Here is a small five year old shohin Zelkova that is just starting to show some promise and will some day make a wonderful bonsai.
Posted by Hello
Monday, June 27, 2005
Zelkova Schneideriana or Elm As Bonsai
The zelkova is a genius of the elm family of plants and there are about six trees in this family and they are deciduous. The zelkova is common in North America and Northern Europe and of course East Asia.
The name zelkova is derived from one of the languages of Caucasus.
These plants occur in woodland thickets and hedge groves in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Iran, and Asia. They have an ovate to elliptic type leaf and they produce a fantastic display of fall color if left out doors they will eventually completely defoliate and loose all of there leaves until the next spring.
Many of these elms have been acclimated over the years to grow indoors as bonsai. However this plant will do much better out doors but you can grow zelkova indoors if reasonable care is taken.
The most common of the elms is the Japanese Gray bark and it is well known and grown through out the world as bonsai.
However there is no reason that some of these other species can not be grown as well and also do just as well as a bonsai.
If you do decide to grow one of these plants indoors then find a well lit and fairly cool position for it and place it on a humidity tray and mist as often as you can.
If you prefer that your plant be deciduous and loose its leaves and have a slight dormant period then try to keep the plant out side during the regular season from may till early Autumn and then begin to bring it back indoors after it has dropped its leaves.
If you prefer to grow your zelkova outdoors then you’ll want to provide it some protection from frost and extreme cold once the plant has lost its leaves it can be wintered in garages or out buildings as they do not require light once leaf drop has occurred.
Watering will be much more critical indoors than outdoors as it will tend to dry out much quicker because of a lack of humidity unless you can provide it with some sort of green house affect.
Feeding of your plant will require a fertilizer high in nitrogen early in the spring when leaf bud is forming for at least about a month then you can drop back to just a well balanced feed for the rest of the season about every two weeks or so.
Pruning of your zelkova will certainly help it to become more compact and grow much nicer for you. I always wait and allow the shoots to grow out to about four nodes and then I prune back to about one or two leaves to get a more compact look.
The zelkova will respond very well to the broom style of bonsai as this tends to be its natural growing habit anyway.
However they can be trained in nearly any style that you desire so just decide on how you want your plant to look and then just work at it till you get what you want.
You can propagate this plant by seeds or green cuttings in the summer and hardwood cuttings in the winter and air layering after the spring growth has hardened off.
Plants that have been planed in pots or trained as bonsai are pretty safe from the well known Dutch elm disease. But you may want to watch out for aphids and leafhoppers and gall mites and you’ll want to be aware of leafspot.
You can wire your elm for shape and style but be aware that the bark will scare easily and care should be taken when you wire this tree.
Thanks, for reading and viewing.
©Copyright 2005 Harold Yearout All Rights Reserved
For more information feel free to Contact Me:
The name zelkova is derived from one of the languages of Caucasus.
These plants occur in woodland thickets and hedge groves in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Iran, and Asia. They have an ovate to elliptic type leaf and they produce a fantastic display of fall color if left out doors they will eventually completely defoliate and loose all of there leaves until the next spring.
Many of these elms have been acclimated over the years to grow indoors as bonsai. However this plant will do much better out doors but you can grow zelkova indoors if reasonable care is taken.
The most common of the elms is the Japanese Gray bark and it is well known and grown through out the world as bonsai.
However there is no reason that some of these other species can not be grown as well and also do just as well as a bonsai.
If you do decide to grow one of these plants indoors then find a well lit and fairly cool position for it and place it on a humidity tray and mist as often as you can.
If you prefer that your plant be deciduous and loose its leaves and have a slight dormant period then try to keep the plant out side during the regular season from may till early Autumn and then begin to bring it back indoors after it has dropped its leaves.
If you prefer to grow your zelkova outdoors then you’ll want to provide it some protection from frost and extreme cold once the plant has lost its leaves it can be wintered in garages or out buildings as they do not require light once leaf drop has occurred.
Watering will be much more critical indoors than outdoors as it will tend to dry out much quicker because of a lack of humidity unless you can provide it with some sort of green house affect.
Feeding of your plant will require a fertilizer high in nitrogen early in the spring when leaf bud is forming for at least about a month then you can drop back to just a well balanced feed for the rest of the season about every two weeks or so.
Pruning of your zelkova will certainly help it to become more compact and grow much nicer for you. I always wait and allow the shoots to grow out to about four nodes and then I prune back to about one or two leaves to get a more compact look.
The zelkova will respond very well to the broom style of bonsai as this tends to be its natural growing habit anyway.
However they can be trained in nearly any style that you desire so just decide on how you want your plant to look and then just work at it till you get what you want.
You can propagate this plant by seeds or green cuttings in the summer and hardwood cuttings in the winter and air layering after the spring growth has hardened off.
Plants that have been planed in pots or trained as bonsai are pretty safe from the well known Dutch elm disease. But you may want to watch out for aphids and leafhoppers and gall mites and you’ll want to be aware of leafspot.
You can wire your elm for shape and style but be aware that the bark will scare easily and care should be taken when you wire this tree.
Thanks, for reading and viewing.
©Copyright 2005 Harold Yearout All Rights Reserved
For more information feel free to Contact Me:
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Here is a five year Ficus Retusa fig still small and still what I consider to be a starter plant.
Posted by Hello
The Ficus or Fig as Bonsai
The ficus is a very popular plant for bonsai and there are some where around 800 different species of these evergreen shrubs and trees and climbers that exist and they all are tropical and sub tropical.
The Ficus Retusa fig can make a wonderful bonsai if you simply take your time and work with this plant to get a shape and style going.
They are very tolerant of indoor growing conditions and will adept to most homes.
Most of our homes though have very poor humidity and unfortunately humidity is pretty much a necessity to the growing of ficus.
This is not to say that your fig will die or not live it simply will not grow as well or as fast if you subject it to less than the ideal conditions that they are used too.
The ideal conditions of course would be when you can provide lots of high humidity consistent watering and plenty of light.
Some things that you can do to improve the levels of humidity around your plant would be to keep it on a humidity tray and spray mist it regularly through out the day when ever possible. You might also try and pot some moss along in your pot to help retain moisture.
Some apartment dwellers may have a bathroom that does not have an outside window and If this is the case and you take a lot of showers and your bathroom steams up that’s great simply take along your fig and let it soak up all that wonderful humidity even if it is for a short while.
Since most of these type of plants are found on the jungle floor and the other taller tress block out a lot of the light they are fairly light tolerant and will adept to most indoor poor lighting conditions.
There are at least a dozen species of ficus and hundreds of varieties of figs within that species and of these there are many that can and will make a wonderful bonsai.
Try if at all possible to place your fig in a very high light condition even full sun will not harm your fig and by keeping a humidity tray filled with some small pea gravel under your plant you’ll only encourage it to grow faster and be healthier.
Of course misting will also be welcomed and you most likely couldn’t ever mist enough unless you had your bonsai all growing in a green house with a built in misting system. So you need not worry about over misting any of these plants as they all love it.
You will most likely need to repot your ficus at least every other year and feed it only during the growing season and never when it looks to be in poor health or during the winter months.
Ficus can be pruned during the spring although most will be tolerant of pruning year around as long as you’re not hard pruning and by hard pruning I mean taking a lot off of your plant.
Scale insects and mites can some times be a problem and should be watched for on your figs. Figs will leaf drop very fast if subjected to poor conditions such as over watering, or poor light, or drafts but if the conditions are improved your fig can leaf back in as little as 3 to 6 weeks.
Some of the varieties that make good bonsai are Ficus Salicifolia or willow leaf fig, the famous Ficus Benjamina of course and Ficus Retusa, or the Chinese banyan, and there is also a variety called the Green Island Fig which is also a variety of the Retusa.
Figs can se started from cuttings or seeds and of course air layering I prefer cuttings and have started most If not all of my figs in this manner.
Thanks, for reading and viewing.
©Copyright 2005 Harold Yearout All Rights Reserved
For more information feel free to Contact Me:
The Ficus Retusa fig can make a wonderful bonsai if you simply take your time and work with this plant to get a shape and style going.
They are very tolerant of indoor growing conditions and will adept to most homes.
Most of our homes though have very poor humidity and unfortunately humidity is pretty much a necessity to the growing of ficus.
This is not to say that your fig will die or not live it simply will not grow as well or as fast if you subject it to less than the ideal conditions that they are used too.
The ideal conditions of course would be when you can provide lots of high humidity consistent watering and plenty of light.
Some things that you can do to improve the levels of humidity around your plant would be to keep it on a humidity tray and spray mist it regularly through out the day when ever possible. You might also try and pot some moss along in your pot to help retain moisture.
Some apartment dwellers may have a bathroom that does not have an outside window and If this is the case and you take a lot of showers and your bathroom steams up that’s great simply take along your fig and let it soak up all that wonderful humidity even if it is for a short while.
Since most of these type of plants are found on the jungle floor and the other taller tress block out a lot of the light they are fairly light tolerant and will adept to most indoor poor lighting conditions.
There are at least a dozen species of ficus and hundreds of varieties of figs within that species and of these there are many that can and will make a wonderful bonsai.
Try if at all possible to place your fig in a very high light condition even full sun will not harm your fig and by keeping a humidity tray filled with some small pea gravel under your plant you’ll only encourage it to grow faster and be healthier.
Of course misting will also be welcomed and you most likely couldn’t ever mist enough unless you had your bonsai all growing in a green house with a built in misting system. So you need not worry about over misting any of these plants as they all love it.
You will most likely need to repot your ficus at least every other year and feed it only during the growing season and never when it looks to be in poor health or during the winter months.
Ficus can be pruned during the spring although most will be tolerant of pruning year around as long as you’re not hard pruning and by hard pruning I mean taking a lot off of your plant.
Scale insects and mites can some times be a problem and should be watched for on your figs. Figs will leaf drop very fast if subjected to poor conditions such as over watering, or poor light, or drafts but if the conditions are improved your fig can leaf back in as little as 3 to 6 weeks.
Some of the varieties that make good bonsai are Ficus Salicifolia or willow leaf fig, the famous Ficus Benjamina of course and Ficus Retusa, or the Chinese banyan, and there is also a variety called the Green Island Fig which is also a variety of the Retusa.
Figs can se started from cuttings or seeds and of course air layering I prefer cuttings and have started most If not all of my figs in this manner.
Thanks, for reading and viewing.
©Copyright 2005 Harold Yearout All Rights Reserved
For more information feel free to Contact Me:
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Propagating Maples
Propagating Maples
I have had many people over the years ask me the same question over and over and that is how I get maples to grow from starts. They tell me that when they try they do not have any luck.
Well let me see if I can explain how I do it and then perhaps you can too if your lucky.
I say lucky because there are so many different cultivars of maple and it seems at times that each one will have its own quirks.
I believe that there is a certain amount of just pure luck involved when you try to propagate these types of plants.
Maples can be started in a number of ways and most people will try to get them started from a cutting. This is a great way to get them started if you can really be on top of the watering or should I say misting.
The cuttings if you’re going to try your hand at getting some started in this manner should be taken in the month of June and that would of course be right now these would be called softwood cuttings.
You’re going to want the newest growth and of course that would be the new shoots that have just started this spring. These shoots will have not yet hardened
off and they will make good starts.
You’ll want the shoots to be around four inches in length and you will want the lower leaves stripped leaving perhaps a couple or so at the very end of the shoot.
You’ll want to plant them in a very course sand mix. I poke little holes in the sand with a pencil and then insert my starts and firm the sand down around each.
A rooting compound will also help and you can find either a powder type of liquid type in any good nursery or plant and garden store in your area. You would simply dip each cutting in the rooting compound right before sticking your cutting in the sand mix.
Another trick I try most all of the time is to very lightly scrape along the leaf stripped stem near the bottom and this will cause sort of a small type of wound and as the plant will almost always try to heal over this area it will then start roots where you caused the wound.
Another secret to getting cuttings started is to be able to keep them constantly misted however this is near to impossible without the aid of equipment and most people simply can not afford to invest in this unless they want to raise a whole lot of cuttings.
You could also get a lot of cultivars of maple started by the budding method and there is also grafting if your very experienced if not then just leave this method to the experts..
I will discuss some of these other methods in detail in yet another article at a later time.
You can also try seed and it should be collected once it has turned brown on the mother plant and then left to further dry out. The seed should be kept until your ready to work with it.
Most maple seed will fall off the mother plant late in the fall and most often simply just get blown away by the winter winds and such. But if a few do some how manage to get covered by some small amount of soil and other garden mulch then if your lucky they might sprout a couple of seasons later.
The reason is maple seeds have a really tough outer shell and they must lie on the ground and go through the entire process of a winter and if they survive then they might open up enough to take root and start a plant.
But I for one do not like to wait so I will try to speed along this process by fooling Mother Nature and processing the seeds myself much sooner.
I will decide on a target date that I want to plant my seed outside and that would be right after any worries about frost and that is June in most places. So then I would count backwards on my calendar 100 days and that would be some where around February.
Then I will take my seed and put it into a cup of nice hot water not boiling or anything like that but still hot.
I will then leave the seed over night and the seed that floats to the bottom is the seed that is most likely to be of use for planting. I discard the rest.
I will then take my seed and sprinkle it in a sterile planting medium wet it down good but not soaking wet. Now I will put my seed in my refrigerator in the crisper and leave it there until my target date of June.
I have now essentially fooled Mother Nature into thinking that a winter has passed and my seed should be ready to plant outdoors.
I would then pick a place in my garden and sow the seed on clean soil and cover about 3/8 of and inch with more soil and water good and wait. Let dry out between watering so as not to rot your seed before it gets the chance to germinate.
I wish you good luck with your cutting or your seed and if you do not succeed the first time keep trying you’ll soon get the hang of it.
Thanks for reading
©Copyright 2003 Harold Yearout All Rights Reserved
For more information feel free to Contact Me.
I have had many people over the years ask me the same question over and over and that is how I get maples to grow from starts. They tell me that when they try they do not have any luck.
Well let me see if I can explain how I do it and then perhaps you can too if your lucky.
I say lucky because there are so many different cultivars of maple and it seems at times that each one will have its own quirks.
I believe that there is a certain amount of just pure luck involved when you try to propagate these types of plants.
Maples can be started in a number of ways and most people will try to get them started from a cutting. This is a great way to get them started if you can really be on top of the watering or should I say misting.
The cuttings if you’re going to try your hand at getting some started in this manner should be taken in the month of June and that would of course be right now these would be called softwood cuttings.
You’re going to want the newest growth and of course that would be the new shoots that have just started this spring. These shoots will have not yet hardened
off and they will make good starts.
You’ll want the shoots to be around four inches in length and you will want the lower leaves stripped leaving perhaps a couple or so at the very end of the shoot.
You’ll want to plant them in a very course sand mix. I poke little holes in the sand with a pencil and then insert my starts and firm the sand down around each.
A rooting compound will also help and you can find either a powder type of liquid type in any good nursery or plant and garden store in your area. You would simply dip each cutting in the rooting compound right before sticking your cutting in the sand mix.
Another trick I try most all of the time is to very lightly scrape along the leaf stripped stem near the bottom and this will cause sort of a small type of wound and as the plant will almost always try to heal over this area it will then start roots where you caused the wound.
Another secret to getting cuttings started is to be able to keep them constantly misted however this is near to impossible without the aid of equipment and most people simply can not afford to invest in this unless they want to raise a whole lot of cuttings.
You could also get a lot of cultivars of maple started by the budding method and there is also grafting if your very experienced if not then just leave this method to the experts..
I will discuss some of these other methods in detail in yet another article at a later time.
You can also try seed and it should be collected once it has turned brown on the mother plant and then left to further dry out. The seed should be kept until your ready to work with it.
Most maple seed will fall off the mother plant late in the fall and most often simply just get blown away by the winter winds and such. But if a few do some how manage to get covered by some small amount of soil and other garden mulch then if your lucky they might sprout a couple of seasons later.
The reason is maple seeds have a really tough outer shell and they must lie on the ground and go through the entire process of a winter and if they survive then they might open up enough to take root and start a plant.
But I for one do not like to wait so I will try to speed along this process by fooling Mother Nature and processing the seeds myself much sooner.
I will decide on a target date that I want to plant my seed outside and that would be right after any worries about frost and that is June in most places. So then I would count backwards on my calendar 100 days and that would be some where around February.
Then I will take my seed and put it into a cup of nice hot water not boiling or anything like that but still hot.
I will then leave the seed over night and the seed that floats to the bottom is the seed that is most likely to be of use for planting. I discard the rest.
I will then take my seed and sprinkle it in a sterile planting medium wet it down good but not soaking wet. Now I will put my seed in my refrigerator in the crisper and leave it there until my target date of June.
I have now essentially fooled Mother Nature into thinking that a winter has passed and my seed should be ready to plant outdoors.
I would then pick a place in my garden and sow the seed on clean soil and cover about 3/8 of and inch with more soil and water good and wait. Let dry out between watering so as not to rot your seed before it gets the chance to germinate.
I wish you good luck with your cutting or your seed and if you do not succeed the first time keep trying you’ll soon get the hang of it.
Thanks for reading
©Copyright 2003 Harold Yearout All Rights Reserved
For more information feel free to Contact Me.
Sunday, June 05, 2005
Shohin Ligustrum: Here is a small Ligustrum started five years ago in training now for three years.
Posted by Hello
LIGUSTRUM LUCIDUM
LIGUSTRUM LUCIDUM
There are over fifty species of this privet and in some areas it is actually considered a weed and is totally ignored as anything you would want to grow.
However I think that the Iigustrum makes a wonderful bonsai material and I have worked a couple of these for my collection.
I have one Ligustrum that is five years old and it has been in training now for three years.
I’m training the plant as a shohin bonsai and it will eventually make a very nice specimen.
It takes a few years to develop the trunk for a shohin and so you must have time and patience.
The Ligustrum if left to grow outside the confines of a pot can reach heights of over thirty feet. It does well as a tree if trained to grow up right and in the style of a tree otherwise it is more of a shrub.
Most varieties have a glossy leaf and some to the point that they may look waxed. The variety that I have in my collection does not have the glossy type leaf and I’m still unsure exactly what variety that it is.
I have researched many plant books but have still not found this particular kind but of course I will continue to look. The plant can have creamy white flowers sometimes in April or May and even as late as June.
It does produce a berry but they are poisonous and certainly not for eating. I would recommend washing your hands after handling or cutting on this plant.
The origin of the Ligustrum is Korea, China, and Japan. They are very hardy and can even be a nuisance if left alone to grow unattended.
The Chinese have used this plant for medicinal purposes for many years, the berries are employed as a yin tonic in there medicine and used for many conditions.
This plant will do well indoors and can be trained in all manner of shape and style if you work at it. The limbs can get very brittle fairly fast so if you plan to wire this plant then you must start when the limbs are young and still pliable.
This plant has been used widely for hedge type separation of yards and has also been used as a common tree in street plantings for years.
Care of this plant is fairly straight forward; it can be encouraged to branch by continued pinching and cutting back of new growth. You’ll need to water your Ligusturm Privet often as they will dry out fast especially as bonsai.
Plant in a well drained soil to prevent root rot and faster draining of any excess water. The plant can withstand full sun or part shade, and you’ll need to repot this plant nearly every year as it grows fast and can get root bound in a hurry.
You can easily propagate this plant from softwood cuttings or grafting or from seed. Some times the cuttings will even root in just water.
A general purpose fertilizer will work for this plant just fine and you should feed it during the season from spring till early fall and then let it grow on its own until the next season before fertilizing any more.
Some of the pests for this plant are aphids and spider mites white fly and of course root rot.
The leafs of the Ligustrum will tend to droop and wilt fast if your under watering and after a while you’ll get the hang of its watering needs. Shohin bonsai are extremely prone to drying out fast as they are in very tiny pots in almost all cases.
The idea of a Shohin is to try and develop a very nice large trunk and still have the entire plant in a small pot and have the plant not over ten inches in total height.
I sometimes have to water my Shohin twice a day even inside. I keep a very close watch on these little plants and really love all of them.
If you decide that you would like to try your hand at growing one of these plants then you can most likely find a nice start at one of your local nursery or if you like you can take a look on one of the bonsai sites on the net and most likely find a nice one.
Thanks for reading and viewing. Harold Yearout
©Copyright 2005 All Rights Reserved
For more information feel free to Contact Me.
There are over fifty species of this privet and in some areas it is actually considered a weed and is totally ignored as anything you would want to grow.
However I think that the Iigustrum makes a wonderful bonsai material and I have worked a couple of these for my collection.
I have one Ligustrum that is five years old and it has been in training now for three years.
I’m training the plant as a shohin bonsai and it will eventually make a very nice specimen.
It takes a few years to develop the trunk for a shohin and so you must have time and patience.
The Ligustrum if left to grow outside the confines of a pot can reach heights of over thirty feet. It does well as a tree if trained to grow up right and in the style of a tree otherwise it is more of a shrub.
Most varieties have a glossy leaf and some to the point that they may look waxed. The variety that I have in my collection does not have the glossy type leaf and I’m still unsure exactly what variety that it is.
I have researched many plant books but have still not found this particular kind but of course I will continue to look. The plant can have creamy white flowers sometimes in April or May and even as late as June.
It does produce a berry but they are poisonous and certainly not for eating. I would recommend washing your hands after handling or cutting on this plant.
The origin of the Ligustrum is Korea, China, and Japan. They are very hardy and can even be a nuisance if left alone to grow unattended.
The Chinese have used this plant for medicinal purposes for many years, the berries are employed as a yin tonic in there medicine and used for many conditions.
This plant will do well indoors and can be trained in all manner of shape and style if you work at it. The limbs can get very brittle fairly fast so if you plan to wire this plant then you must start when the limbs are young and still pliable.
This plant has been used widely for hedge type separation of yards and has also been used as a common tree in street plantings for years.
Care of this plant is fairly straight forward; it can be encouraged to branch by continued pinching and cutting back of new growth. You’ll need to water your Ligusturm Privet often as they will dry out fast especially as bonsai.
Plant in a well drained soil to prevent root rot and faster draining of any excess water. The plant can withstand full sun or part shade, and you’ll need to repot this plant nearly every year as it grows fast and can get root bound in a hurry.
You can easily propagate this plant from softwood cuttings or grafting or from seed. Some times the cuttings will even root in just water.
A general purpose fertilizer will work for this plant just fine and you should feed it during the season from spring till early fall and then let it grow on its own until the next season before fertilizing any more.
Some of the pests for this plant are aphids and spider mites white fly and of course root rot.
The leafs of the Ligustrum will tend to droop and wilt fast if your under watering and after a while you’ll get the hang of its watering needs. Shohin bonsai are extremely prone to drying out fast as they are in very tiny pots in almost all cases.
The idea of a Shohin is to try and develop a very nice large trunk and still have the entire plant in a small pot and have the plant not over ten inches in total height.
I sometimes have to water my Shohin twice a day even inside. I keep a very close watch on these little plants and really love all of them.
If you decide that you would like to try your hand at growing one of these plants then you can most likely find a nice start at one of your local nursery or if you like you can take a look on one of the bonsai sites on the net and most likely find a nice one.
Thanks for reading and viewing. Harold Yearout
©Copyright 2005 All Rights Reserved
For more information feel free to Contact Me.
Sunday, May 29, 2005
Acer Palmatum ‘Goshiki Shidare’
This particular variety of lace leaf has variegated leaves and is one of the harder to find maples. The leaves are a deep red with a light salmon color variegated through out the leaf.
I got my hands on a couple of these in a local nursery this weekend and I’m thrilled. It will take many years to develop this little starter plant into a bonsai.
But I have the patience and hopefully the time so I will surely try. I seem to be drawn to maples for some reason my collection has many now and I still keep looking for more.
There are so many cultivars of maples that you could collect for many years and still probably not have all of them. However if maples fascinate you like they do me well then you can certainly obtain many and have a wonderful collection.
Lace leaf maples are among the most beautiful of all the maples in my opinion. And you do not find them as bonsai in a pot very often.
I think that perhaps the reason that you do not find them is because most of these types of maples are grafted and I for one do not like to start out with a grafted plant for a bonsai.
The people who graft this type of plant always seem to graft the start really high on the plant and this makes the whole thing look rather leggy and just not acceptable to me anyway.
But then we have to also understand that the nursery business is not grafting these plants for the bonsai hobby they are selling most of them to regular home gardeners and they simply do not care that the starter plant is really tall and leggy looking because after all there not going to raise it in a pot.
You can see lace leaf in nearly every yard especially in the NorthWest and since it is considered a garden favorite you'll continue to see it planted where ever it will grow.
You must be very vigilante of the lace leaf in the very warm summer months as the leaves of these and many other maples will burn very rapid and once it starts there usually is no saving the leaf.
I water always early in the morning and very rarely at night and for the reason that if I soak the plant really good in the morning it will most often make it though the day just fine.
I do not water at night because this draws out many bugs that will then feast on your plants leaves and it also tends to mold your plants at the base.
These types of maples will grow in sort of and umbrella style unless you shape it different. You will most defiantly want to protect your maple from the direct hot sun if at all possible.
This maple will do really well if planted around a pond or as a bonsai and will reward you with leaves that can be either green marked with a bronze color and or a red cast or they might be light with pink splashes and even in some cases they might have large white patches and this can all be on the same plant.
If you’re going to fertilize then I would suggest not going over board as most maples of this type seem to get leggier with a lot of fertilizer.
I personally will let the plant just grow and develop on its own and forget the fertilizer.
I have not lost any of my maples yet because of lack of fertilizer.
The plant seems to do well from zone 5a to zone 9a and if you need to see a plant zone map then you can see one at the web url below.
http://forestry.about.com/od/treehabitatandrange/ss/plant_zones.htm
You can propagate this maple by either grafting or budding or by collecting seeds after they have ripened off and dried in the fall. I will write a more detailed article on getting these and other types of maples started from seed later in another post.
Although this maple is considered to be more like a shrub it will grow to around fifteen feet if left to grow in the ground.
I have not grown one in the ground but have two of these cultivars as bonsai and I may perhaps at some later time take a cutting and and graft it in order to get one for my garden.
In the picture above you can see a small starter bonsai of this material that I acquired just this spring and in time it will make a very lovely bonsai but since this material grows very slow it will take a few years to create this one.
I will train it in the umbrella style and later when it has had time to grow a stronger trunk then I will twist the trunk around a bamboo stick to get a desired S curve look to the trunk.
Thanks for reading and looking.
©Copyright 2005 All Rights Reserved
For more information feel free to Contact Me
.
I got my hands on a couple of these in a local nursery this weekend and I’m thrilled. It will take many years to develop this little starter plant into a bonsai.
But I have the patience and hopefully the time so I will surely try. I seem to be drawn to maples for some reason my collection has many now and I still keep looking for more.
There are so many cultivars of maples that you could collect for many years and still probably not have all of them. However if maples fascinate you like they do me well then you can certainly obtain many and have a wonderful collection.
Lace leaf maples are among the most beautiful of all the maples in my opinion. And you do not find them as bonsai in a pot very often.
I think that perhaps the reason that you do not find them is because most of these types of maples are grafted and I for one do not like to start out with a grafted plant for a bonsai.
The people who graft this type of plant always seem to graft the start really high on the plant and this makes the whole thing look rather leggy and just not acceptable to me anyway.
But then we have to also understand that the nursery business is not grafting these plants for the bonsai hobby they are selling most of them to regular home gardeners and they simply do not care that the starter plant is really tall and leggy looking because after all there not going to raise it in a pot.
You can see lace leaf in nearly every yard especially in the NorthWest and since it is considered a garden favorite you'll continue to see it planted where ever it will grow.
You must be very vigilante of the lace leaf in the very warm summer months as the leaves of these and many other maples will burn very rapid and once it starts there usually is no saving the leaf.
I water always early in the morning and very rarely at night and for the reason that if I soak the plant really good in the morning it will most often make it though the day just fine.
I do not water at night because this draws out many bugs that will then feast on your plants leaves and it also tends to mold your plants at the base.
These types of maples will grow in sort of and umbrella style unless you shape it different. You will most defiantly want to protect your maple from the direct hot sun if at all possible.
This maple will do really well if planted around a pond or as a bonsai and will reward you with leaves that can be either green marked with a bronze color and or a red cast or they might be light with pink splashes and even in some cases they might have large white patches and this can all be on the same plant.
If you’re going to fertilize then I would suggest not going over board as most maples of this type seem to get leggier with a lot of fertilizer.
I personally will let the plant just grow and develop on its own and forget the fertilizer.
I have not lost any of my maples yet because of lack of fertilizer.
The plant seems to do well from zone 5a to zone 9a and if you need to see a plant zone map then you can see one at the web url below.
http://forestry.about.com/od/treehabitatandrange/ss/plant_zones.htm
You can propagate this maple by either grafting or budding or by collecting seeds after they have ripened off and dried in the fall. I will write a more detailed article on getting these and other types of maples started from seed later in another post.
Although this maple is considered to be more like a shrub it will grow to around fifteen feet if left to grow in the ground.
I have not grown one in the ground but have two of these cultivars as bonsai and I may perhaps at some later time take a cutting and and graft it in order to get one for my garden.
In the picture above you can see a small starter bonsai of this material that I acquired just this spring and in time it will make a very lovely bonsai but since this material grows very slow it will take a few years to create this one.
I will train it in the umbrella style and later when it has had time to grow a stronger trunk then I will twist the trunk around a bamboo stick to get a desired S curve look to the trunk.
Thanks for reading and looking.
©Copyright 2005 All Rights Reserved
For more information feel free to Contact Me
.
Thursday, May 19, 2005
Cotoneaster
Here is a material that is very easy to work with especially for anyone who wants to start out by creating there own bonsai.
Almost any nursery in the country will have a few varieties of cotoneaster. It grows rather rapid so if you do make a mistake and cut some off that later you wished you hadn’t well not to worry because it will produce many more fresh shoots for you to work with.
If I were going to start out brand new with this material then I would go to a local nursery and obtain a good starter plant in a one gallon pot size and then once home I would begin to study the plant to determine first where my front is going to be.
Once I have established the front of my plant then I can begin to study it to see if it has any typical bonsai shape already kind of started for me. The plant that I have pictured here was already growing a really long branch out from the main stalk.
So I simply wired the branch to obtain the full cascade look and then worked on the main growth at the center of the plant. In a cascade style you will always want your plant as close to the center of the pot as you can get it.
This is not true with nearly any other style of bonsai. Almost always with other plants in other styles you would want your plant to be off center and to one side of the pot nearly all of the time.
But with a cascade I want the plant centered and then I want the growth in the center of the plant to reach out to surround the pot almost to the edges of the rim all the way around the pot if possible.
This simply makes the bonsai look nice and full. The main cascade branch if at all possible should twist or arc if you will from side to side so as to resemble a winding brook or a nice full S curve.
The cotoneaster has blooms of very tiny flowers and some bloom with red flowers and yet others have tiny white flowers and in the fall they will spawn red berries. This is not a fruit that you would want to eat but the birds will sometimes find the berries a welcome feast in mid winter.
I will not try to elaborate too much on the care here for this plant as it is very hardy and you would have to completely and totally neglect it to kill it. Just water and feed through the season and you will have no trouble growing one of these plants.
I have several cotoneasters in my collection and most all of them have been trained in the clip and grow method and very rarely wired unless there was no other way to achieve the look that I desired.
If the plant just presents something to you right out of nature then by all means go with it other wise you’ll simply have to work at it until you get where you want with it.
You can propagate cotoneaster from seed or from soft wood or hard wood cuttings depending on the time of the year for the cuttings and seed would be best started in real early spring after any worry of frost.
You can bring your plant indoors for enjoyment a few days during the year but the rest of the time you’ll want to keep it outdoors as it is and outdoors plant material.
You will find many different kinds to choose from if you look around and some even with thorny spines on them so if you choose one of these then be careful of the fingers when working the material as these spines are sharp and will get you good if you’re careless.
I prefer these plants to teach beginners with because of there fast growing habit nearly anyone can get a bonsai going with one of these in no time at all and they are not expensive material to obtain.
You’ll find them in most nurseries from around six to ten dollars for a gallon size and this size will give you a really nice plant to begin with and you’ll already have some nice trunk size and a lot of branches to work with.
Because of the material being inexpensive it can be used to practice on and not worry to much if you mess it up because you can simply get another and start all over in no time. It usually only takes one or two years to get a nice looking cotoneaster tree created,
From there on it is just clip and let nature take its course and you have a wonderful looking bonsai in your collection in no time at all.
Thanks, for looking and reading.
Harold Yearout
©Copyright 2005 All Rights Reserved
For more information feel free to Contact me:
Almost any nursery in the country will have a few varieties of cotoneaster. It grows rather rapid so if you do make a mistake and cut some off that later you wished you hadn’t well not to worry because it will produce many more fresh shoots for you to work with.
If I were going to start out brand new with this material then I would go to a local nursery and obtain a good starter plant in a one gallon pot size and then once home I would begin to study the plant to determine first where my front is going to be.
Once I have established the front of my plant then I can begin to study it to see if it has any typical bonsai shape already kind of started for me. The plant that I have pictured here was already growing a really long branch out from the main stalk.
So I simply wired the branch to obtain the full cascade look and then worked on the main growth at the center of the plant. In a cascade style you will always want your plant as close to the center of the pot as you can get it.
This is not true with nearly any other style of bonsai. Almost always with other plants in other styles you would want your plant to be off center and to one side of the pot nearly all of the time.
But with a cascade I want the plant centered and then I want the growth in the center of the plant to reach out to surround the pot almost to the edges of the rim all the way around the pot if possible.
This simply makes the bonsai look nice and full. The main cascade branch if at all possible should twist or arc if you will from side to side so as to resemble a winding brook or a nice full S curve.
The cotoneaster has blooms of very tiny flowers and some bloom with red flowers and yet others have tiny white flowers and in the fall they will spawn red berries. This is not a fruit that you would want to eat but the birds will sometimes find the berries a welcome feast in mid winter.
I will not try to elaborate too much on the care here for this plant as it is very hardy and you would have to completely and totally neglect it to kill it. Just water and feed through the season and you will have no trouble growing one of these plants.
I have several cotoneasters in my collection and most all of them have been trained in the clip and grow method and very rarely wired unless there was no other way to achieve the look that I desired.
If the plant just presents something to you right out of nature then by all means go with it other wise you’ll simply have to work at it until you get where you want with it.
You can propagate cotoneaster from seed or from soft wood or hard wood cuttings depending on the time of the year for the cuttings and seed would be best started in real early spring after any worry of frost.
You can bring your plant indoors for enjoyment a few days during the year but the rest of the time you’ll want to keep it outdoors as it is and outdoors plant material.
You will find many different kinds to choose from if you look around and some even with thorny spines on them so if you choose one of these then be careful of the fingers when working the material as these spines are sharp and will get you good if you’re careless.
I prefer these plants to teach beginners with because of there fast growing habit nearly anyone can get a bonsai going with one of these in no time at all and they are not expensive material to obtain.
You’ll find them in most nurseries from around six to ten dollars for a gallon size and this size will give you a really nice plant to begin with and you’ll already have some nice trunk size and a lot of branches to work with.
Because of the material being inexpensive it can be used to practice on and not worry to much if you mess it up because you can simply get another and start all over in no time. It usually only takes one or two years to get a nice looking cotoneaster tree created,
From there on it is just clip and let nature take its course and you have a wonderful looking bonsai in your collection in no time at all.
Thanks, for looking and reading.
Harold Yearout
©Copyright 2005 All Rights Reserved
For more information feel free to Contact me:
Sunday, May 15, 2005
The Netsuke Can Make a Fantastic Collectable
The Living Bonsai & More is as the name implies. I personally have had an interest in most all things oriental nearly all of my life and so from time to time I will endeavor to post an article on a subject other than bonsai.
I became interested in Netsuke as a fine collectable a few years ago and began a personal collection of these little fine art carvings. But what are netsukes you may ask?
Well the Japanese term for a netsuke literally means root for fastening and the netsuke was a way for the Japanese men to carry small objects with them inside there kimonos.
Since the kimono had no pockets and was only held together by a sash called obi around the waist then it would be impossible to carry any small objects around with you during the course of your day.
Thus the netsuke was derived some where possibly around the 16th century and was used as a device to act as a sort of a weight to hang down from the sash and thus keep the pouch from slipping away from the sash and kimono.
There would be a small pouch attached with strings and inside the person could then carry small items along.
They might have had there tobacco and pipe or some writing tools or a small purse and even medicines inside the pouches and these were then carried with the help of the netsuke.
The netsuke traditionally had a small hole through the material and then most often a silk cord attached and the cord was then drawn up under the obi or sash and the netsuke then would hang over the front of the sash keeping the pouch in tact.
The art of netsuke was a fine craft and the carvings were very elaborate and a lot of the time a person’s wealth or status could even be told by the look of the netsuke that adorned the kimono.
As time passed and the Japanese began to look to the western world for dress and the netsuke faded into a lost feature of clothing that was no longer needed so to speak. However the netsuke has always been highly prized as a collectable.
It’s so easy to get hooked on collecting these beautiful marvels of artistic carving once any person holds one of these little master pieces of carved art in there hands the first time there usually hooked and begin collecting.
The western world began to get there hands on these small carvings some time after 1853 when Commodore Perry’s black ships first dropped anchor in Uraga showing the American flag.
There was a trade agreement signed by America and Japan giving America a trade monopoly for many years to come and American sailors mostly from New England who were whalers began to bring back many of these carvings to the western world and by the 1870s collecting had begun.
Even yet today these carvings are still very much sought after and some of the best collections are not in Japan but actually right here in the United States.
Netsukes were carved out of many different types of materials most notably ivory, bone, wood, and sometimes metals even gems. You can find many different types represented for collecting if you’re in the mood to start a collection.
There are of course rules now in place for import and especially for ivory and so it would be in your best interest to read about these if you were into collecting these types of materials.
You would also need very deep pockets if you’re in the mood to collect any ivory carving of a netsuke that is original and truly early Japan. However there are many other materials that can be easily obtained and the carvings are just as beautiful.
Some research on your part would be advised if you want to peruse this fine art collectable. One resource that I would recommend to start with would be the International Netsuke Society http://www.netsuke.org from there you can find other resources and items of interest.
You can simply do a search for netsuke articles in goggle and come up with a lot of sites of great interest.
Here is a url to a fine article about netsuke and colleting that I think anyone interested in this art form as a hobby should read.
http://www.robynbuntin.com/Articles/netsuke_article_files/netsuke_article.htm
There are of course many fine books on the subject as well and anyone interested can certainly begin to get educated on what to look for and how to collect.
Thanks, for reading and looking. Harold Yearout
©Copyright 2005 All Rights Reserved
For more information feel free to Contact me:
I became interested in Netsuke as a fine collectable a few years ago and began a personal collection of these little fine art carvings. But what are netsukes you may ask?
Well the Japanese term for a netsuke literally means root for fastening and the netsuke was a way for the Japanese men to carry small objects with them inside there kimonos.
Since the kimono had no pockets and was only held together by a sash called obi around the waist then it would be impossible to carry any small objects around with you during the course of your day.
Thus the netsuke was derived some where possibly around the 16th century and was used as a device to act as a sort of a weight to hang down from the sash and thus keep the pouch from slipping away from the sash and kimono.
There would be a small pouch attached with strings and inside the person could then carry small items along.
They might have had there tobacco and pipe or some writing tools or a small purse and even medicines inside the pouches and these were then carried with the help of the netsuke.
The netsuke traditionally had a small hole through the material and then most often a silk cord attached and the cord was then drawn up under the obi or sash and the netsuke then would hang over the front of the sash keeping the pouch in tact.
The art of netsuke was a fine craft and the carvings were very elaborate and a lot of the time a person’s wealth or status could even be told by the look of the netsuke that adorned the kimono.
As time passed and the Japanese began to look to the western world for dress and the netsuke faded into a lost feature of clothing that was no longer needed so to speak. However the netsuke has always been highly prized as a collectable.
It’s so easy to get hooked on collecting these beautiful marvels of artistic carving once any person holds one of these little master pieces of carved art in there hands the first time there usually hooked and begin collecting.
The western world began to get there hands on these small carvings some time after 1853 when Commodore Perry’s black ships first dropped anchor in Uraga showing the American flag.
There was a trade agreement signed by America and Japan giving America a trade monopoly for many years to come and American sailors mostly from New England who were whalers began to bring back many of these carvings to the western world and by the 1870s collecting had begun.
Even yet today these carvings are still very much sought after and some of the best collections are not in Japan but actually right here in the United States.
Netsukes were carved out of many different types of materials most notably ivory, bone, wood, and sometimes metals even gems. You can find many different types represented for collecting if you’re in the mood to start a collection.
There are of course rules now in place for import and especially for ivory and so it would be in your best interest to read about these if you were into collecting these types of materials.
You would also need very deep pockets if you’re in the mood to collect any ivory carving of a netsuke that is original and truly early Japan. However there are many other materials that can be easily obtained and the carvings are just as beautiful.
Some research on your part would be advised if you want to peruse this fine art collectable. One resource that I would recommend to start with would be the International Netsuke Society http://www.netsuke.org from there you can find other resources and items of interest.
You can simply do a search for netsuke articles in goggle and come up with a lot of sites of great interest.
Here is a url to a fine article about netsuke and colleting that I think anyone interested in this art form as a hobby should read.
http://www.robynbuntin.com/Articles/netsuke_article_files/netsuke_article.htm
There are of course many fine books on the subject as well and anyone interested can certainly begin to get educated on what to look for and how to collect.
Thanks, for reading and looking. Harold Yearout
©Copyright 2005 All Rights Reserved
For more information feel free to Contact me:
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
This is Serrisa Foetida and is being trained in Shohin style, the plant is three years old.
Posted by Hello
Serissa Foetida or Tree of a Thousand Stars
This material gets its name from the really foul smell of its bark and the latin term Foetida means something foul smelling like rotten meat for example.
This material is subtropical and sometimes is still called by its old Latin name of Serrisa Japonica. There are many varieties of Serrisa some have pink flowers and others have white.
And you can now find many cultivars of this material available in many nurseries through out the western world. The Origin of Serrisa is China and also they are from Japan.
Although they are often times offered in many garden centers and bonsai shops you will most of the time only find smaller plants or starts, it is rare to find an older specimen plant of this material.
The Serissa is perhaps not the best choice for a beginner because it does require that your pretty vigilante in its care. Therefore it is better left to the more experienced hobbyist.
The Serrisa does like to dry out between watering and you will never want to let the compost completely dry out altogether. This plant will quite often loose many leaves that will suddenly turn yellow for what seems no apparent reason.
However experienced bonsai growers know there is always a reason behind these kinds of things happening and will certainly research the problem if they do not know what the cause is.
Most often the reason for this happening is over watering. I have stated many times before and will state it over again that watering of nearly any bonsai is very critical.
Until you learn what each species habits are and what they will require of you for upkeep you may loose a few plants simply to the learning process.
But practice makes perfect and you’ll eventually get it right for all of your plants if you’ll only continue on a stead fast path and keep on trying. If the leaves are brown and crisp then you are not watering enough.
A good rule of thumb for a beginner is to use the chop stick method until you learn. The chop stick method as I call it simply means to buy some cheep wooden chops sticks.
Then place one of these chop stick in each of your plants and always push the chop stick clear to the bottom of the pot.
Then simply raise the chop stick out of the pot daily and observe at what level on the wood that dampness occurs and that should help to give you and idea of how far down into the soil your plant is still moist.
Also placing the plant on a humidity tray will help to insure a good level of moisture around your plant. You will want to feed your Serrisa from early spring around April through September and then you can slack off.
But be careful to insure that your plant is wet when you do feed it as the fertilizers will often times burn the delicate roots; also you will not want to fertilize your plant if it has been suffering from leaf drop.
Serrisa hate root pruning so use vigilance and be careful when you decide to repot your plant. Repotting can be carried out about every third year or so.
You will want to let your Serrisa stay out doors for the summer if possible this will only help to keep your plant more healthy and induce a better canopy of growth.
In most regions the time of the year to move it out doors will be around June and then bring it back inside when it really warms up in August.
You can get starts from soft wood cuttings taken from a mother plant in spring and early summer. Your rooting will certainly be a lot more successful if you can provide bottom heat.
The Serrisa will respond well to nearly any style of bonsai with the exception of the formal upright and you can also be very successful with the clip and grow method of bonsai since this plant tends to really produce an abundance of limbs giving you more choice for positioning.
I have included here above this article a picture of a tiny Shohin Serrisa that I started about three years ago and this plant will remain in training for many years before it will be a nice bonsai.
But you have to start some where and this is yet another one of my attempts at creating a Shohin bonsai.
Serrisa have very small trunks and a thick trunk will take years to grow and if you do find one that has a thick trunk then this would surely indicate that the plant is very old.
No bonsai will ever look really good until you have cultivated it for many years.
The training process for any bonsai takes patients and time and many years to develop a really nice stunning plant.
Anyone with deep enough pockets could simply go out and purchase a nice specimin bonsai but would you really appericate it as much as one you have created and grown to perfection yourself.
I think not.... but when you have finally created your own wonderful Living Bonsai you’ll know it and then and only then will you really have reaped your full reward for all the time you have vested.
Thanks for reading and looking, Harold Yearout
©Copyright 2005 The Living Bonsai All Rights Reserved
For more information feel free to Contact Me:
This material is subtropical and sometimes is still called by its old Latin name of Serrisa Japonica. There are many varieties of Serrisa some have pink flowers and others have white.
And you can now find many cultivars of this material available in many nurseries through out the western world. The Origin of Serrisa is China and also they are from Japan.
Although they are often times offered in many garden centers and bonsai shops you will most of the time only find smaller plants or starts, it is rare to find an older specimen plant of this material.
The Serissa is perhaps not the best choice for a beginner because it does require that your pretty vigilante in its care. Therefore it is better left to the more experienced hobbyist.
The Serrisa does like to dry out between watering and you will never want to let the compost completely dry out altogether. This plant will quite often loose many leaves that will suddenly turn yellow for what seems no apparent reason.
However experienced bonsai growers know there is always a reason behind these kinds of things happening and will certainly research the problem if they do not know what the cause is.
Most often the reason for this happening is over watering. I have stated many times before and will state it over again that watering of nearly any bonsai is very critical.
Until you learn what each species habits are and what they will require of you for upkeep you may loose a few plants simply to the learning process.
But practice makes perfect and you’ll eventually get it right for all of your plants if you’ll only continue on a stead fast path and keep on trying. If the leaves are brown and crisp then you are not watering enough.
A good rule of thumb for a beginner is to use the chop stick method until you learn. The chop stick method as I call it simply means to buy some cheep wooden chops sticks.
Then place one of these chop stick in each of your plants and always push the chop stick clear to the bottom of the pot.
Then simply raise the chop stick out of the pot daily and observe at what level on the wood that dampness occurs and that should help to give you and idea of how far down into the soil your plant is still moist.
Also placing the plant on a humidity tray will help to insure a good level of moisture around your plant. You will want to feed your Serrisa from early spring around April through September and then you can slack off.
But be careful to insure that your plant is wet when you do feed it as the fertilizers will often times burn the delicate roots; also you will not want to fertilize your plant if it has been suffering from leaf drop.
Serrisa hate root pruning so use vigilance and be careful when you decide to repot your plant. Repotting can be carried out about every third year or so.
You will want to let your Serrisa stay out doors for the summer if possible this will only help to keep your plant more healthy and induce a better canopy of growth.
In most regions the time of the year to move it out doors will be around June and then bring it back inside when it really warms up in August.
You can get starts from soft wood cuttings taken from a mother plant in spring and early summer. Your rooting will certainly be a lot more successful if you can provide bottom heat.
The Serrisa will respond well to nearly any style of bonsai with the exception of the formal upright and you can also be very successful with the clip and grow method of bonsai since this plant tends to really produce an abundance of limbs giving you more choice for positioning.
I have included here above this article a picture of a tiny Shohin Serrisa that I started about three years ago and this plant will remain in training for many years before it will be a nice bonsai.
But you have to start some where and this is yet another one of my attempts at creating a Shohin bonsai.
Serrisa have very small trunks and a thick trunk will take years to grow and if you do find one that has a thick trunk then this would surely indicate that the plant is very old.
No bonsai will ever look really good until you have cultivated it for many years.
The training process for any bonsai takes patients and time and many years to develop a really nice stunning plant.
Anyone with deep enough pockets could simply go out and purchase a nice specimin bonsai but would you really appericate it as much as one you have created and grown to perfection yourself.
I think not.... but when you have finally created your own wonderful Living Bonsai you’ll know it and then and only then will you really have reaped your full reward for all the time you have vested.
Thanks for reading and looking, Harold Yearout
©Copyright 2005 The Living Bonsai All Rights Reserved
For more information feel free to Contact Me:
Monday, May 09, 2005
A Shohin bonsai Sageretia or Chinese Sweet Plum
First of all let me explain the word shohin. The word shohin is a Japanese word meaning a tiny-thing or something very small. But then what really is a tiny thing or something very small in the terms of a bonsai?
To tell you the truth nearly any bonsai material can be trained to be a tiny thing or in the shohin method and in nearly any style or shape that you wish to attain.
But if you were to follow the rules of shohin then your plant no mater what material it is will be no more then 25 centimeters or 10 inches and this height should be measured from the rim of the pot to the top of the tree.
The plant and pot should be easily held in the palm of your hand and not be more than the limit in height of 10 inches. It would be rather hard to express the feeling of a shohin bonsai or tiny thing if the limits were to exceed this.
Other than the basic size differences shohin are really no different than regular sized bonsai. However they are really different in the aspects of care.
Since these tiny plants will dry out much faster than your regular bonsai then it would be safe to say that you must really be on top of the watering of these bonsai.
Also the plants over all size and pot will make it very prone to getting blown over really easy if not protected in your garden. Make sure you keep these tiny beauties protected at all times from high winds and most certainly from full direct sunlight.
They would most assuredly burn a lot faster than any other plant due to there shear size. Feeding is also on a much smaller scale for these types of bonsai.
Pruning, pinching, cutting and wiring of course will also be on a much smaller scale.
A good tip for anyone wanting to grow tropical sohin type bonsai would be to try and keep your tiny plants on a large humidity tray and keep the tray filled with very small sized pea gravel.
Fill the humidity tray with water and set the shohin bonsai right down into the gravel and they will then tend to draw up humidity and moisture as they need it from the tray.
Showing these little beauties can really be fun also especially once you have a few in your collection that are different types and styles.
One of the materials that I choose about five years ago for a shohin bonsai was the The Sageretia or Chinese sweet plum this material is a very good choice for bonsai and can be fairly easy for the beginner to start and work with.
Let me tell you about what I know from the experience of growing and training a few of these wonderful plants so far.
Fist of all the material is very brittle and there for does not respond well to wiring as you would expect in the traditional style of Japanese bonsai but it will work out rather nicely as Penjing bonsai in the Chinese tradition of clip and grow.
They tend to wilt really fast so a real vigilante plan of attack for watering is an absolute must for this plant. The tree will enjoy moist soil nearly all of the time and certainly will die very fast if left to dry out for any period of time.
The tree will do very well outdoors during the warmer months and will even survive outdoors in the winter depending on where you are located.
You’ll want to feed you Sageretia with a slightly acid type fertilizer and of course feed through the entire season about every 10 to fifteen days from early April to September.
Unless you want your tree to really grow fast then it would only be necessary to repot your tree when it becomes root bound in its pot.
When you see the growth really slow or roots pushing out of the bottom of the pot then this would be a sign that you may need to repot.
Be especially careful to keep the roots most at all times when you do repot this plant.
Most bonsai at repotting will require that you remove at least one third of the root mass to reduce the plant but with this material I would tend to leave more than the usual.
Pruning can be done through out the season with this plant and it will respond well to clipping and cutting and it will sprout new growth fairly fast. As I said this plant can be trained into a very nice looking bonsai by simply using the clip and grow method.
My worst experience with Chinese Sweet Plum so far is that I actually had one of these plants loose nearly every leaf that it had because of my careless attention to watering.
I have several bonsai plants in my office at work and sometimes if I miss watering one of them on Friday before the weekend a disaster can occur.
However I saved the plant by quickly immersing the entire plant in water and letting it soak for a couple of hours and with in less than two months it had a complete new canopy of growth.
Of course the one good side to this material is that it will root very easy by simply talking cuttings from a mother plant and putting them in a glass of water. Or you can sow seed with out any special needs nearly anytime.
Pictured above is one of the tiny shohin bonsai that I started about five years ago and it is Chinese Sweet Plum.
Thanks for reading and looking, Harold Yearout
©Copyright 2005 The Living Bonsai All Rights Reserved
For more information feel free to Contact Me:
To tell you the truth nearly any bonsai material can be trained to be a tiny thing or in the shohin method and in nearly any style or shape that you wish to attain.
But if you were to follow the rules of shohin then your plant no mater what material it is will be no more then 25 centimeters or 10 inches and this height should be measured from the rim of the pot to the top of the tree.
The plant and pot should be easily held in the palm of your hand and not be more than the limit in height of 10 inches. It would be rather hard to express the feeling of a shohin bonsai or tiny thing if the limits were to exceed this.
Other than the basic size differences shohin are really no different than regular sized bonsai. However they are really different in the aspects of care.
Since these tiny plants will dry out much faster than your regular bonsai then it would be safe to say that you must really be on top of the watering of these bonsai.
Also the plants over all size and pot will make it very prone to getting blown over really easy if not protected in your garden. Make sure you keep these tiny beauties protected at all times from high winds and most certainly from full direct sunlight.
They would most assuredly burn a lot faster than any other plant due to there shear size. Feeding is also on a much smaller scale for these types of bonsai.
Pruning, pinching, cutting and wiring of course will also be on a much smaller scale.
A good tip for anyone wanting to grow tropical sohin type bonsai would be to try and keep your tiny plants on a large humidity tray and keep the tray filled with very small sized pea gravel.
Fill the humidity tray with water and set the shohin bonsai right down into the gravel and they will then tend to draw up humidity and moisture as they need it from the tray.
Showing these little beauties can really be fun also especially once you have a few in your collection that are different types and styles.
One of the materials that I choose about five years ago for a shohin bonsai was the The Sageretia or Chinese sweet plum this material is a very good choice for bonsai and can be fairly easy for the beginner to start and work with.
Let me tell you about what I know from the experience of growing and training a few of these wonderful plants so far.
Fist of all the material is very brittle and there for does not respond well to wiring as you would expect in the traditional style of Japanese bonsai but it will work out rather nicely as Penjing bonsai in the Chinese tradition of clip and grow.
They tend to wilt really fast so a real vigilante plan of attack for watering is an absolute must for this plant. The tree will enjoy moist soil nearly all of the time and certainly will die very fast if left to dry out for any period of time.
The tree will do very well outdoors during the warmer months and will even survive outdoors in the winter depending on where you are located.
You’ll want to feed you Sageretia with a slightly acid type fertilizer and of course feed through the entire season about every 10 to fifteen days from early April to September.
Unless you want your tree to really grow fast then it would only be necessary to repot your tree when it becomes root bound in its pot.
When you see the growth really slow or roots pushing out of the bottom of the pot then this would be a sign that you may need to repot.
Be especially careful to keep the roots most at all times when you do repot this plant.
Most bonsai at repotting will require that you remove at least one third of the root mass to reduce the plant but with this material I would tend to leave more than the usual.
Pruning can be done through out the season with this plant and it will respond well to clipping and cutting and it will sprout new growth fairly fast. As I said this plant can be trained into a very nice looking bonsai by simply using the clip and grow method.
My worst experience with Chinese Sweet Plum so far is that I actually had one of these plants loose nearly every leaf that it had because of my careless attention to watering.
I have several bonsai plants in my office at work and sometimes if I miss watering one of them on Friday before the weekend a disaster can occur.
However I saved the plant by quickly immersing the entire plant in water and letting it soak for a couple of hours and with in less than two months it had a complete new canopy of growth.
Of course the one good side to this material is that it will root very easy by simply talking cuttings from a mother plant and putting them in a glass of water. Or you can sow seed with out any special needs nearly anytime.
Pictured above is one of the tiny shohin bonsai that I started about five years ago and it is Chinese Sweet Plum.
Thanks for reading and looking, Harold Yearout
©Copyright 2005 The Living Bonsai All Rights Reserved
For more information feel free to Contact Me:
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Getting Hooked on Bonsai
Hi and welcome to anyone that may be interested in the most rewarding of all horticulture endeavors that you could possibly ever master.
I’m referring of course to the art of creating your very own living breathing bonsai.
I want to tell you a story of how I first became hooked on this wonderful hobby.
It all happened when I was a teenager living with my grandmother.
My grandmother had a really beautiful front yard and in her yard at the front gate was a huge flower trestle. Planted on one side of this trestle was wisteria.
My grand parents bought the home in 1901 and the wisteria was already growing there at the front gate when they bought the home. The trunk at ground level was really huge.
By huge I mean over a foot around and that my friend is considered very big for wisteria.
It had been there for many years and had grown to completely cover the entire trestle and was to me absolutely astounding and very beautiful.
But as life would have it my grandmother became tired of the plant because of her age and failing health and wanted it removed.
Well guess who got that task? Yea you guessed it me. Well by that time in my life I was around sixteen or so I considered myself up to the task.
I hated having been given the job of getting rid of the wisteria however because as I said to me the plant was simply too beautiful to destroy.
But a job was a job and I knew that I would get paid so I started cutting it down.
I cut away at that plant for nearly the entire day and made a huge pile of branches out near the back of the barn where my granddad had a burn pile.
The main trunk took several more days for me to extract from the ground because like I said it was huge and it had a tap root that was very deep and the darn thing simply hung on for dear life.
I pried and dug till I was blue in the face and simply could not get the darn thing out of the ground. Well the next day was the weekend and I got up early and continued to dig on the wisteria.
Weekends were always my favorite time because you see in the days when I was growing up if you were lucky to have the money you could go to the Saturday movies in the afternoon.
You could even get a huge bag of popcorn and a soft drink for a quarter. Yes you read right a whopping quarter.
Well I wanted desperately to see a movie that Saturday, it was a western and westerns were my favorite. To give you an idea of the generation gap the name of the movie for anyone interested was PILLARS OF THE SKY and stared my favorite female actress Dorothy Malone.
Anyway I could not get the money my grandmother owed me till the job was complete so I kept on digging and prying trying to get that darned old wisteria stump out of the ground.
Well call it a twist of fate or luck of what ever you like but all of a sudden I heard some one behind me asking if they could help.
When I turned around to reply I was to see and meet for the first time in my life the man who later in my life taught me more about this wonderful art form than any other person most likely has or ever could have.
If I had been older at the time the little old man behind me would have perhaps reminded me of the movie actor that played the title role in The Karate Kid…. Pat Morita or better known as Miyagi.
Anyway the little short and nearly bald Japanese fellow was standing there looking at me like I was crazy to be working so hard and ask again if he could help and I said yes of course because at that point all I wanted to do was get done so I could go collect my money and head off to the movies.
Well as the man helped me to get the stump out of the ground he kept asking if he could have it. Of course I was more than happy to give it to him as it would be just one less thing I would had to throw on the burn pile.
Anyway to finish up the story the man did help me get the stump out of the ground and he when he left that day he took the stump along in his truck.
As fate would have it I ran into this man again a couple of years later and he invited me to his home to see his bonsai collection and to also get a look at what I worked so hard to get out of the ground.
Yes my friends the old stump from that wisteria that I was in such a hurry to get rid of.
Well my friends that is the day I really became hooked on bonsai, because if any of you ever in your life wondered want a masterpiece of creative art preformed on a plant looks like you would have seen it that day.
This fellow indeed was genius and a master at the art of bonsai. Yes indeed he was he had taken what was nearly a totally destroyed wisteria stump and some how saved and transformed it into perhaps one of the most lovely and beautiful bonsai that I have ever seen in my entire lifetime so far.
Now imagine if you will a stump that is nearly 22 inches in diameter and only about 16 inches in height but covered in the vine likeness that only wisteria can produce and loaded with beautifully shaped clusters of fragrant flowers as they hung down from the plant.
This was all planted in a bonsai pot that was not like any I had ever seen or have seen since. It was obvious that this pot was very special and most likely from his home land and antique.
Not like any you would find in any nursery here in the states unless it was special ordered.
Anyway to sum up my story I was astonished that the plant even lived at all.
You see I had really never thought about it after the day he took the stump until just then again at that oh so magic moment when I stood there in total amazement looking at what once used to be in my grandmother’s yard.
If I had known the day we dug it up what I know now that bonsai would be in my collection and I would probably still be enjoying it now.
I trained with this man until the time of his death in the early 1970s and I have never to this day ever had any regrets even for one moment of the gentle and caring wisdom he so graciously imparted to me.
I’m sixty one years old now and I still enjoy bonsai and I work at it nearly every day of the year when I get the chance.
It has become my life long passion and one true love other than my family of course and I will be writing about it here in my blog as time permits so if you like bonsai and the art of creating them then you may want to look in on the blog once in a while and read my ramblings.
I will be writing about bonsai and relating information about the art and what I have learned in my life time about bonsai. I will share with anyone that has an interest the tricks and facts that I have learned in my hobby and how you too can enjoy this most wonderful past time if your so inclined.
Respectfully yours, Harold Yearout
I’m referring of course to the art of creating your very own living breathing bonsai.
I want to tell you a story of how I first became hooked on this wonderful hobby.
It all happened when I was a teenager living with my grandmother.
My grandmother had a really beautiful front yard and in her yard at the front gate was a huge flower trestle. Planted on one side of this trestle was wisteria.
My grand parents bought the home in 1901 and the wisteria was already growing there at the front gate when they bought the home. The trunk at ground level was really huge.
By huge I mean over a foot around and that my friend is considered very big for wisteria.
It had been there for many years and had grown to completely cover the entire trestle and was to me absolutely astounding and very beautiful.
But as life would have it my grandmother became tired of the plant because of her age and failing health and wanted it removed.
Well guess who got that task? Yea you guessed it me. Well by that time in my life I was around sixteen or so I considered myself up to the task.
I hated having been given the job of getting rid of the wisteria however because as I said to me the plant was simply too beautiful to destroy.
But a job was a job and I knew that I would get paid so I started cutting it down.
I cut away at that plant for nearly the entire day and made a huge pile of branches out near the back of the barn where my granddad had a burn pile.
The main trunk took several more days for me to extract from the ground because like I said it was huge and it had a tap root that was very deep and the darn thing simply hung on for dear life.
I pried and dug till I was blue in the face and simply could not get the darn thing out of the ground. Well the next day was the weekend and I got up early and continued to dig on the wisteria.
Weekends were always my favorite time because you see in the days when I was growing up if you were lucky to have the money you could go to the Saturday movies in the afternoon.
You could even get a huge bag of popcorn and a soft drink for a quarter. Yes you read right a whopping quarter.
Well I wanted desperately to see a movie that Saturday, it was a western and westerns were my favorite. To give you an idea of the generation gap the name of the movie for anyone interested was PILLARS OF THE SKY and stared my favorite female actress Dorothy Malone.
Anyway I could not get the money my grandmother owed me till the job was complete so I kept on digging and prying trying to get that darned old wisteria stump out of the ground.
Well call it a twist of fate or luck of what ever you like but all of a sudden I heard some one behind me asking if they could help.
When I turned around to reply I was to see and meet for the first time in my life the man who later in my life taught me more about this wonderful art form than any other person most likely has or ever could have.
If I had been older at the time the little old man behind me would have perhaps reminded me of the movie actor that played the title role in The Karate Kid…. Pat Morita or better known as Miyagi.
Anyway the little short and nearly bald Japanese fellow was standing there looking at me like I was crazy to be working so hard and ask again if he could help and I said yes of course because at that point all I wanted to do was get done so I could go collect my money and head off to the movies.
Well as the man helped me to get the stump out of the ground he kept asking if he could have it. Of course I was more than happy to give it to him as it would be just one less thing I would had to throw on the burn pile.
Anyway to finish up the story the man did help me get the stump out of the ground and he when he left that day he took the stump along in his truck.
As fate would have it I ran into this man again a couple of years later and he invited me to his home to see his bonsai collection and to also get a look at what I worked so hard to get out of the ground.
Yes my friends the old stump from that wisteria that I was in such a hurry to get rid of.
Well my friends that is the day I really became hooked on bonsai, because if any of you ever in your life wondered want a masterpiece of creative art preformed on a plant looks like you would have seen it that day.
This fellow indeed was genius and a master at the art of bonsai. Yes indeed he was he had taken what was nearly a totally destroyed wisteria stump and some how saved and transformed it into perhaps one of the most lovely and beautiful bonsai that I have ever seen in my entire lifetime so far.
Now imagine if you will a stump that is nearly 22 inches in diameter and only about 16 inches in height but covered in the vine likeness that only wisteria can produce and loaded with beautifully shaped clusters of fragrant flowers as they hung down from the plant.
This was all planted in a bonsai pot that was not like any I had ever seen or have seen since. It was obvious that this pot was very special and most likely from his home land and antique.
Not like any you would find in any nursery here in the states unless it was special ordered.
Anyway to sum up my story I was astonished that the plant even lived at all.
You see I had really never thought about it after the day he took the stump until just then again at that oh so magic moment when I stood there in total amazement looking at what once used to be in my grandmother’s yard.
If I had known the day we dug it up what I know now that bonsai would be in my collection and I would probably still be enjoying it now.
I trained with this man until the time of his death in the early 1970s and I have never to this day ever had any regrets even for one moment of the gentle and caring wisdom he so graciously imparted to me.
I’m sixty one years old now and I still enjoy bonsai and I work at it nearly every day of the year when I get the chance.
It has become my life long passion and one true love other than my family of course and I will be writing about it here in my blog as time permits so if you like bonsai and the art of creating them then you may want to look in on the blog once in a while and read my ramblings.
I will be writing about bonsai and relating information about the art and what I have learned in my life time about bonsai. I will share with anyone that has an interest the tricks and facts that I have learned in my hobby and how you too can enjoy this most wonderful past time if your so inclined.
Respectfully yours, Harold Yearout
Monday, May 02, 2005
Here is the nice little plant that I was telling you about in the article The enjoyment of bonsai.
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