There are a number of good reasons to fertilize bonsai in summer: The tree is young and the goal is to thicken the trunk The tree requires nutrition to recover from – or prepare for – defoliation and decandling The growing season is short and waiting until fall to fertilize is too late As I have […]
Bonsai Blog
Search
(Enter search terms and press 'Enter')
Recent Posts
Carving tips for beginners
A member of the Bonsai Society of San Francisco, Samuel Tan, has taken an interest in juniper bonsai – especially deadwood work. Although relatively new to bonsai, Sam has picked up good tips from books like François Jeker’s Bonsai Deadwood and Cheng Cheng-Kung’s Bonsai Shari SiDiao. I was curious what information Sam had found most […]
Signs of overwatering black pine bonsai
About a month ago, I noticed some of my pines turning yellow near the base of the needles. Yellowing pine needles I rarely see this in my older pines, but it sometimes shows up in the younger trees in my garden. It’s a common sign that the trees are staying too wet between waterings. After […]
When to graft and when to bend: evaluating branch structure
Since repotting a neglected San Jose juniper last fall, I’ve been thinking about the tree’s options for future development. The main question is whether to work with the existing branches or graft new branches. San Jose juniper Whenever possible, I like to work with existing branches because it’s much faster to develop a tree by wiring […]
Defoliation follow-up: refining a Korean hornbeam
Two months ago I partially defoliated a mature Korean hornbeam (see “Focus on defoliation” for details). After defoliation – May 2018 I’d been curious about the effect of removing more leaves than normal so I cut about 60-70% of the foliage to see what would happen. Since then, the tree has grown well. New leaves […]