bwaynef's brimming-backyard barrage of burgeoning bonsai

[bwaynef]

Is alliteration a bannable offense?

Having a single place to share/update my work seemed like a good idea, so, late to the game, I figured I'd add to the brouhaha of bonsai backyards. My 1000th post seemed a fitting point to begin this thread.

I'm in the midst of fall work at the moment. Deciduous trees have mostly shut down though they haven't ALL dropped their leaves. (For instance, while I have good color on my stewartia, the leaves haven't fallen and manually removing them by peeling them backwards away from the bud resulted in the slightest strip of what passes for bark going with it.) Here's what I've gotten to so far.

 

[bwaynef]

A few more. I don’t always take before pictures. (Please ignore the greenhouse. Through a series of unfortunate events, it was left unanchored when a tropical storm blew through. Replacement parts have finally been located and will be shipped soon.)

First three are some trident seedlings growing in grow pots for now. A chinese elm that volunteered in another pot somewhere.

The 3rd and 2nd from last was at one point a bunch of seedling Japanese maples. It's an interesting little tree. I'm not sure it will become more than a novelty, nor that more couldn't be achieved in a shorter time from a well-grown seedling/cutting, but I'll make a place for it for the next few years.

The last is A. palmatum 'Miners' that so far has proven to have gigantic leaves. I removed a sizable trunk during this recent work. It needs some work to reduce a bulbous protrusion near the nebari.

 

[bwaynef]

I ended up having to pluck almost every leaf off this Stewartia, individually. I still need to put some branches in place and need to work on getting taper into a few of the branches as well. It’s a start though. I’ll come back to this one again with fresh eyes.

 

[bwaynef]

This is probably where I’ll stop with this one for the year.

 

[JudyB]

Nice Stewartia you have going there.

 

[bwaynef]

This wasn’t in the backyard, but it is my babiest girl.

She wanted to help me with a trident I was cutting back and while I was figuring out how to let her help me, she picked up a piece I’d cut off and a piece of wire and asked how to wire. I started telling her, then figured I’d set her up as best I could.

Showed her figure 15 (a different one than this one that’s been colored so she can see which wire is what), told her to use one wire for two branches, keep even coil spacing, and coil the wire and not the branching. Then I went to the store. The final pic is her work.

 

[Carol 83]

This wasn’t in the backyard, but it is my babiest girl.

She wanted to help me with a trident I was cutting back and while I was figuring out how to let her help me, she picked up a piece I’d cut off and a piece of wire and asked how to wire. I started telling her, then figured I’d set her up as best I could.

Showed her figure 15 (a different one than this one that’s been colored so she can see which wire is what), told her to use one wire for two branches, keep even coil spacing, and coil the wire and not the branching. Then I went to the store. The final pic is her work.

That is awesome.

 

[bwaynef]

She went to Roy’s. (Literally.)

 

[bwaynef]

These two found their way to my place. I plan on layering the maple (after digging down a bit to see how deeply it’s potted) and reducing the height 6-8”. The elm I’d like to make sure is well established before doing too much with it. May layer the straight trunk off simply because of the bark.

 

[bwaynef]

My bonsai area is being revamped and I didn’t want this table so prominently in the yard where it was, so I stuck it in the back of my tree area and put my pots on it. I need to cut some wood so I can stack them a little safer, but here’s what I came up with so far.

Also got rid of some of the dead I had hoped was going to show life eventually and collected those pots. I’ll let them air out their bad juju and hope they’ll do better next time.

 

[Bonsai Nut]

Is alliteration a bannable offense?

Better believe bit!

 

[leatherback]

work

love how you block out the name. Good to see you have some talent there

My bonsai

Which tree is hers?

 

[bwaynef]

love how you block out the name. Good to see you have some talent there

There's more going on in that regard than is obvious.

Which tree is hers?

I've promised her one of her own, but she wants to work on mine and I've told her that I need her to keep practicing before I turn her loose on my trees. We haven't found time to continue her wiring practice, but I feel like it'll happen.

 

[bwaynef]

This tree did NOT want to bend. It finally submitted but only after breaking 4-5 progressively larger copper guy wires. I almost caved then I remembered I had some steel wire for an electric fence.

I let it sit for several months to make sure I didn’t take it too far with the bend (and the abuse in getting the bend to stay after several failures) and styled it up this afternoon.

This is Kishu from Chikugo-en.

 

[bwaynef]

I’ve never bothered much with dormant sprays but some folks I trust have recommended it so...

I’m more interested in getting the Lime Sulfur applied to help with some disease pressure, but I started with Dormant Oil spray, which I understand targets overwintering insects and their eggs. The instructions say to avoid any sulfur so I’ll wait 4-6 weeks before applying.

Here’s to less live (bad) bugs and more dead ones.

 

[bwaynef]

As a follow up to that last post, I just came here to declare Lime Sulfur is pretty stinky stuff! I hope it has tangible obvious benefits or I'm not sure I can muster the resolve to do that too often.

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

Definitely an outside activity...

 

[leatherback]

As a follow up to that last post, I just came here to declare Lime Sulfur is pretty stinky stuff! I hope it has tangible obvious benefits or I'm not sure I can muster the resolve to do that too often.

Try cooking up the stuff yourself!

 

[markyscott]

As a follow up to that last post, I just came here to declare Lime Sulfur is pretty stinky stuff! I hope it has tangible obvious benefits or I'm not sure I can muster the resolve to do that too often.

bwaynef -

From what I understand, lime sulfur most effective right when the trees are coming out of dormancy. The ideal timing is when the buds have just started swelling, but have yet to open. Too early and the fungus is not active - not sure how effective it is at killing spores. Too late and the fungus can get inside the opening leaf and infect the soft tissue - difficult to treat effectively at that point. So, to get your timing down, look at when bud break is on your first trees to break bud in spring. Then count back 4 weeks - that should be the absolute latest date you spray your oil In order to give enough time between applications to get your lime sulfur spraying in. Here in Houston, there is zero margin for error - if I don’t spray oil within a few days of Jan 1, I just skip it so I can start spraying the lime sulfur in early February.

- S

 

[bwaynef]

I’d bought a pot for the stewartia, but realized I ought to have a fallback in case the rootball didn’t support moving it into such a shallow pot. That meant I had to repot this Japanese maple just so I could have it’s pot in reserve if needed.
I was surprised how this pot seemed to accentuate the tree.