I’ve been preparing a cork oak for its initial styling for two years now. In winter of 2018, I worked on the roots and planted the tree in its current container. This past February, I reduced the branches that I didn’t plan to use in the final design (see “Refining cork oak” for details). The […]
Cork Oak
Early branch work on large cork oak bonsai
Creating branches on cork oak bonsai can be a fun process. I wire the shoots that will form the primary branches and remove all other shoots. Instead of wiring the branches all the way out to the tips, I focus on creating one or two curves near the trunk as I plan to reduce these […]
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 […]
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 […]