We've Moved!

Due to technical problems I had to move the blog. Just click the link below to go to the new site. All the old posts have been moved over as well.

Thanks!

Brent

http://BonsaiNurseryman.typepad.com

Thumping Watermelons

It's that time of the year again, a bit late this year though. The watermelons are getting ripe.

When I was a kid we lived in the suburbs but there was a big vacant lot next door where we always had a garden. In Maryland, you could grow great tomatoes but the melons always left something to be desired, to say the least. I always wanted to grow watermelons, and my folks humored me for a few years. I would get big lush vines but the watermelons wouldn't get ripe until frost and they would be puny, pitiful things only remotely resembling the melons in the store. It didn't take me too many years to decide that the there just wasn't enough heat and growing season in the suburbs of Baltimore for watermelons.

But I never gave up my love of watermelons, each summer seeking out the perfect melon. I got quite good at it. I always went for the largest and roundest melon with a full blossom end. I investigated the many ripeness tests. My Uncle Ralph subscribed to the scratch test. He would gently scratch the skin with his fingernail and if the green outerskin came off easily it was supposed to be ripe. I could never tell the difference, but then he was a watermelon connoisseur way beyond my youthful years; he even loved watermelon pickles made from the rind, probably the only person on earth who could actually eat those. Then there was the ground spot test. Ripe watermelons have sat on the ground long enough to have a nice big ivory colored spot where they touched the soil. Also, there was the stem test. If the stem broke off easily and cleanly, it was ripe, if it tore and left a stub, it wasn't. But most intriguing is the thump test.

The thump test is a study in hydro dynamics. An unripe watermelon is very dense and will 'thump' with a higher frequency than a ripe one. There are actually two schools of thumping. One is to flick the melon with your middle finger by restraining it with your thumb and giving it a good whack with your nail upon release. The other school is the 'pat' school. This is properly performed by slapping the melon gently with your open palm which makes it ring like a bell. Now it is very easy to tell an unripe melon from an overripe one. An unripe watermelon will give a hard high frequency response and an overripe melon will give an unmistakable dull thud since the heart tissue is collapsed, making a semi hollow cavity. A ripe melon will give you...well, something in between. And therein lies the crux of the problem. Any fool can tell if the melon is under or overripe, but it takes a real expert to distinguish a density difference demonstrated by heart tissue that has reached maximum sugar level and just started to breakdown. I have been working on this test since I was about eight and I haven't quite got it yet, but I am getting there.

So, by ten I was done with growing watermelons, but was embarking on a lifelong mission of studying the species like a fine wine. I have even been known to buy a melon, take it home, take one taste, and throw it away. On average I would say that about one in three storebought melons, that I have carefully selected, really qualify as a good melon, not ambrosia mind you, but a satisfactory experience. You have to understand that as a younger person, summer and watermelon were synonymous to me. I even had watermelon for breakfast as a teen. And I am thoroughly familiar with all the diuretic properties of the substance, dying for a piece before bedtime, but knowing what would happen at 2am. But as the years have gone by, the desire has waned a bit along with some other desires associated with the male species. Still, there has never been a summer where I didn't find at least one good watermelon.

Then a miracle happened. When we moved over here, we had ten acres to play with, flat alluvial soil, sun, tons of water. So, instead of one tomato and half a dozen strawberry plants in our tiny garden in Ukiah, we could now have a real garden. I delegated this project to Susie who needed to get her hands dirty on the weekend to save her sanity, while I on the other hand, have nothing to do but fuss with plants. On a whim she planted a few watermelons. I snickered, having been through this before, but she said what the hell. Now, part of having a garden (when you have land) is finding the perfect spot for the garden, and it took us three gardens to figure this out. But even our first feeble attempt produced corn, tomatoes, a few squash, and yes, watermelon, 'Crimson Sweet'. I watched those melons like a hawk. We didn't have the deer fence up yet, so everything except the corn was nightly pruned back, but not destroyed. The melons were hardly touched, which was a wonderful surprise.

Each week those melons put on another two or three pounds. By early August they were already bigger than anything I had ever grown. We just kept pumping the water to them, saying little prayers to the druid gods of veggie gardening. By the end of August I was thumping like mad. These little guys were reaching fifteen to twenty pounds and were the cutest thing in stripes. Finally, I got brave and cut one open. Wow, that was all I could think or say, wow. Not only were these melons good, they were great! This was bordering on the best melon I have ever tasted in my life. Now I know we landed in the right spot. But then a nasty little thought creeped into my head, were these melons really that good? Or was this just a trick of my mind, my pride faking me out? No, they were that good. We started giving them to neighbors. Now, you know what happens to neighbors to whom you start giving zuccini, they see you coming and they start heading for the car... uh, gotta go to the post office. Well, these neighbors started coming back and asking for more. They swore these were the best melons they ever tasted and even their friends swore it too, and they wanted some too.

Well, we have had watermelons in the garden ever since, some years we only get a few due to spring disasters or years where the gophers decide they like melons too, only they don't know which end to chew. In fact, the melons like living here and self seed coming up wherever we mix in the compost, and they come true too. And each year its the same thing, most of those melons will exceed not only the 'good' test but even exceed the 'great!' test. This year is a poor year, late spring, cold then hot, moved the melons to a new place, trouble with the water system, etc, but we still have melons. So yesterday I cut the first melon having determined that eventhough it was still quite small it had the right degree of 'thump'. And sure enough, 'great!' watermelon first shot out of the box.

And just a little teaser for you other poor wretches who have tried to grow the perfect melon: A 34 pounder record watermelon from last year.

Raw Material: Pines

Among the many email questions I get about bonsai are a few about Japanese Black Pine, Pinus thunbergii. Most people are completely lost about how to design a black pine, and rightfully so because it is so difficult. Pines are nothing like deciduous plants in their growth pattern and thus require their own techniques that are different from deciduous trees, and even other conifers such as junipers. The biggest problem with pines is they have strong nodal growth patterns. On pines, these nodes are easily identified as the whorls of branches. Growth between these nodes, or internodal growth, is difficult to obtain, and new bud breaks on older wood are nearly impossible. Some people recommend grafting as a cure for this problem, but I think this is an overly simplistic solution. Grafting has its place of course, but the real answer to grow pines using techniques that make use their odd growth pattern. That is what I will try to do here and in future posts about growing and designing pines. If you haven't already, you might want to read these two articles I have written about black pines on our website:

Black Pine Training

Black Pine Growing

I usually don't recommend black pines for beginners because the techiques are so sophisiticated from a physiological standpoint. In other words, you have to know a lot to even begin, and it is very easy to go wrong. Mistakes in black pine training are usually irreversible in the sense that you can very severely limit your options simply by making a few unfortunate pruning cuts. With pines you need a strategy that will carry you through to a design you see from the beginning, or at least maintain the maximum number of options for future design. I must admit that I don't design pines from the seedling stage, that is, I don't impose a design on them. I do the basic work and let the plant show me where the greatest potential is. I can do this because I have grown thousands of them, and I can predict pretty reliably how they will turn out. A beginner in the pine world doesn't have that kind of clarity because he doesn't have the experience. I hope to show you how to proceed with a few basic rules and concepts.

Bill D wrote me last week for suggestions in styling his black pine pictured below. He would like a 12 to 14 inch tall tree, but doesn't know how to proceed. This is your standard nursery grown Pinus thunbergii seedling. It has had little or no pruning to this point, and that's really good, because nothing important has been removed. This is the kind of plant offered by most nurseries and what you will find unless you obtain pretrained material from a bonsai grower.


As you can see, this tree doesn't resemble a black pine bonsai at all. It has a perfectly straight trunk with nearly no taper and a reverse internode space pattern (whorls get farther apart as you go up the tree). This is how pines grow, but it really doesn't matter because 90% of what you are seeing here won't even be in the final bonsai 'tree'. First, note and locate the nodes (whorls). Now notice, fortunately, that the very first whorl just above the pot rim is still intact. I say fortunately because, right now, these are the most important branches on the tree. Ironically, these are the ones that a beginner is most likely to cut off. Never remove low branches on a pine until you are absolutely sure you can't use them, they have done their job, or they are causing a problem. More on this later. Note that this node's branches are weak and small except for the one long one. This is not uncommon. Left to its own devices most trees would quickly wall off and shed these branches that were formed just after the seedling germinated, in the first season. You must do whatever you can to prevent that from happening.

This is my answer to Bill:

If you want a twelve inch tall JBP, that means you need at least a two inch caliper trunk, three inches would be better since most JBP are masculine and thus look better with a fatter trunk. So it looks like you have a long way to go yet. Here's what you should do:

Those few tiny low branches just a few inches from the soil: Keep all those, they are very important. They will be your sacrifice branches for fattening the trunk and getting some taper. None of the rest of the tree is usable as it is. You have a long straight internode to the first major whorl of branches that is about six inches or so up the trunk. There is nothing that will work for a first branch, so you will have to start completely from scratch. This is not unusual for JBP. Start by removing the entire top of the tree just above this whorl (the one about 6 to 9 inches high, at the white line in the photo below). You could have done it this summer, but it's too late now, so do it late this winter or early spring.

By removing the top you should get some bud breaks below this whorl, one of which would be the first branch or possibly the new trunk line. You could get a new trunk line out of the whorl by using one of those branches, but it is pretty high and the internode is pretty straight and uninteresting. so it would be better to use a lower branch from the internode for the new trunk line. So, you are doing two things here, one is to get the first branch, and the second is to get a new trunk line, one that would create movement and taper. If you can get these out of the internode section by cutting back to the top to the internode, then fine, you can leave some or all of the whorl branches as a sacrifices to thicken the lower trunk, but it would eventually come off after the trunk has reached the desirable caliper at the point just below the start of the new trunk line.

IF you don't get ANY new breaks below this whorl after pruning the top out, you are kinda screwed. You would have two options. One would be to grow a larger tree with the first branch and the new trunk line both from the existing whorl. The height of the tree would then be three times the distance from the soil to the first whorl, and the new caliper would be at least 1/6 this distance (remember the six to one ratio). Your second option would be to prune it even harder (an inch or two below the white line in the photo below). This would be done next summer, about the middle of your growing season. You would cut just below the first whorl and thus remove it. This will do one of two things. It will force growth in the internode, or the internode will die back to the first low branches you are keeping as sacrifices. Usually, if there are still needles in the internode, you will get a bud break. Even without needles you can still get it to break. If it dies back, you have to create the 'tree' out of one of the very first low branches. This will give you a broad base and strong turn at the bottom of the trunk which is not all bad, but it is starting completely over. You would then have the chance to make an even shorter and more dramatic 'tree'.

It's a little late to be telling you this now, but it would have been better to CUT the needles in half so I could see into the tree rather than plucking them. By removing them entirely you just reduced the chances of getting buds to break in the internode. This is the problem with pines, there is so much to know and you have to know it all at once to really come up with a plan.

No matter how you proceed, all you are doing at this stage is trying to get a first branch and a new trunk line. The entire rest of the tree will be created from the new trunk line. We don't need to deal with that now, but there is probably enough information in the pine articles to help you figure out how to do that. (End post)


I am going to expand my answer to Bill a bit by showing you the results of this kind of pruning on some other pines. The pine below could be Bill's pine in about five years. This pine didn't have a low weak whorl like Bill's, so obtaining a good low sacrifice wasn't possible. This tree was first pruned back to (1) on the photo below. This was the first node. This was done because the rest of the tree wasn't usable. I didn't get any low bud breaks after this chop, but I did get more bud breaks around the node (whorl). This accounts for most of the branches around area (1). One of the original branches at node (1) became the new leader, but the internode between (1) and (2) was still too long to be usable. So a subsequent second chop was made at (2). You can still see the scar. This resulted in internodal bud break as desired. The buds that broke formed branches (3), (4), and (5). Now we have something to work with.

The first branch can come from one of the small exisiting branches at area (1), probably one of the ones on the left. Note the distance to (1) from the soil line. The height of the 'tree' will be about three times this distance, or about twelve inches. The current caliper is about 1 1/2 inches, so it has to double for a finished trunk. Thus sacrifice branches will be necessary for at least several more years. The second branch should be less than the distance of the soil to the first branch. Branch (5) is a little too low and branch (3) is a little too high. Branch (4) is just about at the correct distance and on the right side of the tree. This would be my pick for the second branch and the start of the new trunk line. There is a branch and a new bud break in this area. The branch could be the new trunk line and the bud break could be the second branch. But this often doesn't work well. Usually it is better to use the smaller bud break and let it extend for a year or two. There is a node at its base, and when you prune back this new trunk line after it is stronger, you can get more breaks from this node and possibly a better selection for both the branch and the trunk line.

Now I would like to explain something complex that most people don't think about. At what point do you remove the trunk section above branch (4)? The section above branch (4) will be left as a sacrifice to thicken the trunk area just under branch (4). It should remain until the section under (4) begins to approach the desired final thickness of the finished tree. This is somewhat subjective, but we want taper to the top, so for a three inch caliper tree, the final caliper of this area should be no thicker than about 1 1/2 inches. If you let it get thicker than that you may lose taper from the last section and you will have too much taper going into the next trunk section. You also have to allow time for sufficient scar healing after the old trunk above (4) is removed. So you can see from the photo below, that it is almost already thick enough. In probably a year or two, the old trunk section will have to be removed, it's job completed.



The entire rest of the 'tree' will be grown out of the new trunk line created by branch (4). All of the low branches, except for the first branch, soon will have to be removed because they are already beginning to create a bulge or inverse taper at (1). What this tree is lacking is a good low sacrifice branch. The base trunk section is never going to be superb without one. Pines tend to come out of the ground like stovepipes and stay that way no matter how thick they get unless you can get a low sacrifice to induce taper. It's not too late for a bud break on the base trunk section, but as each year passes it becomes more difficult and more unlikely. The next best chance would be to repot this tree and really pump it up and then prune it really hard at the time that the chop is made above (4). This will often induce very low breaks even old healthy trees.

The next photo is an example of what Bill's tree might be like If he didn't get any bud breaks after pruning back to first whorl, and even after he pruned below the first whorl. This was a 'rescue' tree that I couldn't force back. Note that despite my massive pruning at (1), I didn't get a single bud break below this point. However, I do have a low sacrifice branch that I was using to correct the stovepipe nature of that straight taperless trunk. As it stands, this tree is utter worthless with its present trunk. This is a case where we will make a 'tree' out of the sacrifice branch and trash the entire rest of the tree. In a year or two, once the sacrifice is strong enough to stand on its own, I will trunk chop the main trunk at (4) and make the sacrifice the new trunk line. Now note that there is long internode in the sacrifice between (4) and (2). This is unusable. One of the tricks I do with sacrifice branches is that I work them as if they are 'trees' just in case a situation like this occurs, where the sacrifice becomes the 'tree'. I saw this one coming and pruned out the leader of the sacrifice at (2) last year because I didn't have anything to work with in this internode. It worked. I got a bud break at (3). After this little branch gets stronger and I force some secondary branching from it's base, I will remove all of the rest of the sacrifice above (3). This will make a tiny tree with the same caliper of the original tree, about three inches! There will be some major scar healing to accomplish, but this will be a massively tapered small tree with great movement.


This last photo is of another tree where I have done exactly the same procedure. You can see the results after a few more years. The old trunk was removed at (1) and the sacrifice was shortened at (2). So now the trunk line moves into the foliage. This last cut was recent so there isn't a definite next trunk section yet, but there is plenty to work with as you can see. Several more years are still needed for scar healing and more trunk formation and upper branches, but take note of the caliper and movement. This could make a nice little shohin of about eight inches with an almost three inch trunk caliper!


I hope you can see why working with black pines is so exciting for me, and why it is such a challenge. the last two trees are about fifteen years old with at least another five years to go, but they will be very nice trees indeed.

Raw Material to Bonsai

One of the most difficult aspects of bonsai is deciding when to begin designing your 'tree'. You will see that I use 'tree' a lot on my posts because it is the word that we use in bonsai for finished trees and trees in development. The single quotes help deferentiate between the raw material and the bonsai. For example: "There is almost always more than one 'tree' in a tree. Seeing the 'tree' is very difficult and virtually impossible for a beginner. Even some people who have practiced bonsai for many years do not develop the talent to see the 'tree'. There are many elements that come into play in deciding what path your 'tree' will take, but they can be divided into two basic categories: What you want and what the tree has to offer.


What you want:

The two most important elements in deciding what you want in your bonsai are the size and the form. Recognizing this is the most basic step in developing a plan for your bonsai. Size should be thought of in terms of trunk caliper (diameter at the base) and height of the finished bonsai. This will help you decide on an appropriate method for developing the trunk. And developing the trunk is the first and primary task. Deciding on the form will determine the shape of the trunk. Form is the basic shape of the bonsai. The simplest are formal upright, informal upright, slant, semi or half cascade, and cascade. After you have decided on the form and the size, you can proceed with a plan to create your dream. But the dream doesn't exist in a vacuum; it is woven from live material. So, you also have to consider what the material has to offer.

The approach to creating bonsai can take two directions. You can search for material to suit a specific desire, such as an informal Japanese Black Pine that is about a foot tall with a massive trunk. To make this come true you need to consult your wallet and your time frame. You can spend a lot and make it happen in just a few years, or even immediately if you purchase a finished tree, or you can make it happen over twenty years by growing out your own material from scratch. Of course there is a continuum of possibilities in between these two extremes.

The other approach, and the one used by beginners, is to search for any material that has possibilities. This is fun. It is like shopping at a flea market or a garage sale. You aren't looking for anything in particular, but rather just looking for something to strike your fancy. What strikes your fancy should be some aspect of the 'tree' that you can see. Rarely can anyone immediately see the whole 'tree' in a piece of material as good artists often can. But there should be some element of a good bonsai that attracts your attention.


What Does the Tree Have to Offer?:

If you purchase good pretrained material, which is not inexpensive by the way, the trunk may be essentially finished, that is, it will already have the size and form determined and completed. Your job is then to turn this finished trunk into bonsai. This can occur rather quickly, or what passes for quickly in bonsai. It will look like bonsai just after the initial styling and will only get better in succeeding years. Or you can grow out inexpensive nursery stock and create your own pre trained material. In either case, you still have to see some element of the 'tree' to begin converting the material into bonsai.

The first place to begin looking is at the nebari. This is the bonsai term for the buttress, crown, and surface roots of the bonsai. This is what anchors the tree to the earth. Without a good nebari, a tree will stand awkwardly, it will look unstable and unsure of itself, something a strong wind could blow over. A tree with a good nebari will swell at the base and spread across the surface of the earth, grabbing and clenching it with big radial surface roots that divide and ramify. If you find a tree with good nebari, buy it no matter what the rest of the tree looks like, even if you have to regrow the entire rest of the tree. Excellent nebari is rare and one of the most difficult aspects to achieve in bonsai. If at all possible, you should plan the entire design of the tree on the basis of the nebari, choosing the front from it, deciding on the size and the form from it.





The second aspect that should demand your attention is the trunk. What does the trunk have to offer in terms of size? If it has a good first section, that is, up to the first branch, or where the first branch will be, that will save you about five years of growth for most bonsai. If it tapers from this point, that's even better. What it does from this point will help determine the form. If it tapers into the next section but is straight, then it will work for a formal upright. If it tapers and moves at this point. then you have the possibility of an informal upright or slant. Try to see where the trunk becomes uninteresting. Does it have a long straight section with no taper or branches? Or does it have a radical curve after a basically straight beginning? The place where it becomes uninteresting is where you should consider chopping it and regrowing the rest of the trunk. If you don't, you will build in a fault. This is extremely difficult to overcome. It can be done sometimes by an expert, but you will probably spend more years and effort trying to hide it than if you just corrected the situation by cutting it off and regrowing it.

If you have both a nebari and trunk (rare), then you can begin looking at branches. Branches on decidous trees usually aren't a big deal because you can simply regrow them or even graft them. Conifers are more difficult, especially pines. With pines you pretty much have to have branches were you want them or you will never get them. They can be grafted, but it is neither fast nor easy. On most deciduous trees, the branches aren't even started until the trunk is basically finished.

If you collect material for bonsai, as nearly every practitioner does, there will always be some material that doesn't speak to you. It just won't offer any elements that suggest a 'tree'. This happens to me too. If you decide to keep it, make sure it is pruned and basic aspects are developed and not ignored, like growing out the trunk size and maintaining low branches. Look at it twice year with a critical eye. As it develops, it will change, and you will change too. You will begin seeing things that you have never seen before. At some point, perhaps many years later you will see the 'tree'.

REBS Show 2005

Saturday and Sunday, the fourth weekend in August, is the traditional date for the Redwood Empire Bonsai Society Show. I look forward to this date every year, and I don't believe I have missed the show since the first one I attended around fifteen years ago. It is the bonsai highlight of the year for Northern California. This is one of the biggest shows in the country with over 100 major show quality trees from all over the Bay Area as well as the North Bay. It is always held at the Veterans Memorial Hall in Santa Rosa.

I used to attend this show as a vendor. The sales were good, but my business just isn't set up for this kind of event, so it was much more work than it was worth. But the worst part about vending was that I didn't get to see much of the show! Now, I go down for one day and spend it entirely with the trees and my old bonsai friends, some of whom I only see once a year at the show. It is an inspiration to see such magnificent trees. I get energized to go home and work on my own. I haven't shown any trees for a number of years, but I hope to do so again next year. I have three major trees that I hope to have in shape by August next year. I bought a big cream oval pot for my redwood and agreed to have Tom Colby build me a stand for my Pyracantha. Bob Shimon has a pot I want for my Liquidambar, but it wasn't at the show, so I will have to pick it up later. I rarely buy trees anymore, it's too much of a case of 'coals to Newcastle', although I did buy a wonderful old crabapple from Jim Gremel this spring. Pots and stands will take up most of my 'tree' budget for the next few years as my trees edge toward show quality.


It is nice finally to be making the transition to finishing trees, it only took twenty years. It doesn't have to take that long, but that's how it has worked out for me. It's odd, bonsai is an art that is turned on its head. Beginners want to do all the last things first, and necessary things last. You don't get to work on leaf reduction, ramification, potting, and showing until the tree is basically finished. That's the glory stage, and beginners want to jump right into it. The problem is that they haven't paid their dues, the many years it takes to prepare the material, or the commitment to buy quality material, and the years it takes to learn how to deal with it. The years spent getting there look like a huge hurdle to someone at the beginning, but in fact, the getting there is the real joy. It is the joy that you get everyday as you prowl among your trees, getting hundreds of little surprises each year as you discover each little improvement that you and nature have created. Sometimes it's happenstance, sometimes it's planned, but the joy is the same.

In fact, if beginners don't discover this joy of the journey, they don't stay with bonsai. The path is so long that no mortal human could endure the frustration of that delayed gratification. Yes, the oohs and ahs of the spectators taking in your trees is rewarding, but it is only the tip of the total joy, deeply intense, but soon gone. Monday morning brings you back to the reality of watering, pruning, potting, fending off the elements until next year. Yet, shows are a great incentive to stick with bonsai, especially really good shows like REBS. I take pictures each year of both my old favorites and new trees. Seeing these trees again and again reminds me that I have to finish my own; I have to give them their moment of glory. The trees begin to take on a life of their own. Not like pets, because they are totally dependent on your care and love, but a live entity striving for beauty through your efforts. It's important to show them, to let others enjoy the artistic beauty, to be pulled into the frame that cuts through reality.

Old friends are important too. For the last several years, I have made my critical tour of the show with Greg, whom I only get to see once a year. We are fellow nurseryman, so there is a professional bond beyond bonsai. He is a lovable character and it is a great joy to see him. We, and sometimes Jeff, my best bonsai buddy, enjoy and study each tree in the show, taking a couple hours to make the rounds. We absorb the experience the great trees give us, pausing to let the beauty and the story sink in. Then we critically analyze them, both the wonderful and the bothersome aspects, and make suggestions. It's a great opportunity to test your skills and expand your horizons. The opportunities to see such material all at once and in person are so rare, that they cannot be wasted. I find myself finding new fronts for may of the trees. In a few cases I would have made the front the back, but usually it is a more subtle than that, turning a few degrees to display better an important aspect or to diminish a bothersome one.



The vendors section gives me the chance to see old business associates. These are people I love as friends but with whom I can also talk shop. But since they are busy trying to make some money, the conversations are by necessity short and concentrated. I always try to talk to Ian from Lone Pine Gardens, who is a propagation nerd like myself. He actually propagates a lot more than I do these days, but each of us delight in sharing our new discoveries in the prop house. This is also the chance to actually see and feel the pots, stands, and stones that you otherwise would have to guess about in catalogs and on the internet. You get to talk to the people that make and sell them. I had a nice conversation with Tom and went through all the stands he had there, but there just wasn't one big enough for my monster trees, so I am going to have him build me one. It is going to set me back more than I wanted, but it's time for me to make that kind of commitment to the art. I'm not going to live forever and its so easy to keep putting off these decisions until one day you wake up and it's too late or life takes a left turn, and then it's impossible. I don't want this opportunity to pass me by.

Then at the end of the day, after all the chatting and shopping and looking, I go back through all the trees one last time and take pictures. It's such a challenge. The lighting in the hall is terrible and if you use the flash, the shadows wreck the image. I used to spend about an hour on each picture pixel painting out shadows and enhancing them until they looked like what I remembered. Yesterday, I just gave up and took them without the flash and instead spent far less time correcting the color, contrast, and brightness. They lose detail by not using the flash, but the really important part is that the feeling is still pretty much intact, and this is a process that I can stand to perform. There are a few shots in this post, but the bulk of the pictures in much greater resolution will be posted at our website in the coming weeks. I will announce it here when they are done.

On the almost two hour drive home, I think about these things, about what I am doing, where I am going, how much progress I am making. It's one of those time markers that I keep talking about. This is a yearly one, a chance to gauge my life, and the life of the nursery, and the life of my trees. During the six years of the move, these measurements have been difficult. Yes, I was building something better, but I was also sacrificing a lot of things. One of those things was my trees. That's over now. The old nursery has been closed a year, and there have been other setbacks since then, but these too have been resolved. There is still much to be done, but now it is time for a long climb back to the dream, that fateful thought I had twenty years ago as I prowled among my new collection thinking I could spend my life selling these little trees to people.

Problem Solving

Remember those word problems in elementary and junior high math?

If Tommy rides his bike at ten miles an hour and the store is four kilometers away, How much change would he get from a twenty dollar bill if he bought four dozen eggs at $2.95 a dozen? And how in the world would he get them back home safely?

We universally hated those problems. It's too bad because they probably represented the few, if only, chances to do any real problem solving in school. School was, and probably still is, cognitive oriented. How many facts can you cram into your head for just long enough to spew it out on the next exam? Our whole focus of education is wrong. Sure, there is some basic stuff that everyone should know about our history, culture, our bodies, etc, that could probably be summed up in a few good sized text books, or less. But apparently, even this isn't happening. Ever see those polls that say 57% of seniors in high school can't find the Pacific Ocean on a map? That stuff is mind boggling. Or current events, one poll the other day said something like 45% of adults don't know who Karl Rove is. He's probably only the second most important man in the US political scene today (I wonder if they know who number one is?). I guess we all have gaps and holes in our cognitive domain, but boy, some people must have holes you could drive a semi through. So, if the cognitive gaps are this bad, it doesn't leave much hope for the problem solving realm.

The sad part is that problem solving is really fun! It's curiosity with power tools. Sometimes I think the main object of school is to kill a child's curiosity about the world. We explain curiosity away by putting labels on it. "Teacher, what makes the moon go around the earth?" Answer "That's gravity, Bobbie". Well, that one's done, what's next? I was in college physics before I really knew what made the moon go around the earth. No kidding, and I was a chemistry major and lifelong science buff. Oh, sure, I could talk about the attractive forces, I could even regurgitate an equation if I had to, but I didn't really know in any meaningful sense. It happened like this: One day I was sitting in the huge physics lecture hall, bored out of my skull, thinking "why can't they make more left handed desks in these places". In the background was a voice that was talking about orbital motion and falling bodies. Now, all my life before this very instant, I was fascinated and disturbed by the fact that orbiting bodies had just the right amount of momentum to keep them perfectly balanced against the attractive force of the body they were orbiting. I guess I thought it was because if they didn't, they would either fly off into space or crash into the larger body (which is largely true), thus, only these perfect matches would last. All the physics majors out there are giggling now, but I really didn't know.

So, here I am half listening to the professor, and thinking again about this perfect match problem for the upteenth time. And then something magical happened. The words "falling body" triggered a brilliant flash of intuition. He didn't explain it for me, but he provided the key piece to the puzzle. I was so excited, I was almost dizzy, I wanted to scream "THEY ORBIT BECAUSE THEY ARE FALLING BODIES!!!!" There is no perfect match. ANY body that approaches or FALLS toward a larger body can play out one of three scenerios depending on it's speed and mass relative to the larger body. If it is high, it's path will be curved but it will first fall and then escape, just passing by it. If it is too slow, it's path will be curved enough so that it falls and crashes into the larger body. But for everything in between, it is captured by the gravity of the larger body but its fall never reaches the larger body, it continues to FALL forever in an elliptical orbit. So the moon, the earth and all the other planets are still falling bodies. Falling bodies that are just barely captured will have enormous elliptical orbits, slowing down at fartherest extent of their orbit, nearly about to escape, but can't quite make it, so they slowly turn back toward the larger body gaining a lot speed as they swing just past it on the return trip, but not close enough to crash into it. If you slowed them down, remember the retro rockets Scotty, they would still fall, but their orbit would bcome smaller. There would be a continual sucession of smaller and smaller orbits as you slowed the object down more and more until they did crash.

So, I know a lot of you are saying big deal. But my problems aren't your problems. Each of us has 'falling body' problems wandering around in our psyche, nagging, aching to have an answer. Sometimes, maybe even most times, we aren't even truly aware of the nature of the problem, we only know the nagging feeling. These are problems that cognitve learning usually can't answer because we just haven't been taught the process or the beauty of problem solving. Cognitive learning provides the fundamental stuff from which we can build theories, and it is from theories that we attempt to solve problems.

Why didn't the curiosity get beaten out me? That's a good question. Part of the answer is that I was a 'goody two shoes' in school. All the teachers said on my report cards "If I only had a classroom full of little Brent's". It was disgusting. Unlike a lot of other bright children that act out on their boredom with school, I turned it inward. I wondered about stuff. The reason I wasn't a trouble maker was that I was inside my head most of the time, both in school and out. I had my own little realm going on in there that didn't depend on real world much, or at least the social world. I can remember quite clearly when I must have been about seven or eight, looking at an electric motor. I can still see that motor. I was thinking, how in the world can something like that work? It just a case with a bunch of wires inside that you plug into the wall. Now I bet that is still the extent of understanding of fully half of the adult population in the US. But it bugged me. So, I did something about it. I went to library. Those were different days, I use to take the bus by myself at the age of five and go into town and to the library and the movies, and nobody even thought anything about it. And there I got books on electric motors, how they worked and how to build them. I had a little work shop in the basement and started building simple motors from dowls, thread spools, wire, and copper tubing for a commutator, it ran on six volt lamp batteries my father used to bring home from work for me. From building a simple motor, I got to learn how they worked. Later, I got a reputation as the kid who knew how everything worked. Maybe I couldn't understand or explain the fine details, but I could tell you how a car, or the refrigerator or the TV worked. The other kids would try to stump me, but they couldn't.

I guess that set a pattern for my life. It has been a source of immense pleasure and also painful frustration, mostly in school and college, where the real meaning of what you are supposed to be learning isn't important. Especially math, but that's the subject of another post. Then later, I too, became a teacher, and I tried to teach this awe and wonder of knowing how the world works. I put a priority on this aspect over the cognitive realm, so of course I was fired. Public school and I were just too combustible a mixture. I have continued to teach over the years, but only when I could do it my way, and it in little ways, usually in one to one situations, but I have taught adult college classes too, using these same principles.

Thus it is that I approach bonsai the same way. I reject the cookbook approach. I want to know why I have to root prune when the plant is dormant. I try to incorporate plant physiology into teaching bonsai, so that you gain the power to solve your own problems. These are extremely powerful tools. If you know how plants grow, then you can manipulate them and predict the outcome of your actions, whether you have read about it or not. The parable in the bible is so true: If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach him how to fish, you feed him forever.

A Beginner Demo

Probably the most common question a bonsai beginner will ask is "What can I do with this?" That's when I just heave a big sigh and do the best I can. There are just so many factors involved. For starters, there is usually more than one 'tree' in any starter material. So one of the questions is "What do you want it to be?" Most material that is presented by beginners is just too young to show much of anything in the way of styling potential. So the next question is "How long do you want to wait?". Fortunately, there are some basic guidelines that can help you design your 'tree', if you have some decent material to work with.

What is decent material? More than stick in a pot of course. Decent material will have a trunk with taper and an interesting trunk line. It should not need massive growth to increase trunk caliper. If it does, then it's too soon to use it for immediately styling other than planning a general shape and size. So the trunk should be essentially finished, at least up the first branch. To get any further with your design, there should also be branching. Branches that are not too thick and that fork into secondary branching makes it more workable, but at least having enough branches to create the major final branches is necessary to proceed.

Now that doesn't sound like much, but just go to any nursery and try to find something like that. It's pretty difficult. Most nursery plants that fit this descriptions are going to be overgrown shrubs in one to five gallon size containers. These can make nice small bonsai in a few years and the basic structural work can be done in one session. Deciduous material is the easiest to work with because it will usually bud back if there is little or no growth close to the trunk where you need it. Conifers that have enough branching for immediate design work have all their foliage too far from the trunk, so that if you created the outline you wanted, you would have to remove all or most of the foliage and probably kill it. Thus, you can buy nice conifer candidates, but you usually can't just take them home do the kind of design work that you as a beginner want to do. You first have to prune them back to force foliage closer in, then do the design work months or years later.

Probably the most important rule that should be etched into every beginner's mind is the six to one rule. This is the rule that virtually every novice on the face of the planet violates, and every mallsai every created violates. This rule tells you how big your bonsai is going to be. Most real bonsai have a trunk that is six times taller than the width (or caliper) of the trunk. This isn't something that requires you to actually measure to get an exact ratio of six to one, but nearly every real bonsai will be in the range of about three to one (fat) to ten to one (tall and thin). Most bonsai will fall around a mean of six to one. So if your bonsai is taller than ten to one, it just isn't going to look like 'bonsai'. You can rail all you want about stupid rules, and how you are only doing this to please yourself, etc, etc, but, the truth is, you just won't be creating bonsai. You will be creating a stick in a pot, and that is exactly how it will look.

Armed with the six to one rule, you are ready to begin. Now you know how tall your 'tree' is going to be. The next rule to apply is create a triangular outline. There are a lot of correlations to this rule which would refine the outline, but for initial styling, all you need to know is that you need a triangular outline with the top point as the apex. Beginners tend to make the outline too broad. Good bonsai will usually have all the foliage relatively close to the trunk. The wider the base of the foliage outline triangle, the smaller the trunk will appear. Keeping the outline tight will enhance the trunk. You can start with a wider base for the first round of pruning and refine it to a narrower outline as work progresses. Knowing that this triangular outline is the shape of your 'tree' allows you to cut cut off everything outside this outline. This reduces the thinking process tremendously.

Now you have a basic shape and height. The rest of the work is more difficult and will require study and practice, but almost anyone can do it. More rules will follow. I have illustrated these ideas below with a series of pictures. The material here is Cotoneaster microphyllus 'Thymifolius'. Cotoneaster is a wonderful bonsai teaching tool, because they are easy to grow, are very shrubby, and can make a decent small bonsai. You can often find overgrown one gallon size plants that can be treated immediately like the one below. The one I have illustrated here is a bit of a ringer because it is an older plant that has been pruned several times in the past to get some trunk movement. But you can often find such material in nurseries. The problem with Cotoneaster is getting a decent trunk caliper, so it will almost always be a small bonsai (remember that six to one rule!). You might easily end up with a six inch tall or even shorter bonsai from one gallon size material. A bonsai tall would have a 3/4 to 1 inch size trunk caliper.

Now look at the picture below. The white line defines the triangular outline and gives you the maximum final height of the finished 'tree'. You can cut off everything else. This isn't rocket science. You just take a pair of shears and make a cone to create this outline (remember that a bonsai is three dimensional, so the rotated triangle is a cone).


Here is what you get after this preliminary shaping.



I should stop here and tell you that bonsai have a front and a back. I could write another whole article on how to determine the front (the angle from which you view it). But for this beginner analysis, I would just like to make two points. If at all possible, the front should display the most powerful and interesting aspect of the trunk and the base or buttress (the nebari). So if the trunk has some nice interesting curves, that's what you want to show. If it has a nice thick base and flare, you want to show that. If it has good radial roots anchoring the trunk, you want to show that. It's not often that you will get to show everything to it's best advantage, so it is usually a compromise. The second rule of choosing the front, is that that the tree has to move toward you, not away from you, especially the apex. The apex can usually be grown toward you without too much difficulty, but the trunk is usually fixed, so you will have to position it so it leans slighty toward the viewer. Sometimes, but not always, you can accomplish this by tilting the tree. When it is repotted the next time, you plant it at it's new angle. Wooden wedges are great for angling the pot to get the best view while you are deciding. Always remember that you are working in three dimensions; not only can you rotate the tree to get a good front, you can tilt it as well. It is often amazing what a few degrees of tilt or rotation will make. I chose this as the front because the entire tree leans forward, there was no possibility of having the other side the front. It often isn't this simple.

Now you need to refine the tree somewhat. This is still gross pruning, so it doesn't require a whole lot of thinking. If look at the first picture closely you will see that there is a multitude of straight thin branches coming from the trunk and from larger branches. For deciduous trees, the only potentially useful part of these branches is the first inch or so, because that is where you would want the branch to fork and bend. You get it to fork by pruning it back to where you want the fork to be or just a little longer. When the branch buds back (sprouts) as a result of the this pruning, two things happen. First, you get an nice bend in the branch because one bud will break from the side. The second thing you get, usually, is another bud break that can be the side branch. Now there are many more branches than you want in your 'tree', but at this point, you don't need to think about it, just prune them all back, and don't remove any of them. We will remove the extra branches later when we have decided on the final design. It is very easy to remove them now and wish you had them back later.

Here is the result of the next stage of pruning.


Now it is starting to look like a 'tree', but it needs final branch decisions, final trunk line decisions, and refining. I need to stop again and talk about trunk lines. This is a very simple, but extremely important concept in bonsai. The trunk line begins at the soil line (at the nebari) and continues up the trunk and finishes at the apex (top). That seems like a simple statement, but getting this final result can be extremely difficult and literally can take years or even decades for good bonsai. The trunk can have movement (curves), or it can relatively straight as in a formal upright. It can either end with the apex over the base (upright), or it can end with the apex off center (slanted). It can also end up below the rim of the pot (cascade or semi-cascade).

Now branches need to be selected. There are many rules of branch selection that I won't go into here, but they can be found in the RULES article at the website. A few simple rules can be applied here. Branches should go on the outside of the curves, they should get smaller and finer in nature as you go up the tree. They should also get closer together as you go up the tree. If you are in doubt, you should leave more branches than necessary, they can be removed later. In this particular tree, it had several thick branches that were already nicely formed, so it was an easy decision to keep them and remove the long straight thin branches entirely. However, had the thicker branches been too thick, it would have been necessary to keep a nearby smaller branch and develop it. This takes time and most beginners want results now. So, I left the more developed branches, although some smaller ones were also left for possible future development. Hopefully by now, you are getting a feeling of the potential for bonsai by recognizing the number of parameters there are to the various aspects. Read that sentence again. If don't know what "parameter" means, you should look it up, it's a great word and has particular import for bonsai.

Almost no beginner would have cut back the thicker branches as much as I did. There is a good reason. Think of branches as little horizontal trees. They should have movement and taper, just like the trunk. The only difference is that they are created relatively flat on the bottom. The get smaller and finer as go out toward the tip, the secondary branches get closer together, just like the trunk. The large branches on this tree don't do this. Study the longer, larger branches. You can see in each one that there is a long straight section where they don't taper or move. They have to be cut back to where they become a problem. That is, where they stop moving, or where the taper stops, or where they begin to become boring. You will have to regrow and reform the rest of the branch from this point. This is a difficult thing to do when you are looking at a tree as in the photo above that almost looks finished, and you realize that you will end up with the tree in the photo below that looks bare and naked. It is necessary, or you will have a flawed tree forever. Bite the bullet and cut them back, you will be thankful years later that you did.




Now look at the top of the tree in the picture above. Notice that there is a twin apex, or in other words, a fork at the top of the tree. This confuses the eye and breaks the 'flow' of the trunk line. There should be a clear undisputed trunk like to the apex. The apex itself can branch into a little crown, but it must be very fine in nature and the forking should be of equal or similar caliper branches. This is not the case here. The left hand apex is very heavy and lacks taper. The right hand apex is smaller and more refined. Many people might be inclined to go with the larger apex simply because it is larger, but this is a mistake. It is also a mistake to leave both. The correct choice is the right apex, the left has to be removed. In addition to the taper and the small nature of the right apex there is another reason to choose it over the left one. If you look at all the pictures, you can see in each one that there is strong movement to the right. There are bends, but the movement always returns to the right. This is the direction of the 'flow'. This is a vague concept, but like love you know it when you see it. The apex must always finish in the direction of the 'flow'. If you look at the left heavy apex, you will notice that it moves and finishes to the left; it changes the direction of the flow. Also notice that visually it forms a "C" with the portion below. The "C" formation is a classic sign of a fatal break in the flow. This is what I call moving back on itself. I have coined this term because that is exactly how this formation makes me feel. Anytime I see a "C" formation in bonsai, it gives me an uncomfortable feeling. It closes off the flow and suggests a circle rather than a soaring upright visual movement. The flow gets stuck in the "C".

So, remove the left apex and this is the result. When it is next repotted, it will have to be tilted and rotated as shown below. Because of the strong movement of the trunk, the tilt and rotation are very critical. It will take some fine analysis to get it just right.



What's left to do? You will notice that I did not repot the tree in this session. The last photo completes all that you can do at this time. Beginners want so badly to put the tree in a teeny bonsai pot, that they will invariably endanger the tree to do it. There is no good reason to do it. Bonsai is about patience, if you don't have the patience to do what's best for the tree, then you better take up knitting. This kind of work is only possible because the tree is in a larger pot with an established root system. The presence of the undisturbed root system will allow this tree to recover very quickly. By late fall, it will have filled out again and I will post another picture. I will not prune it all until next spring. It could be repotted in early spring, but it might be better to wait even another season to use it's vigorous growth to solve some remaining problems such as scar healing.

Next season, it can be trained exactly as if it is finished bonsai. The next step is ramification of the branches and formation of the apex. The apex right now is only suggested, it will need a lot of work, but since the apex is formed from small branches only, that can easily be accomplished in one or two years. This will be a nice little shohin tree in about two to three more years. For this tree that means about 15 years total, but from ordinary nursery stock, you could achieve similar results in about 7 or 8 years. Since nursery stock of this size is already about 5 years old, you can get a decent little shohin in 2 to 3 years from material costing about $7 if you can find it. You might have to look at 25 to 50 trees of all the same age to find one that has the potential of this one. That's why I don't sell such material for $7. I have already gleaned the best trees for advanced material. You can of course spend a lot more time developing good stock yourself, but then you need to know a lot more than I have outlined here, and you need to spend the kind of time that I have spent in corrective pruning over the years. Or you can do both, most people do.