Oct 30 2017

Arakawa JBP Update 2017 part 1

Nebari Bonsai

This is the Arakawa variety of JBP. Not a Nishiki cultivar, but a rough barked variety. The bark is nice and rough, but so far, rather flaky and not yet persistent. That’s ok, the bark will improve as the tree is refined. I chose a front and completed the first styling in March 2016:


and took it to a Kathy Shaner workshop in March 2017:


I started with cleaning out old needles, and reducing each shoot to a pair of buds and 10-12 pairs of needles:

Getting it into an easy-to-wire state:


Which I did, and Kathy adjusted:

And here is the end result for now:

Notice the trunk has been tilted to the right a bit? I started by excavating the left side to confirm the base would look good at this angle. With it confirmed, I repotted it the following weekend:

I broke down the left side of…

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Oct 17 2017

Creating A Beech Forest Bonsai

Valavanis Bonsai Blog

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Beech are highly prized for bonsai because of their characteristic white bark, beautiful foliage, winter hardiness and easy training. There are several beech species native to Japan. The Japanese beech, Fagus crenata is the most commonly trained species for bonsai in Japan. Specimens near Mt. Fuji are especially valued because of their small thick foliage. The American beech, Fagus grandifolia, has rather large thin foliage and often collected specimens are grown for bonsai. The European beech, Fagus sylvatica, is trained for bonsai in Europe and spectacular bonsai are created from thick trunked collected trees.

In the United States European beech, and its numerous cultivars are commonly used in the landscape for different colored foliage or unusual growth patterns. These cultivars are usually grafted onto seedlings of European beech, so they are a widely grown nursery stock.

The normal leaf size of European beech is a bit larger than Japanese beech…

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Sep 2 2017

Early Spring cutback

On the 8th Feb 2017 I decided to cut this back hard to build a better branch structure, I also cut the first right branch back to some buds that had developed as the branch had a lot of wood rot so will used these buds to re grow the branch:

 

Then on the 19th March 2017 I decided to dig into the mat of roots to see what was in there. I did half this year, then half next year:

 

Jul 25 2017

JBP Candle-cutting

Nebari Bonsai

I like to update this one every summer and every winter (if I can get to it). Remember, candle-cutting JBP with 100 days left in the growing season produces a second flush of growth, with more buds (ramification), and shorter needles, due to the shortened growing season.

July 10, before


Starting at the top, remove this season’s candles:


Middle section complete; leaving longer stubs on the stronger shoots. Look at these like fuses on a firecracker, the longer the fuse, the takes to go!


All of this year’s candles removed:


Pruned heavy areas, and thinned the needles down to 10 or so pairs of needles per shoot.


Want to see how this tree got from a nursery can to antique Chinese container in 10 years, in a flip-book format, with step-by step, cause-effect photos? Check out the book:Developing Japanese Black Pine Bonsai…by yours truly.

2007:


2017:

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