There’s a lot to try to keep in mind when shopping for field grown material. It can be easy to focus on the lower part of the trunk and think, “This looks nice, I can fix the rest later.” The fix may not, however, always come easily. At a glance, the pine below has a […]
Bonsai Development
Bonsai Development posts form the heart of Bonsai Tonight. Learn about varieties like Black Pine, Shimpaku and Japanese Maple, techniques like Decandling and Grafting and Air Layering, and bonsai features like Deadwood.
Double decker air layer on cryptomeria
I’ve always been curious about whether a double air layer could be used to produce three trees at once. Knowing that cryptomeria bonsai layer well, I thought I’d give it a try. Double decker air layer started May, 2017 One challenge I had was that there was little foliage between the two layers. It’s better […]
Redirecting growth on an 8 year-old black pine
I recently picked up an eight year-old black pine growing in an Anderson flat. It had grown in the ground for several years and had been in the flat for the last one to two years. 8 year-old black pine As you can see from the photo above, most of the vigorous growth is located […]
Refining Korean hornbeam follow-up – thinning branches
I received some fantastic suggestions last week, both in the comments and in my inbox, about how to improve a refined Korean hornbeam. I’ll respond below, but first, here’s the tree as it looked last week for reference. Korean hornbeam A number of you suggested thinning the branches – I agree. I didn’t thin the […]
From landscape tree to bonsai part 5
Six years ago, I started working on a large Japanese black pine that had been developed as landscape material. Japanese black pine – 2012 Over the years I reduced the tree to a single cascading branch (for the full story, see links to parts 1-4 below). Black pine – December 2017 Several years ago, the […]