After nursing a handful of young Japanese maples back to health, I decided to plant them all in the same pot to create a small grove planting. I started by selecting a shallow pot and adding lots of wires. The pot from below Plenty of wires Using lots of wires is useful for creating groves […]
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.
20 year-old black pines – before and after
Having just appeared in BIB’s 15th annual exhibit, the small black pine below was due for a tune up. Daisaku Nomoto made a surprising number of cuts and then reset the remaining branches. When he was finished, I repotted the tree into a more suitable container for the growing season. Shohin black pine After cutback […]
Daisaku Nomoto workshop
I recently had the opportunity to participate in a workshop led by Daisaku Nomoto. In town from Miyazaki, Japan, to help with the BIB exhibit, Nomoto spent the day helping a handful of students with their trees. I spent most of the day with a white pine I’d picked up at last year’s BIB Auction. […]
Refining a black pine
One of my longer term projects has been a black pine grown in the ground at Lone Pine Gardens. It looks like a somewhat normal tree save for a few extraneous over-size branches. The large branch in the front is the new apex – the branch on the right is helping the trunk thicken. Black pine […]
Removing an air layer
About a year and a half ago, I started an air layer on a Japanese maple (see “Air layering a Japanese maple“). I checked on the layer’s progress the following winter and found that the wound had produced callus but no roots. I reopened the wound to stimulate root growth and by spring a few […]