Nov 11, 2015 | General
It’s been a busy few weeks around here. We did a couple of shows and some demo’s. I also finally got our new Terrier sorted out, it’s a ground breaking new tool that turns your small hobby tool or Dremel into a wood eating monster. Watch this space. Primarily however we have been working some of our trees. This time of year is always a bit quiet on the order front as everyone braces themselves for the silly Christmas season. Living on the coast the weather is very mild at this time of year and with leaves falling it’s time to get some styling work done.
It is becoming increasingly difficult and expensive to source good bonsai trees. Gone are the days of unlimited cheap Japanese imports as the government tries to wreck the business. As a result we are increasingly having to focus on producing our own bonsai. I have written here before I am forever amazed that so many folk do not buy raw unworked material considering the initial cheapness of such plants. Also the sense of satisfaction and reward of creating your own bonsai is immense not to mention the fact it’s entirely possible to double the value of a tree within a year. I do appreciate a lot of folk feel they lack the skills to complete such work but if you don’t try you are guaranteed to fail. In my experience most folk with a modicum of experience can do much more that they might initially think. The trick is to start on something cheap and go from there. Buying a £40 stump won’t financially ruin most of us and even if the results are appalling and you throw it away the lessons learned are worth much more that the price paid. Failure is not a reason to give up. I used to make some pretty ugly trees and killed more than a few but I just kept going, every tree worked is new experience in the bank and after a while it starts to add up.
We have a lot of raw material here. There are normally a couple of hundred trees listed on our web site but we never have less than 1500 to 2000 plants on the nursery. After a while I get fed up with looking at some of it and we make a concerted effort to get plants worked. It never ceases to amaze me, we have a beautiful piece of raw material sitting around for years and they never get a second look. We spend a few hours roughing out the trees shape, the price goes up and folk clamour to buy them. I suppose what’s even more odd is that I don’t make more time to get the work done, it’s my living after all. Having written this I think I should shut up and go do some work!
Anyhow, Rammon and I have been busy these last few weeks roughing out a few of our trees so here are a few images of some of the work.
G.
Oct 5, 2015 | General
Apparently the “Bonsai Group, Enfield” now have to be referred to as “North London Bonsai Group. What ever you call them they can put on a good show. I like this event it’s small enough to be a friendly accessible affair but still manages to maintain a good quality standard. Unfortunately I was way too busy talking nonsense and working to have a chance to take any pic’s of the exhibits to show you.
The demo’ tree I put up last week came out Ok for a three hour session. A short stint is always a challenge to get a significant result but overall this chopped off cupressus made a good step forward I think. Sincere thanks to everyone for their kind comments and encouragement. I expect we will be back again next year.
Heathrow show next…..
G.
Nose art is result of fighting my dog. He gets me every time 😉
Sep 29, 2015 | General
This coming Sunday (4th October) we will be at the Enfield Bonsai Group’s autumn show. I got my arm twisted a bit and will be presenting a demonstration over the day. I thought it would be interesting to let y’awl see the material we will be bringing. This Italian cypress has been cluttering up the place for a few years now and seeing as nobody had the stones to get into it I figured it might make for an interesting project. I have a rough idea how to take this forward, after all it’s a stump with some branches as is the way with bonsai material. I have about four hours to get this done so no pressure then 🙂
This event is a really good friendly little affair and you should make the effort to be there!
G.
Sep 23, 2015 | General
I have been very good all summer. I kept my hands in my pockets and didn’t buy any new trees. We really do need to reduce our inventory to some degree and have in fact managed to relocate a lot of stock. I am pleased to say I am now in full relapse and buying again. 7am this morning we took delivery of the first shipment of yamadori, several are on the way.
Once I get this lot sorted out it’ll be hitting the web site. For now you will have to make do with these few snaps.
G.
Sep 16, 2015 | General
If you live outside the UK the following post might not be relevant to you, especially if you are lucky enough to live in a warm climate.
In my own head I am about as patriotic as it’s possible for a guy to be. Unlike certain ignorant beardy weirdy political figures I will stand up and sing our national anthem with pride. I love what my country is and what it stands for and will fight to the death those that seek to bring us down. One of the things I love about us (Brits’) is the spectacular fashion in which we embrace mediocrity. Modern Britain is no place for extreme views, plain speaking or being too good at anything. Over the past two hundred years Britain has given the world some of it’s most significant technological advances right from the steam engine to the most advanced semiconductors. We come up with incredible advances in every field and then, by and large, lose interest and go do something else. Unlike the Americans who manage to monetize everything in every conceivable way and produce unprecedented wealth as a result we daft Brits’ just give our stuff away to the world (says me sitting here writing this for free). The action avoids the awkward situation of having to ask for money which is always a little hard for us. It also avoids the problem of having too much money because that what would we do with it, we hate a show of wealth and as soon as a person or company amasses too much we turn on them in pretty short order (Tesco?). We love to back the underdog so long as he does not end up doing ‘too’ well. I noticed during my time in America they love a winner, everyone will back a success and want to be a part and share in the glory. Brits love to get close but not too close because it saves all the embarrassment of having to stand in the lime light being the focus of attention. Success is good but too much is vulgar. There is a certain comfort in mediocrity that we revel in and are proud of, we are good at being average and are proud of the fact.
Another thing about Britain that is mediocre is the weather. It’s never cold, it’s never hot, it’s often wet but not too wet (like a monsoon kind of wet). There is not usually much difference between spring summer or autumn. The winter is a little colder and very dark. Considering we are on the same longitude as Goose Bay, Canada which is a “borderline subarctic climate” experiencing close to 170″ of snow a year and an average temperature of -5 Celsius I guess our weather is pretty good. However consider this, Goose Bay gets 10% more sunshine than us which brings me to my point….
The weather is the central preoccupation of most Brits. Ask a Brit how he’s doing and the answer will be a ‘fair to middling’ kind of response. Stand next to us in a bar and pretty soon a discussion about the weather is imminent. Moaning about the weather is another way of grumbling about our lot in life. It’s rude to burden others with your problems so we deflect by pissing and moaning about the climate instead, it’s really complicated being from here.
If you grow bonsai the weather plays a vital role. If you can’t rely on the weather you never know where you are going to be at any given time. Many years we bust our humps to get trees ready for the summer growth period and put in endless hours to set up our plants for a big leap forwards and then, like this year, summer entirely passes us by. This year there was a week of real nice sunshine in June where, even here on the coast, we saw 30 degrees. The following week we had single figures. The spring was nearly two months later that the previous year and August was again back to single figure temperatures and days on end of cloud locked skies. This year I managed as much growth in the entire season as my friend in Spain achieved in 10 days. Where I can grow an average of 12″ on a tree outside he can grow 12′. The logical conclusion is to give up and go fishing but as a Brit I am a sucker for a lost cause.
Our lack of warmth, summer sunshine and light just highlights the need for exemplary horticulture. It’s a mistaken belief that plants get their energy from the soil, probably bought about by calling fertilizer “plant food” which it’s most definitely not. Plants ONLY get their energy from the sun, a lack of good light weakens a plant severely. In the UK plants compensate to some degree by making more chlorophyll thus plants appear greener than their southern cousins and probably gave rise to the collocation “England’s green & pleasant land”. We need light for plants to make energy and when it’s warm that traverses the plant structure faster and cell division happens much more rapidly. More rapid growth means bonsai trees improving in quality much faster and seeing as none of us are getting any younger that can only be a good thing.
So, we need good horticultural technique. We need a larger root mass compared to growers from sunnier climes, a bigger pot works wonders every time.
We need good soil quality designed specifically for our weather conditions and selected to suit the needs of the plant as well as the type of growth we are looking for.
We need to control the moisture content of the rhizosphere in order to maintain oxygen levels and temperature. This may mean protecting a plant from excess rain, even in summer.
We need a good steady supply of nutrients in the form of fertiliser. The daily needs of a growing plant are best served using an organic product like Green Dream Original.
And finally we need a strong source of direct sunlight and if you live where I do that’s a problem. Put simply light intensity is measured in LUX. Even on a clear sunny day here in blighty the light intensity can be half of what it might be in Spain and it’s ilk. At either end of the ‘summer’ light can be in pretty sort supply. We don’t really notice the difference but our plants do. Just a pane of clear glass can cut down light by 50%. To the human eye it looks the same but not to your green friends. Half the light means half the photosynthesis which means half the growth. So, more light is better. The problem is just how to increase the light a plant gets without bringing the national grid to it’s knees.
There is an ever increasing section of society that has this problem licked but our plants are in general not worth what theirs are and justifying electric lighting is tough for bonsai growers. However there is one element our growing compadres use that we can employ at very little cost.
This week I had to empty the poly tunnel in the process of cleaning up and moving trees into their winter quarters (a month sooner than normal). In doing so I took the opportunity to cover our benches. I have been using this silver foil insulation product now for a couple of years with excellent results. The benefits are significant. Firstly it increases light around the plants by up to 50%, I know I measured it with my light meter. Secondly it keeps the wooden benches dry thus preserving them indefinitely and finally it stops all the crap falling through and seeing as I have thousands of pots under my benches saves a very tedious clearing up job every few months. Over time the light transmission benefits do reduce but even after a year or two it’s still making a difference. It only cost about £70 to do all the benches in our 70′ tunnel so the average 8’x 10′ will only cost a few pennies. Well worth the effort and a little leg up for your bonsai that need all the help they can get.
I bought the foil product in B&Q for £8 a roll.
G.
Sep 4, 2015 | General
I write long. The trouble is an idea comes into my head and in an attempt to capture it I write it down. A new idea or notion combines with an old one and before I know it I am off on a tangent to who knows where. Being immersed in bonsai all day every day and talking to people all the time and giving advice is fertile ground for new ideas to sprout, weeds too. I have hundreds of pages of text on my old MAC now and sorting them out is a bit dull, at least to me. Earlier in the year I sat down to write an article on how to really get bonsai growing and developing. I obviously started in the wrong place but the resultant first couple of pages turned into a waffle about how to learn bonsai. Thinking about it here perhaps this SHOULD be the precursor to an article on growing plants. Sometimes we have to part company with poor ideas in order to progress. I will let you judge….
In the first paragraph I refer to an ‘old fellow’. I was heart broken this week to discover he died recently. This grumpy old man really helped me into my bonsai life and belongs to a very few other ‘old fellows’ to whom I owe a great debt. Treasure the old folk!
Back in my early days of discovering bonsai I was lucky enough to share the company of an old fellow who had been around then for as many years as I have now. We were off on one trip or other and discussing his route to enlightenment. Years before he had been lucky enough to spend a considerable amount of time with, what would now be considered, one of the Britain’s founding fathers of bonsai. After much discussion and recounting tales of daring-do my friend pointed out it was not all it could have been. In a flippant but poignant moment his mentor had let slip “ Of course I only pass on what I want you to know, and don’t expect to find out what you really need to know in my books either”.
At the time this made me very angry. After all my friend was spending large gobs of both time and money in good faith in order to further his bonsai skill and knowledge. However, having spent twenty five years in the saddle now I am a little more understanding but I still think the position the teacher took is on one hand abhorrent and on the other very sad. Bonsai is not a competitive sport, it’s a quirky pastime largely enjoyed by a few ‘special’ folk. However at the moment bonsai becomes a matter of pride and the need to ‘beat’ others takes root in our soul the writing is, by and large, on the wall. I have seen more folk lost to bonsai because of a need to be better than others than for any other reason. The problem being that no matter how good your bonsai are there is always going to be someone out there with better. This will sow a seed of dissatisfaction that will, in time, grow up to strangle our love of bonsai. Ambition and the need to compete is a strong emotion in most of us but, as with all emotions, if not held in check it can eat us alive.
People fail in bonsai for any number of reasons. Number one is because they lose trees. If you have ever spoken to the public about bonsai you will have heard “Oh! I had a bonsai once but it died”. My retort is always “It didn’t die you killed it”. Which gets a stern face in reply before I explain, as I have a thousand times…. Bonsai are just plants and have simple needs. Light, air and water provided in the right proportions under the right conditions. How hard can it be? The simple answer is NOT HARD AT ALL. However humans have an inane need to complicate everything and it is destroying us. I am old enough now to remember simpler times. I do have to wear spec’s now for reading but they are not rose tinted. It’s a fact that in the past life was much simpler and folk were much happier as a result. If you weren’t there you won’t know. In spite of our ridiculous thrust toward ever more complicated and busy lives some things do not change. People remain the same bumbling, stumbling, farting and shitting silly meat sacks we always were. Sure we can make a few cool things but underneath we remain the same with all our basic needs, worries, cares and insecurities shared by our ancestors of a thousand years ago. That’s what so many people love about bonsai, it remains the same. Sure we refine a few techniques along the way but fundamentally we remain a little child who has performed the magic of shrinking a special old and magical tree into a little pot that we can carry around and care for.
The big issue today is simply too much unqualified information. As soon as a yellow leaf appear folk hit the web and start choking down great gobs of information. In my experience the ideas we pick up in the first few months of our bonsai journey take root like Japanese knotweed which is good if those ideas are sound but if they are erroneous or ill informed most everything that comes after will be on a shaky foundation. The internet is a great resource but unlike times past anyone and everyone can get their ideas published and out there for all to see. Previously you needed to use more expensive mediums to get your voice heard and because those channels were expensive folk putting up the money made sure, in general, those doing the speaking were at least qualified to do so. As an example…. Over the years I have been fanatical about growing mediums (soil) for bonsai. There is not any product or combination of ingredients I have not tried. One thing I know as a fact, using straight Moler without any other elements for growing bonsai in the British climate will not work well. There are a large number of factors why but I will not go into them here. Some time ago I saw on a forum a post extolling the magic of Moler as a growing medium and advocating it’s use straight from the bag. The writer sited improved growth and ease of watering as his primary reason for recommending the product. There was no information about the trees involved, their history or even species. There was no information about pots, growing conditions, fertilisers, water quality or any other very significant factors. An unqualified random experience of an unknown grower without any context, presented over just one season. I can be supremely confident, assuming the fellow continued in bonsai, that the soil mix he is now using has changed. However for anyone with very little experience, reading a post like that confirms the use of the product in that way and with little experience or a wider understanding of horticulture failure is imminent. I am sure the writer had the best of intentions but I am also sure he never picked up the thread again down the road and told everyone he got it a bit wrong.
If you are sick you go to a doctor. The doctor is qualified in general practice and is educated enough to know if you have a problem. If it’s simple he will give you a script’ for something to fix you up. However if he fears there may be something more complicated you will be off to see a specialist in fairly short order. That specialist will be extensively more skilled in his area than the GP. You would be crazy to go down to the local pub to get a diagnosis. In minutes there would be dozens of nosey beggars chipping in their two pennies worth and I can guarantee by the time you left you would be dazed and confused. Starting to sound familiar? One of my significant mentors in bonsai told me you “Have to judge people by the quality of their bonsai”. It’s not what you buy it’s what you grow. Many folk have the ability to go out and buy trees way beyond their experience and skill level. In the same way we now educate people way beyond their intellectual capacity and have a lot of PHDs that are in fact Post Hole Diggers. My mentor had a classic ‘put down’ “I can’t hear what you are saying because your trees are talking too loud”. Cruel but so often true. The only way we can determine the quality of a bonsai teacher is by the quality of the trees THEY have produced. Even that is not entirely straight forward because in the early days we are easily impressed.
The heart and soul of a teacher and their entire purpose is to pass on information and skills that open doors for their students. The greatest delight for a true teacher is to see their student go on to achieve greater success than they themselves could ever hope to achieve. In my life and my bonsai journey I have been privileged to meet a few of these inspiring folk. Sadly though most of the people I have met have lacked the true heart of a teacher and many are using “teaching” as a means to make themselves look good and feel better about their lives. It’s simple to be a big fish in a small pond, every bonsai club has one. Speaking personally I never quite understood the need to have ‘students’ (the term is often used as a euphemism for allegiance) I know the human race is extremely tribal in nature and I know it feels good to ‘belong’ but, in my experience and observations of the last twenty five years in our hobby the best way to progress is to take as much information as you can from every source available. Learning is an ongoing process and like an alchemist we should take as many elements as we can and then by combining them together with skill and in the light of our own experience we can develop something that is more than the sum of it’s parts. Allying ourselves to a particular person, becoming a ‘student’, means we are destined to go only as far as our teacher but, if our chosen mentor does not have a desire to see us succeed we are more likely to always end up as much less than the sum of our parts. I highly recommend working with as many learned folk as you can, take as much as you can from everyone and then combine what you have learned with your own experience and develop your own blend of bonsai. However do be wary of nailing your colours to any particular mast to the exclusion of all others. Swearing allegiance to a flag is a very patriotic thing to do but in bonsai it’s not necessary.
I say all that to say this. Most bonsai folk fail because of a few mis-truths they got lodged in their heads long before they knew any better. When we are new to anything we soak up information like a sponge, the trouble is later on we have difficulty shedding poor quality information. Be very careful what you pick up in the early days and always try to qualify the source before you add credence to any pearls of wisdom you tuck away. Finally NEVER be reluctant to try new things, maintain an open mind. Always be prepared to jettison old ideas and never stop questioning what you know and what you do. Keep your eyes fixed on the future, accept failure as the price of an education and never stop moving forward. There will be some scary moments (like the time I spent 6 months salary on a single tree) and some sad times but just keep going. There is so much exciting and rewarding stuff to discover it won’t stop until you are dead. If you have become bored with bonsai, frustrated or disillusioned it’s because you have stopped learning. As another old fellow once said “If you try you might fail but, if you don’t try you are guaranteed to fail”.
G.
