Newsletter October 2006

Hows everybody enjoying all the new spring growth, don’t forget to increase your water and fertilizer! Make use of the growing conditions while you can.

Repotting
Don’t worry to much if you haven’t completed all your repotting yet. Many trees, such as azaleas, elms and junipers all can still be done as long as you are careful with their aftercare. Other trees such as figs prefer to be done a little later in the season, so these can be safely done in the coming weeks. Trees such as black pines are now best left until Autumn, and done with care, or leave until next spring.

The most important aspect of repotting is the after care. Make sure you place your tree somewhere it will be shaded, but not in a dark or drafty place. & days should do it and then move it back to it original place.

When repotting make sure you don’t leave any air pockets around the roots as this can lead to root rot. This is best achieved by using a chopstick and gently working the soil so it is compacted around the rootball. Be gentle with this so as not to damage the tiny roots. Also the word compacting can be a little misleading. You don’t want the soil packed in so tight that the water has trouble penetrating the soil. The worst thing you can do is water your tree in and then push it down hard with your hands, this will pack the soil to tightly and cause problems.

Always use good soil! Don’t scrimp on soil and try and use some old stuff from a previous tree. You will transfer disease, and use soil that is denuded of needed nutrients for you growing tree. Remember your tree is in “grow mode” so it will be needing the best it can get! As mentioned before I am now having my own mix made commercially and am selling it at the nursery. It is specifically designed to promote good root growth, which will obviously promote good leaf growth! Remember, don’t try and save a dollar on a tree that is worth $100!!

Some trees will need to be repotted twice a year such as privets. It is therefore best to do these early in spring, and then again in say march. Often these trees will fill their pots with new roots very quickly.

Pests
Yep their back! Unfortunately, as we experience all this new growth, so are all the little bugs. There are various methods of keeping them under control, but the best is prevention.
Although I have hundreds of trees, I still water by hand. Sprinkler systems are fine but you will learn a lot more about your trees by hand watering. In one day you will notice a whilting, or chewing insects or yellowing etc. By being so prompt in dealing with the problem, you may avert a massive infestation. Keep your eyes open, as soon as you notice something different, find the cause.

Something to watch for is when you tree seems to be very loose in the pot, and is looking sickly. Often the cause of this is the “curl grub” These are little white grubs the size of half your little finger. These guys love to eat roots, and will be merrily munching away with you wondering what is going on. When in doubt with the health of your tree, always check the roots.
Many people fail to keep an eye on what is going on under the soil, “out of sight, out of mind”.
If you suspect a problem, check the roots, smell the soil, does it smell like its rotting? Maybe your drain holes are blocked, and water is slowly rotting the roots. Roots need oxygen to operate!

Your mix should be free draining allowing fresh air to be drawn down into the soil as you water.
Keep the area that you have your trees in nice and clean. Keep any surrounding trees free from pests also.

Tree selection.
Its important to understand when you are selecting a tree to shape as a bonsai, that often you are not looking at the entire tree. More often than not the tree has been grown to its current size just to increase the trunk thickness. Don’t try and work out how you could shape the whole tree as it is. Start at the base of the trunk and imagine a tree with good taper using maybe only one third of the tree! You may throw the rest away. Try and resist the instant bonsai pressure and begin to plan for the future, you will be surprised how fast time goes. I have recently cut of the whole top of a juniper and kept only the bottom branch, and turned it into a lovely cascade. By doing this you have a nice strong looking tree, with heaps of wow factor. If you are keen to do something like this, let me know next time you are at the nursery, and I will show you some trees that I keep my eyes on! This is a great way to expand your artistic ability and talents!

I recently purchased some small junipers, but they were larger than I needed so I am selling these for 4 for $28. (they are usually $12 each!) Let Corey know if you want these as they are only being offered to the recipients of the newsletter.

Hope this finds you and your trees all well,
Chris

Newsletter January 2007

special welcome to all the new readers of the newsletter, I hope you are in some way inspired and encouraged to keep going further with one of the greatest pastimes known to man…..BONSAI. (Well one of the great pastimes!)

SUMMERWhat summer? you are probably saying, well you are right, we are having very unusual weather up until now. At this time of year we are we are normally experiencing long hot days with late afternoon storms or showers. These can be great times of good growth as long as the periods of intense heat are not to long. There are unusual problems occurring with growing owing to the unseasonal temperatures.

I still think the summer season will come, just a little late. Please don’t blame global warming!! We have had record low temperatures around Australia, as well as record levels of rain. (this is another story that I wont get into here) But as someone famous once said “be carefull of what you hear!If you need to you could even sneak some repotting in now if you must, just be careful of exposure for a couple of weeks after you have repotted. BUT keep in mind the weather can swing at any time so if you don’t need to, avoid it unless you are well experienced.There are trees that should not be done this time of year, trees such as pines, cedars, azaleas etc. Interestingly enough, there are some natives that can be done. The thing with natives is to watch for the tree to go into dormancy, ie no new growth appearing, then get to it. A word of warning though go very easy with the roots, they don’t like them to be drastically cut as a rule!

Usually with the onset of summer we may experience a period of dormancy. This is the trees way of protecting itself from those hot spells where the tree is unable to supply enough moisture to the leaves, so any new growth is very susceptible to die back.For this reason pull back on your fertilizing especially your fertilizers with high nitrogen content, as this will promote new growth artificially and cause your tree to struggle in the heat. Move you more delicate trees into a bit of shade, azaleas, maples etc. Maples tend to burn around this time of the year, and the leaves can look pretty ordinary, all brown and curled up. The other thing is when autumn comes around instead of having a tree with beautifully coloured foliage its just a crinkled misery!
PESTSI have noticed a lot of trees coming into the nursery lately with major pest problems. On trees such as junipers, often it is to late as these trees tend to die from the inside out, in other words the last thing to turn brown is the needles.

Figs on the other hand will show it in their leaves first so we are often aware earlier of the problem.Most of the problems seem to be with the sap sucking variety. These are usually either white louse scale, or red spider mite, two spotted mite.These insects will attack most trees. Junipers usually begin to turn a slight olive colour, and there bark becomes a bit wrinkly. Some of the tell tale signs are very fine webs, also very small whitish specks at the base of the leaves or needles.The best way to treat these is with either Folimat, or Confidor, both available at the hardware store. Be careful spraying these, keep the can well away from the tree as the aerosol can burn the foliage.

It is also important to keep your trees healthy, and your area where they sit clean.If your trees become weak through neglect, they become a target for pests, this is their job! Also keep falling leaves etc away from your trees because these will also harbor little nasties. More often than not, if you follow simply practices you will have minimal problems with pests and disease. If your are having problems and you are going to bring your tree, just bring a small bit in a bag as I don’t like having every disease and pest brought to the nursery, as you can imagine!

We have had some great stock come in lately. We have some really nice ground grown corky bark elms. These have been grown from root cuttings so already have great bark and trunks, and also good shape, they are about 40-50mm thick. We have some nice cedars, big pyracanthas, these have a lovely flower, followed by red berries. We also have some nice chunky black pines, some huge Chinese elms, (250mm + trunks!) some good sized maples, some awesome little stumpy olives, very unusual. Also some good sized seiju elms ( these are like Chinese elms only they have minute leaves).I am still unpacking pots and putting out new styles all the time, so if you are after something special have a look.I have also started selling “Bonsai Europe” This is an outstanding bonsai magazine, probably one of the best publications I have seen. I initially got one for myself and was that impressed decided to import them for resale at the nursery. It is printed once every 2 months and is a very classy magazine done in full gloss from cover to cover, It is full of hints tips and inspiration, and of course some amazing trees.I only have 25 copies each delivery. They are only available from the nursery I cant post them out. They are $15 and the only other place I have seen them was Brisbane and they were $19.95.

Reading this magazine you realize how big bonsai has become in the western world. I don’t think we have really started to scratch the surface here in Australia. I know just from the trade at the nursery that it is beginning to explode here. The inevitable will come out of this, higher demand bringing higher prices. But with this will also come the expansion of knowledge shared, techniques improved and greater enjoyment for all.What an exciting time to be involved with bonsai!

Newsletter March 2007

Looks like Autumn has dawned, caught most of us unawares, but here it comes. It really is a glorious season, all the colour, anticipation of great ramification you will see on your deciduous trees, and an end to frantic watering! (which is a lead in for this newsletter)

WATERING
Yes I know watering again, but this time its for a very good reason. As you may or may not know we have 75% of our dam filled at the moment. BUT in the governments wisdom they have brought down huge water restrictions. Brisbanes dams are very low but they have included Gold Coast in this, yet we have had RECORD rainfalls all over Australia (Al Gore has a lot to answer for, this is one of the most deceptive Presidential campaigns yet!) Someone sternly told me the other day we just recorded the hottest day in March since 1965! So are you telling me it was HOTTER in 1965? If you care to read anymore click on the below link.

APC: United Nations > Articles > There is No Global Warming
I don’t want to use the newsletter as a place of debate, but hopefully people will be challenged to do some research for themselves.

If anything Bonsai will grow dramatically as people always want to have some sort of trees to look after and admire.

So I thought I would take the opportunity to help you with watering under the new guidelines. At least we are coming into winter and watering has already started to slow down.
One way of watering a lot of trees yet using very little water is done by submerging your trees for a short period of time.

What you need is a container that will take your largest tree, it doesn’t matter what its made of.
Starting with your small trees first place them in the bottom of the container and begin to fill the tub until the water is about 40-50mm above the trees ground level. Do this gently so as not to disturb the pebbles or moss.

Leave the trees in the water until all the bubbles have stopped rising to the surface. Different trees will take longer, depending on the density of the root ball. (5-15 mins)

Whilst you are doing this, you can also add your favourite liquid fertilizer to the water. This will seep through the whole rootmass. Fertilising can be continued now until the night temperatures drop to about 12 Cel. This only needs to be done every fortnight though with the fertilizer!
You can keep using the same water, obviously you will have top it up depending on how many trees you are doing, and correspondingly add more fertilizer.

You can even put a tray on top of the tub and let the water drain out and save even more especially when it is using fertilizer.

A word of caution, you wont need to water like this everyday as you have perhaps been doing when you hose. The reason is that this is a very deep watering, and much more water gets to the trees roots, and will sustain it for 2-3 days. You will just need to check your trees individually, but you will soon get the hang of it.

You will probably find your trees become a lot more healthy. It will also promote more even root growth rather than new roots just forming on the extremities of the rootmass. The reason is more often than not we water and only the outside of the rootball gets watered.

Using a gravel tray is another option for keeping your plants hydrated. This is done by using a shallow tray with the bottom covered in sand or gravel. Fill this with water until the sand or gravel is just covered. Now when you place your trees on this they will be “watered” by the evaporation that takes place. Now this is not to replace watering but will prolong the time between watering. (this is a great option during very hot weather, or for very small “mame” bonsai) Again you will need to check your trees individually. What actually happens is that the water contained in the botoom of the tray will continue to evaporate, misting the leaves of your trees. Trees can absorb moisture in this way also. One word of warning, make sure that your trees are not sitting in the water. Roots on trees such as swamp cypress are ok, but keep everything else above the water line.

WIRE
Just remember that because the growing season seems to be over not to neglect your trees especially when it comes to wire. During this time of the year, often your trunk and branches will continue to thicken up. One reason is the optimal temperatures (they are very much like spring) the other is that the tree is starting to store all its goodies before winter in preparation for next spring. For this reason wire can start to cut in quite easily and leave nasty scars. Just check all your trees and have a close look to make sure wire doesn’t need to come of. Keep this in mind if you are currently wiring your tree, it will need to be checked in a month or so.

Another thing to remember at the moment is to not do anymore trimming on your azaleas. All your new flower buds will have formed, and if you cut them you wont have any flowers!
In regard to flowers and fruit, don’t forget to start using liquid potash once a fortnight (can be used with your new watering system) to produce an abundance of beautiful fruit and flowers come spring.

Its also time to move your deciduous trees into more sun. This will give greater colour as autumn approaches.

In the valley we are experiencing cooler nights already, and colour is really starting to show. My liquid amber is really starting to turn, (see picture) its going to be a great autumn!!

Happy Bonsai-ing, and remember henny penny was wrong!!