Sometimes when you have a dense collection of trees you miss a repotting year on year. Today I had one of those embarrassing moments when I looked down on a recently rotated collection of trees to find my neglected cork oak. It was cramped in amongst olives I was preparing for a demonstration later this
We bonsai folk know how important it is to rotate your collection to ensure that sun and air exposure is balanced for growth and development. Today was one of those days I approached the benches with the intent to change locations, turn trees, and clean up trees needing some refinement. My Daiymo Oak needed more
Today I moved a lot of trees; bring them up from the bottom benches where many were dormant for the winter and up into the bright sunlight top shelf. It gave me an opportunity to clean up and enjoy their new buds. Since the Winter was so warm may popped new growth last week in
It is hard to believe that March is nearly run its course. It has been a crazy month with health issue for me and for my trees. COVID shots are 1 down and 1 to go so that is a thing and I am overjoyed about it. The removal of a major stress point and
On the last day of February, I spent the morning repotting some trees. This has been a fun month with work for a client on some old trees and then on my own collection working on shohin and experimental trees. A few years ago, I purchased a 3 Peruvian Rain plants from Calaveras Nursery. Two
Well yes it is. Here in California plants continue to grow albeit slower than in the normal growing season. Some trees are starting to bud and even push new leaves. Pruning certain kinds of trees now will prepare them for the aggressive spring push. The Brazilian Rain Tree(BRT) is tough to grow here. In the
I have been a bit quiet this season. That doesn’t mean I am not working on trees or other projects. California weather was very odd in early Fall and it delayed some work. I have been enjoying my trees, taking lots of photos around the Bay Area and working on paintings. I have penned my
I am in the process of cleaning up the collection for the Fall. Summer light is fading fast and many of the trees are tired. Tropical trees get their final pruning and all my cuttings need to be potted. Potting many of my cuttings. Several different pots were created. My biggest effort was finishing the
This month I am to due a tropical demo for SBBK. It will be a Zoom meeting and I have such limited time to present some updates on my trees. I put this PowerPoint together to create some excitement. I will still do a short live stream on working with tropical trees from the host’s
I have been working on many tropical trees this summer and learning some key lessons about up-potting trees in the summer. Several trees in the both personal collection and client collections were suffering greatly in the heat. Some of those issues were caused due to not being able to transplant in the correct season this
