Maros Bonsai Blog: presádzanie

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A couple of new projects

As I wrote in one of my previous posts I caught collecting bug last spring and had an irresistible feeling I haven't collected enough trees in the last few years. I thought I have enough space for a few new projects, which obviously proved terribly wrong. Nevertheless, I managed to bring a few new trees last year.

In desperate attempt to make my shelves look decent this spring, I was repotting everything that was possible to be repotted into ceramic pots from plastic bowls. So did I with two trees on pictures below. Both were collected in March 2018. Both were very vigorous so I repotted them. Not that I'm recommending it as a standard approach with freshly collected trees. It is still better to wait 2-3 seasons and than disturb trees again. In this case, trees were Prunus mahleb and second is Elm, which is both vigorous growers. I had almost no doubt they will do just fine.

For mahleb, I see its future with a round, rather wide crown, with upward branches. Trunks need to be carved for sure. I hope the tree will create nice even nebari all around the trunk.

March 2019 after repotting

April 2019

Summer 2018, a few months after collecting from wild

The second project is Elm. Also with strong roots, already nice even distribution. Even if it was not true they tend to improve nebari themselves by growing a lot of roos on all sides. I decided this will be traditional (!!!) broom project. I know, I know what you are thinking. That I'm not doing a lot of traditional shit and so on. But As I was looking at the trunk I saw it there, I promise. I'm following one interesting thread on BonsaiNut about crating broom and I think I can try to do it along these lines. It will be extremely challenging, and it will take two decades to bear fruit but I'm going to give it a try. Now, tree pushed a lot of growth from the cut in late spring, I cut off absolutely nothing. It pushed two branches from below the cut but I should have removed them but was not sure where I'm going with it. And those two branches were there much earlier than growth on cut. So, now everything is cleared, all excess growth was cut out and only 5-6 upward shots were left. They were shortened on two-three buds in March during repotting. Month later growth is strong again many new shoots emerged. I will leave it like it is to let the tree gain more strength after the repotting stress and thin out branches in about month time.

Carpinus betulus No.13 in new pot

A few weeks ago this hornbeam got its first ceramic pot. It is much better to move around now. It is a tree collected in 2012 and still in the early phases of development.

Carpinus betulus "The Yossarian"

Since last repotting tree was sitting in its pot in a quite awkward position provoking many. Well, at the time of repotting back in April 2013 it was a too big risk to remove so many roots jut to fit it into a rather shallow pot. Accidentally, it stayed in that position up until last week.

Now, it was time to try to fix the tree in more desirable position. The pot was full of roots and even by removing something like 10-litre bucket of roots, editing stumps of larger roots on the bottom of the tree it was still resisting. Shortly, the tree is now in best possible position for two or more years. Crown needs editing as well, and it was partly done today. You will see the result in a couple of weeks time here as usual.

Tilia cordata No.1 in progress

During last weekend repotting session I did the change of pot for this small linden. Now it is sitting in Luboš Škoda pot as you can see from the pictures. The tree was collected from the wild by myself in August 2009.

It was just one month and one year after my first daughter was born. Well, as you can see in the picture, she was assisting me with fixing mesh on drainage holes with wires, and my son was taking pictures with remote control of the DSLR. Just nine years apart. Hm. I'm getting older, it seems.

Actually, 2009.

Tilia cordata No.2 in new pot

Linden repotted last weekend into its first pot. Pot made by my friend Daniel Tarcak, the amateur potter with potential for sure. The tree is, unlike most of my trees, from finger thick nursery material I got from uncle years ago, and field grown for a few years.

Larix decidua in new pot

We had nice warm spring Saturday so it was a good time to do some repotting. Larch deserved new pot so it has one now from Luboš Škoda kiln. The pot was not purchased for this larch and it is obviously a bit bigger than needed but it was best I had for the tree right now. Pot is much shallower than previous one, so I covered the top of the substrate with moss to use whole depth of it for potential root growth.

Cornus mas "Vesna"

Last week it looked like spring is here. Well, weather forecast this week shows quite opposite and for the large parts of our country, we are expecting unusually frosty time for the upcoming week. Nevertheless, my "Vesna" have different opinions on when to start flowering. Since few days flower buds start opening.

So, I decided last weekend it was time to do some reporting. I got a couple of new pots recently and one of them, from Tomas Snovicky I used for this dogwood. This is yamadori tree collected from wild some time before 2009 (not by myself, so I do not have the complete track of its origin). It was collected from stony grounds and a couple of stones were embedded between massive anchor roots still. I repotted it a couple of times in last decade but took a lot of caution not to kill the tree and I managed to do only minor structural reductions of big roots. Still, step by step. The health of the plant has the highest priority. Now I managed to remove a considerable amount of old thick roots which prevented me from potting it into more desirable position and into the shallower pot before. So Roots are gone, one and half of the stones are gone. One stone completely, the second one is still part of the composition and I think it will stay there. I just hit the last stone with a hammer from underneath and it broke down into two pieces. The tree is now sitting in its new pot in slightly tilted position to the right on the front picture. It is much lighter as well due to removed rocks, few handfuls of old soil removed. And finally, I used lighter particles in the substrate composition. I'm testing pumice, it is lighter and has nice colours. Hopefully, the tree will have all flowers open and I hope to take decent pictures in next couple of days.

Fraxinus No.2

During weekend repotting session I was working with this ash. As vigorous as it is, it could have stayed in pot for at least one season. Even if after taking out from pot it is clearly visible pot was fully packed with fine fiber roots ( just remainder it is sitting in anorganic mix of Zeoilte and Teramol since it was collected, if there are people out there not believing in using modern substrates. I hope we do not have to prove it works fantastic anymore tough). Reason I was taking it out was removal of larger roots. This tree was potted initially into plastic bowl after collecting. Than it was repotted several years ago into this chinese pot. Being careful I was removing minimum amount of roots when fitting it into this pot. This obviously led to larger roots reaching very edge of the pot. Larger roots are problematic from several reasons. One is obviously aesthetical, it is generally better from design point of view, to have several smaller roots than one fat big root. Second reason is related to size of the pot, and effective volume of the roots. In small pot if you substitute one bigger roots by cutting it by mass of fiber roots it is much better for the tree.

So, if you look on initial picture you see one of those large roots ending just on periphery of the pot. This root was shortened significantly, as was two others on other side of the root ball. Edges of the roots were covered with moss to keep them wet, this will hopefully help in development of the new fiber roots at cuts.

Now tree is sitting in same pot, new one for this tree is in production phase already. Since removed roots was forcing tree into certain position, now it was possible to rotate the tree to achieve better front. Top of the crown will be edited, when tree start to show its vigor after few weeks from now.

Larix decidua No.1 repotted

It was nice warm first spring day yesterday. I spent whole day working in my garden on ending winter protection of my trees. First time I used only dry leaves to cover trees. It worked well even if it looked more messy than wood chips. It is too early to say if all trees made it but it looks everything is OK.

So today I had again some time to work with my trees. I decided to change position of my larch as I was planning. I removed only small amount of roots just to move tree towards edge of the pot. Tree is now in more upright position and I like it more this way. Substrate is mixture of zeolite 4-8mm and Teramol plus some bark pieces.