Last spring I brought home a few coast live oaks. I repotted them in early May and found that they responded well to the work (see “Repotting out of season“). Here’s what one of the trees looked like last week. Coast live oak I did, however, notice that most of the new growth was on […]
Search Results for: oak
Refining cork oak – step two
I’m starting this series on cork oak with the second step – reducing branches that are too long or too straight. The first step is repotting the tree into bonsai soil and generating healthy roots. Last year I repotted this oak in a training pot after nearly bare-rooting it. The field soil supported few roots […]
Illuminated bonsai at the Oakland Autumn Lights Festival
Each fall, the Gardens at Lake Merritt host the Autumn Lights Festival. The event is a fundraiser for the seven-acre garden in Oakland’s Lakeside Park. Held over three evenings, the event attracts thousands of visitors of all ages. More than five thousand made it to the Bonsai Garden at Lake Merritt to see trees illuminated […]
Checking the roots on a large cork oak
I’d like to highlight a comment from the last post: “Whenever I get a new tree I like to repot it at the first ideal opportunity, regardless of whether or not the tree or soil are showing signs of a required repot because that is such an important component to the future of the tree […]
Restoring an old cork oak bonsai
Toward the end of 2014, I picked up an old cork oak bonsai that belonged to a former member of Bay Island Bonsai. The tree hadn’t been repotted for maybe 5-10 years. Getting it out of the pot took several hours – the whole repotting took more than a day. At the time, the tree […]