Feeding time

Honestly, I love some aspects of globalisation folks. Long time ago I was looking for fast and easy method for feeding my bonsai with liquid fertiliser. As you know from my previous posts I'm using many different types of fertilisers simultaneously, Osmocote, chicken manure granules, and sometimes I was using liquid organic or chemical fertilisers or different origins.  I had a problem with liquid products application for long time because it is timely so I was skipping it too often. 

Then I heard about product which is mixing fertiliser directly into hose water.

 "That's something for me!" I thought

I was looking for if online and in different garden stores but I failed. 

I almost gave up looking.

Then one day I saw Facebook post of Marija Hajdic about her use of Aquamix product for feeding. I asked where it is from. 

Simple quick answer, they bought it in Bauhaus. Great. 

We had freshly open Bauhaus market in my city. 

On my next visit to city I went there and start to search this thing. 

Could not find it, actually. 

Then one of the salesmen, unusually kind and helpful for Slovak sales guy, asked what I'm looking for. 

After my one sentence he immediately knew. 

So I finally got it. 

It already some time since I'm suing it, and I can only recommend it. Great and easy product which makes feeding my bonsai as easy as watering. 

Back to globalisation. Swiss product recommended by Croatian friends on American social network site, bought in Slovakia in German bigbox market, used with Czech fertiliser producer? 

And now imagine looking for such solution in 1988 in Czechoslovakia.

We live in great times, my friends.

TILIA CORDATA NO.1

I did complete defoliation of small leaved lime recently. Foliage was too big and too dense. As you can see on one of the "before" picture leaves inside the crown were already yellow due to lack of sunlight. 

If you leave it like this on tree for too long some inner growth inside the crown could eventually die off. You can prevent it with partial or complete defoliation to allow sunlight reach inner parts of the structure. Reason for defoliation with this tree is promote back budding, and keep inner growth strong. 

Smaller leaves are just secondary issue. And it is not happening automatically with every tree, smaller leaves are more result of finer and dense ramification in combination with restricting space in bonsai pot. 

Obviously, one can perform such task only on suitable tree, which is healthy and has a lot of energy. This is the case of this tree. I know based on my experience I can do it 2-3 times a year without jeopardising its health. In any case if you are trying to do it with your tree for the first time I advise you to be extremely careful.Start with partial defoliation in strong parts first season, watch how tree is reacting and learn how much you can push it. It does not make any sense to kill the tree with technique you are not familiar with. 

Yesterday we had World bonsai day. I  wanted to wish to all of you open mind, courage to go your own way, ability to find more inspiration in your nature surrounding you. 

Cheers.

Now this is how tree looked just before I start to defoliate it. But, day before I cut off about 10 to 15 shots from top of the crown which were already 30-40 cm long. So this is almost initial picture. 

Since tree is naked, it was easy to put some wire on bottom branch. I was planning to do it for long time but have no good opportunity to do it. So now was the time. Rest of the tree could have been wired also, but I made couple of other defoliation on that day and I will come back to wiring this Tilia in next few days I hope. 

Picea abies No.2

One month ago I took few pictures of this spruce. I was covered with a lot of new freshly opened buds. Just month later tree looked like this today. One can clearly see tree is happy and fertiliser I'm using is working. I always prefer more growth, healthy tree. I think when you perform any styling work with healthy vigorous tree you can push it with less risk. A lot of editing and refinement will follow with this spruce during next couple of years. 

To compare here is the picture taken in mid April. 

There has been several unjustified claims from several sources I cant smile, based on this picture . Those claims were based on few of my last selfie Me-Tree pictures from some of the later posts. To fight those claims Im adding picture of myself smiling which is clearly proving contrary. I hope it will stop any further accusations once and for all. 

History in pictures from 2010 to 2017

Výstava Bonsai Klubu Trnava na Radnici

Od dnes 11.5.2017 do nedele 14.5.2017 sa koná malá výstava Bonsai klubu Trnava v priestoroch Radnice v podkroví. Ak hľadáte program na koniec týždna, tak sa môžte prísť pozrieť. Ja som prispel hrabom a jaseňom.

Crataegus monogyna with couple of flowers

I managed to make few pictures from tripod today. Pictures of the flowers are a notch sharper. Im adding picture of the tree, still no pot for this one. Hope next spring it can go into something new. Shots on the top of the crown had to be shortened, those at lower part of the crown will stay for some time. 

Few shots had to be shortened already. 

Few pictures and thoughts

Today I had a short walk in my garden I made few pictures. It was bit cold and rainy so no tripod, so pictures are bit blurry. Anyway, I took picture of neglected hawthorn flowers, I hope they will be all over the tree in couple of hours( or days) and I will make few adjustments to the tree a take pictures.

Cold and rainy weather is norm for few past weeks. We had short period of warm weather in March but since then it is just rubbish. I hope it will get better soon. But, point is I do not remember when I had situation when last of my trees woke up from dormancy in May. And this happend now. This is the picture of beech bud, opened today. 

It means two things. 

Firstly, we are experiencing coldest spring since I'm doing bonsai, I guess. 

Secondly, none of my trees died during this winter. Zero loses. If you want to know what I'm doing for trees as winter protection then go to posts from end of November and check it. Basically, nothing special, just covering them into sawdust and water them when it is very dry period during the winter. Nothing else. 

It seems I'm going to have cone on pinus sylvestris bonsai.I don't know if it is common or not, but I don't remember seeing one on pictures online. Maybe I have bad memory, or I'm not looking for them well. Truth is, as is quite obvious from my blog, I have close to none interest about pine bonsai. I know, I know, it is weird in bonsai world, but it is like it is. Maybe I just need to find out pine I will fall in love with yet. We will see. 

And last but not least, I made couple of pictures of Juniperus communis. I collected it as one of my firt trees. Since I'm not focusing my work on this kind of material I sold it couple of years ago. As it happens in life, my client who purchaswed it, is busy doing his job on other side of the planet, so tree is temporarily in my care. As you can see, it is doing fine. No styling yet. It is up to next artist. 

Picea abies No.5

This tree was collected back in August 2011. You can see first (and only so far) post about it here . Now, it is pretty long time since then, right. So, let me tell you shortly how was tree developing. As you can see on this picture, tree had long branches you can hardly use right away. 

August 2011 shortly after collecting from wild in mountains. 

On picture taken in July 2012 you maybe can see that all inner needles fell of the branches. Spruces do this when collected. They leave only last year needles, fresh. Then you get long sections of old wood without single needle with only needles on very ends of them. 

What can you do with this now? Do you remember what did said Tom Hanks to Catherine Zeta-Jones in movie Terminal? 

I'll wait! I'll wait! with great russian accent.

So, I was waiting, and waiting as well. 

Basically, doing nothing, just watering, feeding and once a year I was awarded with new buds on old wood. 

And then after I cut branches back, just enough to keep sufficient amount of foliage on them. Slowly coming back to the trunk. After enough years of waiting and doing almost nothing (I repotted tree from no so practical plastic bowl into ceramic pot somewhere in between waiting time) tree reached this stage in autumn 2016.

Then I found out tree is ready for some styling so I was working on few jins, still enough left to finish. 

You see big black jin on bottom right? That branch was 20 years old. It can give you idea how old the tree is. 

Here are few shots of nebari, seems to be quite wide for such tree. 

So I was removing and styling tree from bottom to top in autumn 2016. And after couple of hours I realised that amount of removed foliage is too big. I was afraid to loose the tree since conifers even if well established do not like to lose too much foliage at once.  So I left top third of the tree untouched until now. 

When it was clear tree is doing reasonably well during the spring top few unnecessary branches were removed. During autumn styling I relised tree would be too tall if I will use all branches. So, decision is there will be long jin on the top of the tree. rest will be build from branches which left now. 

Tree now has first rough styling, many more must be done in the future, such is life with spruces. Since I have couple of them, original idea was to make group planting, but I'm not sure. Seems this could be decent solitary tree. I will collect new trees fro group or forest, maybe.