Bonsai
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Happy 2017!! Lets make this a great year! A few weeks ago my local Bonsai club had it's annual winter picnic. At this winter picnic, there was a new species of tree I had never tried to grow before. At first I thought it was a different kind of cypress but after asking around the club I found out it was a Dawn Redwood. I found out this tree was donated by Adam of AdamAskWhy.com and has been growing it for a few years. As you will see later in the post it looks airlayered but Adam informed me it isn't. He told me his friend Nick Alpin got the seeds online and planted them. At the time Nick was playing around with a bunch of seeds and became too successful with them so he ended up giving a bunch to Adam. Here is some info about the Dawn Redwood. This species of tree is deciduous, meaning it goes to sleep for the winter. This is one of 3 kinds of Redwoods. This particular one (Dawn) is native to China. Dawn Redwoods are fast growing trees. First things first, time to defoliate the tree to make it go to sleep for the winter so I can successfully repot it without it dying. When repotting a Dawn Redwood and it hasn't dropped it's leaves yet, you have to cut the whole compound leaf off. Here is the bare tree without any leaves Now it's time to take the tree out of the pot. The soil is so bad I have to hose it all off. Now lets see what those roots look like Wow! Look at those roots! Remember at the beginning when I said it looked like an airlayer and we would talk about it later? Well here is the later. If you can see, there is 2 sections of roots. From the inbetween area to the bottom is where there could have been the airlayer materials. The tree doesn't appear to have a tap root either. Now I'll clean up the roots Ahhh, a lot better. But what is that I see? An interesting base? Look at that! That makes a straight trunk more interesting! Time to pot it! I am going to put it in an even bigger pot to really let it grow wild. I will put it in a 3 gallon pot. I put it in the pot with 50/50 potting soil and perlite mix. Here is the final tree I left it tall for it to grow and I straightened it in the pot because of the nice base. I will watch this tree in the coming weeks to see when it pops out and post an update when that happens.
See everyone next time!
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I was at my local club workshop and I brought a buttonwood that was purchased from the buttonwood queen, Mary Madison. I have been growing it and wondering what to do with it. Adam of AdamAskWhy.com had a vision of what to do with the tree. Here is the front I walked into the workshop with: But we decided to change the front to this: We talked about what to do with it and decided to jin the top of the tree because of how straight it is. So first he took all the branches off then we took everything off the top, the bark, the wood, and the cambiam. We also changed the front in the pot Adam then took the torch and bent the deadwood to make it all old and twisty After moving the wood and adding wire, he bent the branches in a gnarly way. Here is the before: The awesome after: Thank you so much Adam! Can't wait to see this tree in 5 years!
Who remembers this Hackberry root? If you don't remember this Hackberry root, take a look at this post. This was one of the Hackberry roots my friend Adam gave me from his big Hackberry tree. Below is the big Hackberry my root came from. Check out his post on his tree here. The tree turned out great!! I gave Adam my opinion in the post, you will have to check the post out! I bet it is growing wild right now just like mine are! Alright, to my Hackberry... This Hackberry was one of the survivors of what I got from Adam. It is growing great... Want to see? It's grown a lot since January! I have not trimmed on it at all, it has just been left to grow. The trunk is going to be really nice one day... Look at those roots!! Most of those are new since I have put it in it's current pot in January. This Hackberry looks great right now!! I am not going to work on it for a while because I do want the trunk to thicken and I want more branches to pop and grow. The other Hackberry roots are alive but the cutting unfortunately did not make it... I recently pulled the cutting out of the pot and it had no roots. It had dropped it's leaves about a month earlier. The other Hackberry trees are growing a lot but have not grown like this one. That's why I choose this Hackberry to update on. In the future I will update on the others. Until next time...
I haven't decided what tree to post next, so you will have to check back and see! Hello Everyone! Yesterday, I was with my friend Adam and he was working on a big Hackberry. Click here to read about his big Hackberry. When I was with him, he repotted the big Hackberry. He also took off a thick branch (shown in the picture above) that I ended up getting. When he repotted the tree, Adam of course cut roots off because it was pot-bound. I ended up taking home some roots and the thick branch Adam cut off. The next day, I got ready to put the trees in pots. The branch had no roots, but some buds that were getting ready to pop. The roots had no growth, but a ton of little roots. Below is what I took home from that tree. Below are closeups: I had to do some work on the Cutting to fit it in the pot. I pulled out my handy-dandy concaves to do the job! The cutting is all done. Below is what I did I only cut towards the bottom so it would fit in the pot good. Now it's time for potting! I filled each pot with soil, put the tree in it, and chopsticked the soil to airate the soil. Each tree got potted! Below is the closeups, then all together. If you would like to learn more about Hackberries, click here.
If you don't want to click the link, here is some of the information: Hackberry is a common name for this species of tree. Celtis, is a Genus of about 60-70 species of deciduous trees widespread in warm temperature regions of the Northern hemisphere. The tree goes dormant in the winter and drops all of it’s leaves. It was previously included either in the elm family (Ulmaceae) or a separate family, Celtidaceae, the APG III system places Celtis in an expanded hemp family. ^I did not write all of that above. Credits to Wiki. Hope you have learned a lot about the Hackberry species of the tree and make sure you check out Adam’s post on the big Hackberry tree that is the mama to my trees. (His post is currently being written) Ben Jamin Lorber UPDATE: 2-2-15: The Hackberry Cuttings I’m trying to root ALL have green buds all over them. The root cuttings from Adam have not done anything on top of the soil, but I don’t know what is going on under the soil. I as well do not know what is going on under the soil for the cuttings I’m trying to root. Hello Everyone! Recently, my neighbor got a new fence... But a big bougainvillea was in the way! So my Bonsai friend Adam (Facebook Account) (Blog) came to dig the big tree up! But when I say big, I mean BIG!! This tree has been growing in the ground for 19 years! When Adam was taking the bougainvillea out, I got a little piece that came off... Below is what it looks like: And here is the piece Adam got: (If you want to know Adam's Side of the Story, Click Here) In case you want to know more about a bougainvillea, you can click here. This particular bougainvillea has a pinkish purple flower. Although this tree has a pretty flower, it has a lot of thorns! Like I said above, this bougainvillea has been growing in the ground for 19 years! This tree also loves to grow wild! Below is this bougainvillea flowering: Back to my little piece, after getting it... I had to get this bougainvillea in water, it only had 1 root! It was hard finding a big enough container to fit this... Finally, I remembered I had a watering can a good size for this bougainvillea. Below is how I left it for the day... I will keep you updated on how this tree is doing!!
Enjoy, Ben Jamin Comment / Mobile! |
Ben jamin LorberI LOVE Bonsai!! I have participated in many styling competitions and have even won! I have also displayed many trees in many exhibits! Archive
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