Today I needed to be a re-potting crazy man and managed to get all of this year’s re-potting done minus one tree! I had not re-potted some of the olives for over 5 years as I was more concerned with creating good roots and styling foliage. This could not last another year. With the great
Today I set out to repot a few trees. This year our seasons are advancing very quickly and trees are putting on a great amount of new growth. It has been above 50 degrees at night on my terrace and tropical trees are continuously moving with new buds so I have begun working on Silverberry,
You know it is a great day when you pop out of bed on a holiday and run for the woods, well, in this case the trees on the patio. Today, I needed to accomplish the re-potting of the my Sierra Juniper. I have had this tree for about 6 years and it began as
Today I toured through my trees looking for growth progress. I was surprised by what I saw. The weather the past few weeks have seen temps in the 70’s and night time temps in the 50’s so trees are showing unexpected signs of movement. I also a seeing the first ever blossoms on my Chinese
The re-potting madness has set in. I am busy cleaning up trees, re-potting and generally getting rid of winter mosses and weeds. This year we have been blessed by rain in California but as I was re-potting trees I was reminded why we must water our plants anyway. Some of the root mass was too
Temperatures are dropping below 50 and all the tropical trees moved inside last night until daytime temps rise. I then will start moving them in and out as the days are fitting. Cleaning up all those other trees and preparing for re-potting. Time flies.
In my collection of trees I have tropical and subtropical trees along with the standard California mix. The Peruvian Pepper is one of those special trees. I have been working on a little stump I found at the Sumagawa Nursery near Santa Rosa, CA. It was in a large container in a forsaken section of
Today ends my 2 year journey to test the viability of turface as a substitute for akadama growing medium for sample bonsai in my collection. It has been recommended in club meetings and by cost conscious bonsai artists over the past few years as the price of Japanese Akadama has increased. Over the past year
Bonsai show time is a great experience. It is an opportunity to display the results of all the work you put in on your trees. We spend countless hours every year perfecting the placement of branches, feeding, protecting, watering and then it is story time. Time to tell a story with a tree of hard
Be sure to check out our trees at the Kusamura Bonsai Show in Palo Alto, California this weekend. I will have several trees on display and one special one featuring the redesigned Diamyo Oak, boxwood in-progress, and my Olive saikei. I will also display a client tree that I have been working for several years