reason, I don’t have a display garden just a very utilitarian sort of little commercial nursery. Second, i’m quite attached to many of my trees and the last thing I need is some little scrote helping himself to my hard work just before my dog gets teeth into his nut sack. Who needs all that grief ?
However what I have done is a quick walk through my scruffy, ie busy, workshop early this freezing winters morning. It’s a bit dark and shaky but it is free so please enjoy and please keep buying our stuff so I can keep the wheels on. Cheers.
Weather-wise 2023 started off well here at KB world headquarters before rapidly turning into a shit-show once spring dawned upon us. On the east coast the month of May was significantly colder than January as a northeasterly wind cut us deep for many weeks. Cultivating bonsai here in troubled Britain is all about the weather which is only marginally more reliable than the incompetence and duplicity of politicians and the ruling class. A good weather year makes all the difference to exactly what can be achieved with our bonsai
After thirty five years I have noticed that, in a typical British growing season our plants normally do okay. However unlike other warmer places I have been lucky enough to visit there are no guarantees and, by and large, our trees fight tooth and nail to achieve barely what’s required each season. The weather here is always going to restrain our bonsai ambitions and limit the level to which we can rise in comparison with those lucky enough to live under a sunny blue sky rather than a leaden grey one.
Once again this year, despite the weather, most of my own trees did about what I expected. Scots pine, always reliable performers did great, junipers were distinctly average, elms I found piss-poor alongside hawthorns. But, much to my surprise considering single figure temperatures in June our maples of all varieties did great. I have a little deshojo here and it had the best year I have ever seen with bright red colour right into autumn before making a spectacular display of colour before leaf drop. Every year there seem to be winners and losers in our crap-shoot climate, note the emphasis!
So, that being the case I thought it was high time I put together some information on the aforementioned in video form and so here is YET another video, i’m really on a roll at the moment. This poor old Japanese maple arrived here in a right 2 & 8 having suffered almost criminal neglect over a good number of years. It’s sad to me that some folk have so little respect for the work of those who came before but I Guess those are the times in which we live.
Japanese Maple Bonsai Pruning Video – New!
This one runs on a bit and as usual i’m pretty good at repeating myself but only because those points need …… pointing out. Sadly not all bonsai is dramatic or exciting, in fact I would say 99% is repetition of mundane techniques. If you need a bit of excitement, a head rush or an adrenaline shot go purchase an MV Agusta. I already own one and recon they should be illegal, just like juggling live hand grenades naked in public. That’s infinitely preferable to feckin’ up good trees in an attempt to spice up your life but I digress.
The video is now live and I hope ya’ll enjoy it and hopefully pick up a few tips which is exactly what i’m going to go and do now, sweep up all those leaves. Remember to like, share and subscribe so you don’t miss even more ol’ bollocks in the future lovely folk.
Graham Potter
This is an MV Agusta with it’s Ferrari engine and it’s fucking terrifying (0-60mph under 3s) and spectacular in equal measure. Bonsai is a different thing all together.
This is a Japanese maple bonsai. It’s the same colour (silver & red) but entirely different and lacking in any ability to produce adrenaline. If you need peace and quiet however it’s right up there.
It’s hard to believe but it’s Easter already and seeing as it was December last time I posted anything here a spring rant is long overdue.
Here at KB holidays are few and far between in common with most of the beleaguered British underclass known as the ‘self employed’. In actual fact I have not had a holiday, like the ones where you go somewhere nice, for OVER 30 years. Bonsai and summer vacations are not compatible and in our business winter is just too busy to get away. Not that I give a toss, I have everything in the world I need right here and the thought of having to take on traffic and travelling crowds is sufficient to persuade me to stay home. However what we do manage to achieve these days is extended weekends and bank holidays. That is a stupid idea really because when we do get back to work the effort of clearing the backlog of orders far exceeds any benefit the break afforded us. So, we tend to just work every day regardless.
After the Christmas break our workload increases exponentially. Turnover for January is typically five times what we might do in an autumn month. We go from shipping a couple of dozen orders a day at the scrag end of the year to between one and two hundred a day from January until May. These days that can include up to a thousand kilos of soil products a day and for a geriatric old bloke like me that’s a tough ask. On a good day we manually shift 5-7 tons of stuff between us however that’s the easy bit.
Ever since the governments actions to limit the spread of Covid (H’m that worked out well) our supply chains have been in crisis. Factories shut down and materials were hard to get. Container shipping prices increased up to ten-fold as the world clamoured to restore order and then on top of that we let a megalomaniac loose on eastern Europe which caused panic across the timorous markets that we allow to determine the price of pretty much everything. That’s resulted in insane price inflation although a LOT of those increases have little to do with the cost of materials and a lot more to do with an explosion in admin’ costs associated with rules, regulations and an exponential increase in UK import costs. That coupled with the cost of fuel, which is a BIG percentage of the cost of literally everything, has been killing us.
As an example let’s look at our supremely popular soil product S-Te. The manufacturer informed us that this was finished. It’s produced using propane gas and because the cost of this went into the stratosphere he pulled the plug. What followed was a frantic negotiation on my part to secure our supply. The net result was me stumping up a good five figure sum to secure many tons that would ensure our stock for a few months and I had to actually OFFER him a big price increase as an incentive. After that I can’t tell what will happen. This example was repeated multiple times for up to half our range of Bonsai Growing Media.
So I have spent a LOT to secure at least some of the supplies we are all going to need. So now I have hundreds of pallets of stock sitting everywhere from our warehouse to southern Italy. How long this will last I can’t tell. In the long term I think we are going to loose some of the staples we currently take for granted. Everything is in flux and our position remains precarious. That’s all very stressful and a lot to deal with, I don’t sleep much these days.
Here’s an example that’s still ongoing. We sold masses of Akadama this year, even at the inflated price it carries these days folk want it in the worst way. All of the regular channels were out but I managed to find several tons on the other side of the channel. We put that on the road mid-February. As of today (5 April) it’s still on the other side of the water. Somehow it’s got caught up in a simply incomprehensible web of complication caused by asshole customs agents and transport companies. I have been spending up to three days a week dealing with these Muppets and I’ve lost a good five figure sum in sales that would have helped see us through the lean summer months.
Bearing in mind our web site carries over 1500 product lines almost every single item has become an insane battle to secure supplies. Even if I can buy the items I need, moving them has become extremely difficult in most cases. Nobody in the UK answers emails or phones. Transport companies are by and large asleep. Here’s a great example. I had a delivery of tools and wire, this amounted to 4 big pallets. This arrived Ok and went into our warehouse late September. Before we could put any of it into the system I needed to get all my import paperwork in place in order to determine my final costs and therefore determine the retail prices. It took the freight agent over FOUR months just to get that out to me so the stock sat there untouched. How can it take 4 months just to get a bill? Anyone who knows me will be laughing about now but why on earth do I have to resort to profanities before anyone will do their jobs these days? I’m so tired sorting all this out. I just want to give up and go cut grass for a living.
Still, the good news? H’mmmmm, thinking hard here………. Ho! I know, it’s spring, sun is streaming through the window, my recent bout of sciatica is finally on it’s way out and the garden is looking good.
Since we stopped selling 1500 trees a year I now have the luxury of doing my own bonsai. It’s taken me thirty years but I’m now finally back doing what I intended right at the start and it’s a nice thing to do.
I have 2-300 trees here I have kept back over the years and some are actually in danger of becoming decent bonsai. Over the years I have spent a lot of time helping other folk to do bonsai and at the same time selling all my best trees to those same folk. For too many years I have looked on enviously as those trees developed whilst mine went past on a conveyor belt like a crap parody of the The Generation Game.
Being in business today is not easy, the stress is high, the rewards are slim and the insecurity is hard to live with. A couple of my good friends have retired recently which makes me SOO envious. Foolishly I followed my heart in life and ended up in the bonsai business that’s not generated a pension for us so I will have to die in the saddle but i‘m Ok with that so long as I can do a little bonsai, ride my bikes and occasionally enjoy a Herf at my local bike shop where we can put the world to rights.
So, have a great Easter break everyone and enjoy those simple pleasures because very soon that’s all they are going to let us have!
Here’s a few pretty pictures from the last week around the garden. Enjoy. I’m off to cut the grass 😉
Graham.
A Spring Rant is Long Overdue.
My new infatuation, purple leaf crab apples.
Everyone in Bonsai loves a spring maple don’t they?
Little nire elm grown from a cutting waking up.
Another type of red crab apple.
Spring colours. Always a great time in the bonsai garden.
Peach blossom.
Trident in full leaf.
Recent Oak project. Good oak take many years to develop.
Here’s how you know an oak is good to work.
First pot and rough branch shaping. That deadwood will go in time.
English elm, just plain weird.
In bonsai you just have to do the best you can with what you got.
First up please accept my apologies for the silence these last few weeks. This time of year I’m a dead man walking, we’re so busy. Getting over a ton of soil products out the door EVERY DAY is killing us all, even my strapping 30-year-old son-in-law. Normal service will be resumed soon 😉
Just time to point out a special offer price on some Japanese unglazed pots I bought far too many of. It’s against my religion to offer a sale price but this lack in concentration has proven I’m far from infallible.
Limited-time offer on some pots in a variety of sizes listed in our section of Japanese Made Quality Stoneware Bonsai Pots. You may have to scroll down a bit to find the specific items.
