November 8, 2019 – Wolf's Birding and Bonsai Blog

This meeting was all bout watering and feeding our bonsai through the growing season.

Firstly we revealed the main prize for the Christmas raffle. A splendid Korean Hornbeam we managed to acquire at a bargain price at the Coventry BTA event.

We then went on to talk about watering. Although it seems to quite a simple topic, it was quickly established that many of the newer members were a bit baffled by the wealth of conflicting advise and opinions when it comes to watering and feeding.

Mike gave a thorough run down on watering, taking into account the stage of development of the tree, the soil composition, pot size, weather conditions, time of year and location.

We then moved on to feeding, covering the essentials like N-P-K values of fertilisers, micro nutrients and the pros and cons of organic versus chemical fertilisers.

Mike again pointed out that feeding regimes are…

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Members Workshop May 2019

As our monthly meetings only last for about two hours, there is really not enough time to really get stuck into practical work, especially on larger trees. To remedy this we have introduced the Members Workshops some time ago now and they have proved popular ever since.

Not only does it give our members an opportunity to work on their trees while having more experienced member to get help and feedback, it also provides a chance to see how others display their trees and it is a good social occasion to get to know the other members of the club.

Herb and Val kindly offered to host this month’s workshop, so a big THANK YOU to them!

Members who attended were greeted by the sight of a fabulous Japanese style garden, worthy of a Chelsea gold medal.

Despite the weather threatening to throw a spanner in the works, we had…

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July Meeting 2019

We were pleased to welcome David Cheshire as our guest speaker for the evening.

David gave a very informative talk about Mame and Shohin sized bonsai.

He had brought along many fine examples of these small sized bonsai and explained the size classification differences between the two sizes.

David then went on to show examples of trees and shrubs suitable for growing in mame and shohin size.

He kept the talk interactive and at a level that even our newer members and beginners could easily follow.

After the break, David did a short styling demo on a Blaauws Juniper to demonstrate initial wiring and styling on nursery bought stock plants.

Members had brought along their own small size bonsai for the display table and there was a good selection of trees on show.

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Club Display at Staunton Harold Garden Centre

With the demise of the Market Bosworth Horticultural Show, we were on the lookout for a new venue to put on a small display of our Members’ trees.

As luck would have it, one of our members works at the Staunton Harold Garden Centre and Nurseries and managed to get permission for us to put on a display there.

As with all of our shows and displays, we encourage all members to enter a tree, no matter of their experience level or development stage of the tree. These shows and displays serve to show the range of experience and abilities of ALL of our members and display not only specimen bonsai, but reflect the various stages in bonsai development.

A big thank you to Ruth and Olly, who did a stern job in coordinating the event and to all members who contributed.

You will notice that some of the trees…

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October Meeting Report

First of all an apology. We seem to have lost a few meeting reports. I am investigating why they have not posted as planned and will hopefully be able to recover them. Please bear with me on that.

Members brought along trees for entry in our club display at the Heathrow Bonsai Show which made up the display table for this months meeting.

Octobers meeting was a practical workshop to start a mame/shohin size cascading juniper from nursery stock.

We obtained the material for the practical session from David Cheshire Bonsai , a selection of well rooted Blaauws and Shimpaku Juniper cuttings.

Mike brought along a few small juniper cascades in various stages of development to show the process and succession,

Members then chose a tree to work on, following steps as explained and demonstrated by Mike.

After two hours of concentrated work, everyone had managed to produce a piece…

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Heathrow Show

This was the fourth successive year that we have displayed our members trees at the Heathrow Show. It is one of the main event in our annual events calendar, and I was pleased to see that most of our members have entered a tree this year.

As last year, Olly and Herb set of on Saturday to help with the set up of the event. They arrived there at about 12.30 and got stuck in with helping to complete the set up. They even found time to set up part of our display, pending the arrival of further trees to be brought by Ben on Sunday morning.