Maros Bonsai Blog

Tilia cordata "Daria"

Linden doing good so far this year. A lot of growth which has to be reduced to allow light get to the inner crown to prevent dieback. For comparison, there are two pictures from the beggining of April.

beginning of May 2019

Early April 2019

Ten Years

Today it is exactly ten years since I launched my blog. I was thinking about what I can write down but had no really good idea. So I'm posting me and a tree, like I do, sometimes it is the tree alone. Sometimes we are looking at stuff and we think we know what we are seeing. Maybe there is a message. Sometimes there is.

My message for You is:

Try to find best possible tree yourself, believe me, they are out there.

Work with local trees - they are best for your climate.

Use local resources if possible - environment matters - shipping bags of clay around the globe sucks.

Dare to use your creativity, walk outside your home and look around, chances are you will find more inspiration in your nature surrounding You than browsing the web.

Dare to work alone, most of the time there will be nobody to help.

Be inspired by Your culture, Your nature, and Your tradition don't try to follow someones else dreams.

Never stop dreaming.

Thanks for visiting my blog, thanks for leaving the comments, thanks for the support.

Maros

Acer campestre No.2 in new pot

Maple was repotted into its first ceramic pot. Rather small, I wish I had a bit bigger but I run out of suitable pots after repotting fifteen trees this spring. I tell you I had cold feet doing some drastic root work back in March. But tree fitted into the pot and I was waiting for its response. As you can see on April pictures tree does not think pot is too small. I'm happy for now, I will kut back the top in few weeks and let the side shots elongate for a bit longer. Still, the tree is rather a new project collected only in 2014, so it needs a decade or two to shine.

in a previous plastic pot in 2018

First plastic pot, picture from 2017 I guess

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.

"The Yossarian"

During the upcoming week, my blog should have its 10th anniversary. I'm thinking about the epic anniversary post but haven't got the clue how to write it. You know this cliche when a writer sits in a cafe drinking overpriced fair trade coffee from an eco-friendly cup and he is scratching his head in desperation. So that's me, without coffee. But I still have some time to hit the mark. Anyway, in case, I will not come up with anything epic enough, I'm posting a few recent pictures of hornbeam "Yossarian". I was doing some editing in March and the first set of the pictures are from that session. Now the tree is fully covered in foliage and nothing is visible obviously. I will give it a few more weeks before the first cutting back of the foliage.