crab apple

The blossoms are more pink this year and not fading to boring white. This is an improvement.

 

Calamondin thoughts.

 

In previous years it was never in great shape after the winter. Full of bugs and yellowing foliage.

This year I sprayed it with Roseclear 3 times during the winter - this kept the outbreaks of pests down.

I also took it outside and gave it a deep watering a few times. Drenching it with fresh rainwater. When indoors I water it less because it will overflow its driptray otherwise.

It kept good dark green in the leaves because i fertilised it quite a lot - every 10 days or so - with half strength micracle grow general purpose - and I also gave it a few doses or CalMag which it really enjoyed last summer.

This fertilising regimen seems to work well - so I intend to have the Calamondon and the Satsuki's on the same rotation of fertiliser and CalMag.

Field Maple

 

This is one of my first collected trees. It was found in a sorry state on a footpath - roots already ripped out. I experimented with constant mist and various tent configurations to recover it.

It has too many straight branches and it's also quite skinny. It really hasn't grown well in a pot. I did make some mistakes with my fertiliser schedule in years gone by - so I expect much better results this year.

It does look nice with the leaves out.

Crab Apple

 

Taken with my Z7 and the 24-70 F4. This is just a few days away from blossoms. I will try to take this same angle in a few days with blossoms.

Last year in Belgium.

Taken with my Nikon D810 and a sigma art series 24-105. 

 

Satsuki photography technique

 

Due to the cold weather this Satsuki was brought in. It lives in a small greenhouse during the winter for frost protection and a bit of warmth - but it was too cold last night - so in it came. This gave an opportunity to clear off all the old leaves and critters and then thoroughly spray it with insecticide. 

I am hoping that with the right water and fertiliser this tree will grow vigorously this coming season.

My backdrop for photography is very glossy and wrinkly and I don't have great lighting gear so I opted to paint the tree with a hand held light on a 30 second exposure - you can see my hand and the blurry light as I fill the image. This bottom picture is an uncropped raw image direct to JPG. The top image is the same one cropped with the exposure tweaked. 

Pomegranate 3 years

 

Here it is in the garage where its spending the winter. I have cleaned off all the old leaves and trimmed off the longer shoots. I struggled to get enough growth in the first years.

I struggled with leaf curl and purple leaves due to nutrient deficiencies that I couldn't correct. Turns out it doesn't like tap water and it wants a tonne of food. And it also likes extra calcium like citrus.

Once I have enough foliage I will begin to select branches and wire a bit. For now I am just cleaning up the dead wood with a ball cutter.

The twigs are really brittle. I broke off a few - luckily nothing critical.

Beech progress

 

The tree is still a bit skinny. I placed it in a larger pot hoping for some more trunk growth.

January 2021.

Some years earlier - about 8 I think. Not happy with the progress.

 January 2013 in fact. 

Old wild Hawthorn

Just a lonely old tree i saw while out climbing.

Trauma

The trauma of moving the entire bonsai collection to a new home is over. No losses so far - although the Scots pines are very grumpy.

Ladybirds

I have not sprayed the Scots pines this year as I am hoping for the natural predators to help me out.

So far the aphids are winning - but each pine is getting more and more ladybirds to manage the aphid population. They seem to eat until they are so full and then fall off and sleep.

The ant herders seem to also fight off the ladybirds - which is limiting their effectiveness.

The new season begins

All of the deciduous trees are out now and I hope that I don't get hit by a late frost again this year. The maples have given smaller leaves this year - which is very nice.

Some of the trees are looking really good and I expect a good season. 

Just this last week the beech's have dropped their old leaves so they will get going soon as well.

My pines have begun putting up this years candles over the last 2 weeks. The younger and smaller ones are running about 4 weeks ahead of the big established pines.

I have done some heavy cutting on them just before the big flush of growth and I hope that the timing is right.

As usual there are visitors on the pines again. I will give the ladybirds another few weeks before I spray.

Interestingly one of my Oaks is flowering heavily - I'm wondering if this is stress related like the Scots pines or if its just in the mood for acorns. 

I'm still using chemical fertiliser until the soil is warm enough for the organics to digest. Some of the fertiliser pellets on the pines are starting to show some of the characteristic white mycorrhizal fungi on them so the soil is waking up.

Roots and pots

In addition to bonsai I grow something else each year. Most years I grow a chilli or two and in addition this year I've grown garlic and radishes. I use the same soil, nutrients and pots for these projects to learn about them for growing bonsai. 

These were Sante Fe Grande hot chillies. An attractive looking variety that are quite mild and can be used in large quantities for most cooking. You don't have to be careful of them like the Habaneros I grew last year.

Air pot roots - for bonsai this is perfect. After seeing this I am very pleased to have my pre bonsai trees growing in these pots as they are so suitable for bonsai. The three Scots pines are going to be fantastic growing like this.

Conventional pot roots. As usual the roots are doing laps of the pot.

The air pot plant was able to stand upright without a stake and was very stable - even with a large amount of fruit on it. The growth rate and yield were not discernibly different to a normal pot. 

Conventional pots led to a plant that flopped all over and needed to be staked upright. Note the slanting trunk after I had cut off all the fruit.

I learned a bit more about how to grow in coco coir doing this as well. Garden centre top dressings for calcium and magnesium in combination with organic fertilisers are very hard to do and lead to severe nutrient lockout.

Local show

Here are a couple of nice bonsai I saw while walking around the local Capel Manor / Enfield bonsai show.

Beech.

Needle Juniper.

Hawthorn.

Beech.

Crab apple.

Yew.

LV had good material available.

Not harry.

Nice sized vendor area with good material.

Got a nice little crab apple from Kaizen.

Scots pine progress

I took this image this afternoon as I was removing the old needles.

I've been really busy this year and I have only had time for basic maintenance and fertilising. I am unexpectedly unemployed and have time on my hands to spend some quality time with the little trees.

Last year I hurt the pines with being too aggressive with the fertiliser towards the end of the year. They respond very poorly to high PK suitable for flowering or fruiting plants. I remember killing my first Japanese black pine about 15 years ago in Australia using tomato fertiliser - at the time I attributed this to inexperience.

This year I have used Biogold ( cause you can get them cheap now ) and liquid organic fertiliser. As the needles were hardening off I used a bit of seaweed extract as well. 

I took this image earlier this year after the candles had extended and been trimmed.  You can see how the needles have reduced in size as the tree was more relaxed and had enough light gathering ability.

The wine bottle is there for scale.

2 years ago. The tree was growing aggressively and had very long needles.

4 years ago. The poor thing was starving as you can see from all the flowers on it.

Wild English Juniper

Beech potting

Today I moved this beech over into a proper pot. I am almost settled on the design and I will do the final wiring over the next few days. There is one big branch to be removed - but I am going to do it slowly and make the most out of the deadwood. 

The shape and size of the pot were dictated by the shape of the large roots and depth of the root ball. In addition I wanted a pot with a bit of height to accentuate the windswept nature of this tree. Its positioned up as close to the side of the pot as possible.

I did my usual drainage layer of large hydroponic pebbles.

Once I was done settling it into the pot I reused some of the original bonsai soil and supplemented it with a coarser mix that I prefer. This mix was quite fine and the roots weren't stellar. In my experience the beech grows well in quite a coarse mix. 

I included a lot of organic material (pine bark) in the mix to give the soil flora something to hang onto.

I had a choice of pots and went with the tall one in the end. Nice to have a choice of good quality pots to work with.

Condition of the roots in the nursery pot was not bad. I tried not to disturb them too much, other than loosening the edge of the ball and fitting it into the new pot.

Big pots experiment

Last week I dug up one of the Oaks that I was growing in a very large pot and had a good look at what was happening underground. I was becoming a little concerned about the type of roots developing and feared deep thick roots and growth up against the side of the pot.

I was really surprised at the quality of the roots that came out. A nice dense root ball with very few thicker roots. Clean and healthy too with no dead roots or an smell at all. There were plenty of choice surface roots to work with later as well.

I trimmed them back and decreased the depth of the root mass to make it easier to pot later. As I reduced the depth of the root ball I came across no thick deep roots that were going to be a problem later. Its gone into a large air pot now for finishing off over the next 2 years. 

Its going to be very interesting to see the growth rate in the air pot compare to the large container behind it.

So its maybe not as effective as field growing - but for now it easier to manage and gives very good roots. A lot easier to lift from the big pot and retain quality roots that digging up too. I will definitely continue to grow Oaks like this.