Recent content by Zach Smith

Needs pruning and pinching for leaf-size reduction, Carol. It's just a "feature" of crapes and many other species.

My s My pleasure. Happy live oak!

I've never tried air layering Sweetgum, but it's worth noting that they produce fibrous roots very nicely in a pot. I mention this because you will virtually never lift one that has any appreciable fibrous root volume near the trunk.

Go with the largest and deepest pot you can for strongest growth - if you can, of course. Good luck with it!

Pull it out and put it in the ground, let it grow wild two or three years, then see what you have to work with. You're putting way too much design thought into this tree given its size and current form.

First of all, you will have to work hard to kill this vine. Let it grow out, don't love it too much, then next summer reassess what you have. Wisterias are resistant to training, but once you figure out what they want to do you can go with their flow and make something nice out of them. The...

A couple of the larger leaves had the classic American elm shape, terminating in an elongated point with asymmetric edges. Also too big for Chinese elm. White bark also comes early on American elm, eventually getting raggedy-shredded looking. Given the size and apparent age, if it were...

Looks like an American elm. Great species for bonsai, underutilized.

This specimen should terminate at about half its current height. So you can plan your air layer accordingly. I don't have any experience with layering BC, as I have no need to, but I'm sure someone here has done so successfully.

You have to decide what is most important to you in your bonsai. If it is thick trunks with no chop scars, then plan on a 20-30 year timeframe to end up with large trees featuring thick trunks (3" or better) with great branch structures and fine ramification. Building a trunk with repeated...

What Brian said, just be sure you wait years. It'll take about three before the tree really takes off (first year sleep, second year creep, third year leap). In the meantime, get a lot more trees so you leave this one alone and don't succumb to the temptation to love it a lot.

Jerry, it really is the journey. If you had a perfect tree sitting on your bench, the odds are pretty high that after a few years you'd walk by it and not even notice it that much. But the ones you're trying to whip into shape, that's where your attention goes. Sure, it's nice to have nice...

I like that tool on the left-hand side of the bench. No nonsense from those trees! :cool:

Sounds like you've got a plan. BC seeds do germinate at pretty near 100%, so that should leave you with plenty to work on down the road. Good luck with them!

One thing to bear in mind about any trees grown from seed, there is a certainly mortality rate that tends to take the weaker ones out over the first few years of growth. They look fine, you treat them the same way as the others, but you lose one here and there for no apparent reason. It's just...