Last year I tried two different approaches to planting black pine seedling cuttings – planting them in individual containers, the approach I’d most often taken in the past, and planting groups of them together in terra cotta pots (see “How to pot seedling-cuttings“). While the seedling-cuttings planted in 3” pots did well, the ones planted […]
Search Results for: pine
Repotting a red pine forest
Late last year, I brought my red pine forest in to a workshop with Daisaku Nomoto to see about preparing it for show. To my surprise, Nomoto was more concerned with the way the group was planted than he was with the branches. A repotting was in order. Nomoto’s chief comment was that he didn’t […]
A project pine
I’m fond of referring to selected trees as “project” trees when the journey to become a bonsai is a long one. The black pine below has something resembling a bunjin feel – a euphemism, in this case, for a tree with no branches along the lower part of the trunk. I removed the top half of […]
Preparing a black pine for exhibit
Not long before last month’s Bay Island Bonsai exhibit, Boon mentioned that there was room for more trees if I was interested. I looked around my backyard for candidates and found that one of my black pines had filled in nicely after the previous year’s decandling. I brought it to workshop to see if it […]
Creating cork bark black pine
After doing some cutback on a corkbark black pine, I saved the clippings so I could do some grafting. Corkbark pines aren’t as strong on their own roots as they are on black pine roots. As a result, most of the corkbark bonsai we see are grafted. The earlier these trees are grafted, the better. […]