A little Trident Maple root work

Nebari Bonsai

Trees are usually strongest when their freshly dug, and this is the best time to make drastic root reductions…while they have the best head of steam.

Here is a look at some root work.
Trident 1:

Remember to plane the bottom:

An attempt at an approach graft with some roots:

Planted into an Anderson flat (everything in the grow bed must be dug and relocated this year):

Trident 2; grown for a couple years on a cd:

Trident 3; planted too deep, and was a mess after 2-3 years in the ground from a cutting. What to do?

Another messy root base that I failed to take a before photo of; but the after shot is telling:

Keep them cut short!
Another very nice example of developing nebari, which is just a few years ahead of those above:

And a little update on this one; my first attempt at…

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Trident Maple Project

Robert Nocher Shohin Bonsai

3 years ago, I bought a small forest planting of trident maples. I intended to separate them into individual pots, which I would then grow on to create my own shohin sized material.

The foreground of the first picture shows the saplings sitting on my benches, freshly separated and potted into 5 inch training pots, in the summer of 2012.

In the 2 and a half seasons that have past since the fist picture was taken, most of these trees have done very well. They all are considerably larger than they were at the start and are now ready for their third re-pot.

The next picture shows the three largest trees in the group earlier today. The roots are now filling the 12 inch wide pots and the trees are now ready to be planted into larger growing boxes. The oval pot in the foreground contained all of the saplings in 2012.

The shallow growing boxes…

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Spring’s Here

Natural Moments

In fits and starts, it seems Spring has finally arrived around here. With a couple of days this week showing up with clouds, a touch of snow on the mountains, a little rain and even unheard-of foggy days, this weekend has returned to sunny warm conditions perfect for being outside and seeing what’s going on. After checking on several reported locations for nesting Great Horned Owls, I finally tracked down a new one this week across the river close to Rio Rancho. Without too many possibilities for where it might be, it turned out to be fairly easy to spot.

Great Horned Owl

Returning a week later with some friends, not only did we see Mom sitting on the nest but looking around the nearby trees, this time spotted Dad keeping an eye on things.

Great Horned Owl

(Click on the picture to zoom in on this guy and those…

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Re-potting My Deciduous Shohin Trees

Great post. Thanx for posting and reposting on my blog.

Robert Nocher Shohin Bonsai

I take all of my more established deciduous shohin trees out of their pots each spring, not necessarily because they need to be re-potted but mainly to check the condition of the soil and roots. I find that the top centimetre of soil in the pot breaks down quite quickly in our climate, and retains too much moisture. This does nothing for the tree, but does provide the ideal conditions for mosses, liverworts and insect larvae. I clean the decayed soil off, trim the roots if necessary and replace the tree in it’s pot with some fresh akadama and kiryu.

Here are some pictures of the trees that were re-potted today

This cork barked elm needed the roots trimmed a little

The roots on this trident were OK but the top layer of soil needed to be replaced

Cleaned up and ready to go back in the pot

This Shishishigira…

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