Help me with a boring satsuki

[yashu]

My mother in law has one at the corner of her house that I’ve coveted for many years and tried to bribe her with a “fine young specimen” in the color of her choice and I’d take that ragged old thing off her hands.

For better or worse I no longer live in an area where there is an abundance of “yardadori”. I used to be in a more urban area and I kick myself for not grabbing all the “crap” I would see at the dump. I’ve relocated to the sticks where everyone’s landscape plants are 100’ tall white pines and maples (among other varieties).

 

[yashu]

Glad you made a start of it. The hardest is doing your first group and crossing your fingers for a month or two.

Given my first year experience root washing, I’ll wager the lil guy will perk up in 6 weeks, given good weather and that you can easily get away with some pruning now and do the rest after flowering.

Next you ought to look up Riverbend Gardens in NH and pick a couple of their Satsuki… they do a nice job of pre styling!

Best
DSD sends

So I looked up Riverbend and ended up ordering 5 more satsuki because why not

 

[Deep Sea Diver]

I’ve about 8 of their satsuki etc azalea and have root washed each of these. They have the best underground development of all the azalea sources I’ve purchased from except Nuccios.

cheers
DSD sends

 

[Carol 83]

They have the best underground development of all the azalea sources I’ve purchased from except Nuccios.

Love those guys. I may or may not have received a recent shipment from them.

 

[Tums]

Very tempting, I just looked Riverbend up and live under an hour's drive away. If I don't get buried under all the other plants I ordered this year, maybe a trip is in order?

 

[BrierPatch]

I’m not to concerned with flowering this season can I preemptively remove the flower buds, then do the work and in essence accelerate the burst of growth that generally follows flowering?

I've really enjoyed all the input on this thread. Sorry if I missed something but I too was wondering on @yashu question of "preemptively remove the flower buds"? A lot of nursery stock is already at the blooming stage, at least what I've seen here locally.
From my understanding it's recommended to remove the buds if repotting and performing any root work.

 

[River's Edge]

I've really enjoyed all the input on this thread. Sorry if I missed something but I too was wondering on @yashu question of "preemptively remove the flower buds"? A lot of nursery stock is already at the blooming stage, at least what I've seen here locally.
From my understanding it's recommended to remove the buds if repotting and performing any root work.

I would classify this step as added detail that improves the outcome. Yes if you wish to repot or perform root work it is helpful to remove the flower buds before they open. The reasoning behind this is to save the energy expended on flowering! The reserve energy can be better used to help the plant recover from the repot, root work or pruning that is performed in place of allowing the plant to flower! ( best practices would suggest earlier repotting in late winter/early spring) or as a second best alternative (after flowering and with time to recover from flowering first. )
As an aside, it is common practice to selectively reduce the number of flower buds in preparation of display or to minimize the energy drain on the plant if you wish to let it flower each year. This can create a more balanced display of flowers on the plant and also balance the health of the plant going forward.
The stronger the plant the more one is able to continuously develop and improve the design.
One of the better basic books that focus on Satsuki was published in 2004 by Shogo Watanabe and is available in an English translation. The book covers most of the basics with well illustrated tips and techniques for development and refinement of satsuki. Particularly on topic with this thread is the illustration and discussion of eleven common styles for Satsuki Bonsai. 80 page soft cover book and relatively inexpensive.

 

[Deep Sea Diver]

@River's Edge is on the mark as usual!

Mr Watanabe’s book is really good. Alexander Kennedy‘s Floral treasures of Japan” is one of my favorite satsuki books as a rookie

@BrierPatch ‘s question kicked off a train of thoughts I wrestle with all year when working on azalea so I’m going to launch a few out here for further cogitation, comments or consideration…. Here goes…

In fact there are plenty of questions that elict different opinions on this forum, debudding is one of these. There are multiple facets.

An important issue with azaleas is maintaining water/sap flow. Preserving the sap flow as is or diverting the sap flow towards foliage growth is a key consideration in most situations.… and avoiding cutting too many roots so the water intake can’t meet the loss from transpiration is a biggy. After all, a tree will die in less then a day if the leaves dehydrate. That’s why repotted trees are kept in shaded situations for 2-3 weeks afterwards.​

Damaged roots will divert energy at the expense of the stem, creating a tug of war for resource need. Debudding can make sense in a number of situations.​

Yet azaleas aren’t all that frail, if properly handled and the sap flow is maintained, the trees are robust and not meant to be treated like Shrinking Violets. Therein lies the rub. When to debud, partially debud or leave things be?

In practice, full or partial debudding is frequently done to trees in development or, when in refinement during a rest year or to focus resources to specific parts of a tree …. this ensure maximum vegetative growth in these years.​

It’s not done in other years, especially when checking the distribution of flower color variations in multi patterned azaleas.​

As far as repotting goes there are a couple thoughts on debudding…. here’s a few:

…. the first thought is in a robust tree debudding should not matter, there is plenty of energy to go around. Keep the tree hydrated, out of the sun and all will be fine. If I’m not mistaken, it was Peter Warren, a Japanese bonsai satsuki professional, who stirred things up with this stance on a online lecture a couple years ago.

…. the second thought is debudding should be done whenever a tree is repotted. This is the kind of blanket statement we all like to fall back on as rookies or not. Its easy and keeps one’s tree on a conservative flight path.

…. a third train of thought is when slip potting or repotting done conservatively. In these cases debudding, especially full debudding isn’t necessary. Perhaps the question for this situation would be, “What’s the goals for this tree?”
.
…..a fourth situation….roots severely damaged during repotting …. well, the tree could be now be considered to be in the ER. Factually, if there is not enough active root surface area to uptake water to keep the sap flow going, the tree is going to die now matter what one does. Removing buds is an appropriate effort to decrease the amount of water demands in the stem. Loss of sap from this procedure could throw the tree over the edge, but… this is the ER after all!

….in the last situation I’ll mention, is a tree is not bursting with growth. This could cover a number of cases calling for further investigation a full root and foliage check …These could include trees severely root bound, suffering from root root, blasted with infestation of insects… lacebugs or the like etc. Trees are known to divert energy to reproductive parts as a last gasp, so there is often a plethora of buds. Removing this energy drain could help resolve the situation for a short time while appropriate measures, repotting, rootwashing, fungicide, nematode, insecticide, micronutrients etc are taken.

Cheers
DSD sends

​

 

[BrierPatch]

@River's Edge , @Deep Sea Diver , That's a lot of great detailed info! Thank you for taking the time to break this down! I think I have a pretty good understanding now and I'm sure this will help others also.
I also read the document you linked to at satsukibonsai.com under the resources tab yesterday which helped a lot too.

 

[Deep Sea Diver]

Thanks @BrierPatch
The link you mentioned is the original Spanish version. If you didn’t already…

Go back to and hit the download button for the translated and last posted English updated version.

Evergreen Azalea Basics, including Satsuki

Greetings Evergreen Azalea lovers! This article provides a solid background on Evergreen Azaleas, including Satsuki azaleas. The content is from, and credited to, the Italian Satsuki Bonsai Website and is named "Satsuki Tutorial". This is not a...

www.bonsainut.com

Cheers
DSD sends

 

[yashu]

I received a nice package from Riverbend Gardens yesterday. One of the plants I ordered was out of stock so Wayne offered me an “off menu” Utamaru as a sub which I accepted. Great guy, great business and I’m fully satisfied with the customer service. The plants were packed well and none of them were “boring”. I cleaned, wired and repotted a Chinzan taking all of the advice from this thread into a leaning style and cleaned and repotted a Gunrei (no wire on this one yet) that looks like it will be a good candidate for a double trunk mother/daughter style. No foliage removed yet, thinking I’ll wait til after the bloom season though I expect I’ll remove flower buds on most to put energy into bulking up. Many thanks for everyone that chimed in on this and a special thanks to DSD for turning me on to Wayne and Riverbend.

 

[Deep Sea Diver]

Good job!

It’s very hard to wire after one root washes, I usually wait a couple months before I mess with mine, except for minor work. So we’ll done on that

A couple horticultural notes JFYI

Chinzan is one of those all around good performers. Bends well, responds with good growth, wants to flower no matter what. There is a small flower Chinzan out there… flowers are 1/2 size….occasionally shows up at random.

Utamaru is one of those small leaved slow growers that wants to “lay down” and creep along the soil surface. So wire up when you think its safe. Slow grower is can often be synonymous with hard wood.

Gunrei is a sport of Gunpo/Gumpo. Known for slow compact growth. These are notorious for having hard wood and difficult to bend, so use all precautions once things are safe for bending. I have Pink Gumpo and use all the tricks I know to bend these little guys. Mostly I don’t even try to bend the older wood. Last year I got cocky when I tried to bend one… it snapped when I least expected it..

cheers
DSD sends

 

[yashu]

I wired the trunk on the chinzan after root washing but before potting and I went with much heavier wire as suggested.

The other two varieties I purchased were a Gumpo variegated and Nuccio’s Lucky Charm.

 

[bunjin]

Certain cultivars are notoriously tricky to remove all of the buds and usually too much damage is done to make it useful. Variegated cultivars & those that have brittle branches would particularly be on the list. I think for those in this category it is probably better to do a repot after the blooming ends, which is the normal default to the preferred March repot time slot.

 

[yashu]

My Chinsan (pictured above after cleaning, repotting and initial “styling”) has finally flowered!

 

[yashu]

These are the satsuki acquired from Riverbend earlier this spring. All seem healthy and doing well.
Unfortunately the Momo No Haru, for which this thread was started, is suffering. I fear that I performed the repot during the first few posts of this thread and before I consumed all the information that was shared. Knowledge is power. I was not nearly as careful and thorough as I was with these later plants and it shows. I suspect the roots have one or more significant air pockets and the damage is done. Lesson learned.

 

[Deep Sea Diver]

So sorry to hear this.

Hmmm. Momo no Haru is a pretty darn strong cultivar. It’s possible it’s just lagging the others. Mine dragged but most of the spring and just picked up some inertia after a cold wet spring, as did many others.. Most azalea medias will fill in any air pockets with normal watering . It’s likely something else affecting the roots.

Is the azalea a goner, or can you post a photo?

cheeres
DSD sends

 

[yashu]

It’s been quarantined however I’ve continued to water and care for it on the slim chance there is a speck of life but it’s pretty crispy. The soil is loaded with fungus gnats. Unlike the others I used some of the potting soil it came in and mixed it with the new media at a pretty high ratio (50/50ish)… to further differentiate the Riverbend plants came in a kanuma mix while the Momo No Haru was in a more traditional nursery mix.

 

[Glaucus]

Well, those leaves are completely dead, as you have also noted. An azalea with completely dead leaves may still bud out. But if the leaves died because the roots died, then that's not going to happen.
I'd often say, prune off all the branches. It might help it bud out if it actually wants to.

 

[Joe Dupre']

I'm picturing a rather wide, flat crown like the acacias on the African plains. You could wire the branches down some and then prune to a slightly domed crown. I think it would look good now and just get better as the trunk gets bigger.