ANYBODY NEED SAGE FOR THERE TURKEY DRESSING?

 

Hello to all and a very Happy Thanksgiving. Sage as a bonsai who would have ever thought? Oh excuse me I did.

Sage is a wonderful craggily looking material in the trunk and it is indigenous to most high and even some low Deseret areas of America and other areas of the world. I worked on a ranch in the state of Nevada years ago when I was young. The one small room little bunk house I lived in had an old pop belly stove and I would burn sage brush in it and believe me when I say sage makes for a quick and very easy hot fire.

The high desert of Nevada gets mighty cold at night and in real early morning time but that sage could warm up my entire little cabin in a heart beat and have my coffee brewing in a short time. Sage is very aromatic and the oils in the woody material will make it catch fire readily. The native tribes used sage for many different things and also for seasoning various foods. They made mats for there dwellings out of the sage wood as sage will strip fairly readily and can then be woven.

I did not know but the sage plant can actually talk to one another. No not really talk but they give off a sort of special chemical sent that can be recognized by other sage plants in times of stress or pest infestations and the like so if one is being attacked it can send out the sent and others are for warned and then can actually infect the invaders.

I was lucky to get this one and its been in my collection now for about ten years. I have no idea how old it is as it is a collected plant and only god knows its age. Sage leaves are pretty small and very pretty light muted blue gray looking. The sage plant can go a long time with out water as it is accustomed to that in the high deserts.

My sage tree is in a cascade style potting and in a nice dark blue pot and I have only transplanted it once since I have owned it.

The soil is my ready mix of pumice akadama, and lava rock. Almost all of my bonsai are planted in this same mixture only at different levels of akadama depending on the tree. Sage is truly edible and many animals and birds depend on it for extra food sources and nutrients, rabbits, mule deer, pronghorn and sage grouse. The sage grouse also use the brush for cover and shelter in times of need from other predator's. The young eat the seeds and the sage is a real true friend of the sage grouse.

Sage is in the family of Asteraceae and grows fairly prolific in the United states in many states and in many other countries.

This sage brush was collected in the high desert around Madras Oregon. The region is prolific with sage. It was collected on a fishing trip to the area. The sage can produce small yellow flowers in early spring and if you rub a sprig in your finger tips and smell it then your in for a real nice treat and or surprise.

 A lot of sage gets destroyed by wild fires every year and there have been ecology experts from the land management offices actually getting inmates in the Oregon Penial system to grow the plants to reforest a lot of the areas affected. It is said that they grew more 90 thousand plants alone in the year 2017 and are still making it happen to this day. The sage grouse is fast becoming close to being added to the endangered act and truly do depend on the sage for their survival.

If your out in any area where sage grows you may want to try and collect one. But always make sure you get permission first from a local forest service station area. Or try to get some seeds and plant them to grow one or many. If you do get permission to collect one then be especially careful to dig a wide area around the plant while trying to up root it and make sure you get as much of the root as possible.

Collect some of the actual soil where you dig the tree up and use that as its beginning substrate planting then later after your sure it is established good and not going to perish then move it on to the pumice, lave rock and akadama mixture.  Sage can live to over 100 years old if cared for properly.

 Good luck and I hope you have a wonderful Thanks Giving where ever you are in the world.

By: Harold Yearout ©Copyright 2021 Harold Yearout All Rights Reserved for more information feel free to contact me: h.yearout@gmail.com

 

Why do bonsai artists call multiple trees of the same kind a forest?

 Hi there and welcome to yet another of my many rants. The correct terminology would be to call it a grove of trees and not a forest. To further bolster my opinion then please if you will, can tell me the last time you were any where in the world in a forest and seen only one kind of a tree growing? 

No indeed in a forest of trees there are many varieties and types not to mention many other types of vegetation growing all over and around rocks, stumps, and ferns and all sorts of other things alive and or dead.

The Chinese are famous for plantings they call Penjing which often result in a very wonderful and beautiful looking bonsai display of many trees almost always of the same verity and kind of material.

Although this may not always be the case as in my personal Penjing for instance I have three different types of tropical trees and three ferns and a couple of Azaleas growing so it could sort of be a tropical forest I guess but I prefer to not call it that but a grove of trees and other materials.

 I personally only have one of such type plantings and it is a tropical indoor bonsai and consists of a Saikei Penjing planting of Ficus Benjamina, little gems as they are called, dwarf Hawallan Schefflers and small little Azaleas Kakuo some various small ferns and they were all taken as cuttings and grown on to be a nice grove of tropical trees in a lovely small shallow pot and all the material is growing on a hand made concrete slab and with various rocks and other items to represent some what of an island scene placed into a very shallow cheremic dish type bowl.  

Any way I guess the point of this rant is to indeed try to get other bonsai artists to call it what it is and not something else it is not. I will try to take a picture for you of the Saikei Penjing tomorrow and along with some other small bonsai I have planted.  I do know that when the Japanese plant these type of plantings they always use an odd number of tress for what ever reasons they believe that even numbers of trees in a planting is bad luck and so every one of there grove type plantings consist of odd numbers of tress and or other items rock ferns and such.

I also purchased a couple of small variegated ivy and one that was a little larger and had already been started as a bonsai. I do not know much about ivy but I will learn and start growing some varieties for my garden. I do know that we have an English verity here that is very strong growing and can be somewhat of a pest in the garden if not kept in check. I have some growing in my garden as ground cover and it does well as long as you do your diligence and keep cutting it back and keeping it under control.

I have a very nice Fukin Tea and it needs a hair cut very bad as it went nuts this summer and I did not trim on it and now it looks out of control but tomorrow I will prune it back and try to regain some control over the plant. I will try to root the cutting material off of it but do indeed not know if I will have any success in rooting any of it as it should be rooted from cuttings in the summer and or planted and grown from seeds. I have never done either so we will see what happens by just keeping the cut material in a jar of water and see if any of it forms roots.

No harm in trying as I hate to throw any material away that could possibly be grown on to make a nice little future tree. I got my hands on some very nice material this year and will be posting articles about the trees and pictures here in the next few weeks. So in closing for now until tomorrow when I attempt to get some pictures of the materials I purchased today I say good evening to you and have a good one.

As promised here are my pictures. Above is my Penjing planting I really enjoy this bonsai and it is of course tropical so needs to be indoors other than in the late spring or summer time. Can also be kept in a heated greenhouse in the winter.

This is my heart Ivy so named because the leaves are heart shaped.

As promised here are some pictures of my Ivy and my Penjing plantings one of the pictures of the heart ivy is to kind of show you the trunk girth. I will take a picture of my Fukin tea at another time because I will at that time write a post about that species of plant as a bonsai.

Here is a variegated ivy I planted from a cutting so far it's doing fine. It's just very small yet and will take at least three to five years to develop. I hope that I  have peaked your interest and maybe you will also try a Penjing planting as well as grow some ivy as a bonsai. Almost any material can be made into a bonsai and grown on for many years. It just takes time an patient's. Of course also knowing the material species helps so before jumping in do your home work..

By: Harold Yearout ©Copyright 2021 Harold Yearout All Rights Reserved for more information feel free to contact me: h.yearout@gmail.com