Planting Saplings

Well today I decided to plant some of my young seedlings in the ground for a couple of reasons. For and foremost, in the ground these trees will clearly grow faster. They all need thicker trunks and vigorous growth in order to become bonsai one day. The other reason is for ease of care. It is less pots to carry around and care for. Also, these trees will be fully hardy in the ground where in small pots they would need some sort of protection.

It’s not pretty or perfect by any means, and I haven’t finished the area off with mulch yet. I basically took an unused piece of my parent’s driveway and cleared the weeds as best I could. I planted our three japanese maples seedlings, a unidentified pine from Home Depot, a pitch pine, and a dwarf hinoki cypress. My hopes are to leave these here for at least until spring 2013 and possibly pot some of them up after that.

Edit 9/12, I have mulched them in. Now grow!

Repotting of Ficus Benjimina Kiki

Last night I decided to repot my ficus and at the same time try and strike a few cuttings. I tried two different methods of striking cuttings the unique one being to try and root them in water. It was recommended to try this method and I am giving it a shot. The tree looks pretty sparse after the work but I think in time it will grow in and look fine.

The future plan is to let this grow out out and shoot for an informal upright. With the cuttings I think I might try to plant a few together to make a forest. My concern’s are that this repot might be too late, but I hope that the warmer weather goes a little longer here on the East Coast.

The first pictures are of the tree when I brought it home a few weeks ago. The next few are the progression of the repot. You’ll see the last picture where I tried to strike cuttings in the new pot.

Satsuki Azalea Aikoku

I thought that I would start posting certain trees on here for progression purposes. I will start with a Satsuki Azalea that I got during my first bonsai class this past june. It was completely rootbound and was potted with about 70% of the rootball still untouched. Even so, it has been putting out some pretty nice growth all summer.

I have thinned it out a few times this summer and now will be leaving it untouched for the rest of the year. I had wired it and then taken it off while trying to put some curves into a few of the branches. I still have a tourniquet styled guide wire pulling a very straight branch inwards to increase the density of the canopy. The plan is to repot the correct way next spring I think right after it has bloomed. I may try and hack it way back as well but that might have to wait until Spring 2013. I am toying with leaving the two trunks or narrowing it down to one. I like the way it is turning out so far and it seems to be very healthy at the moment.

The first picture is at the NE bonsai during the class. As you can see the flower are sort’ve large on this tree so that is something that will need to be taken into account in future styling. The next picture is the same day at home, potted up. The latest picture is from August 20th and you can see that the shape seems to look better, and the leaves look much healthier. Since that picture, there are new sprouts all over the place which you can see in the next picture.

The Move

Well the past few days have been one horrible blur. We were told on Tuesday that the apartment we had planned on moving into on Wednesday would not be available for us to move into. They did not know when the person would be moving out. This pretty much means that the trees and us were pretty much going to be homeless. We spent yesterday packing and loading up a u-haul, and putting everything in storage. We had to leave my trees behind until we got them this afternoon.

We then had to drive them in the car for an hour and a half to my parent’s house temporarily. I am worried that because of the long commute to and from work, that the trees might start getting neglected. I am going to do all I can to keep them in good health. I had to bring the trees I was keeping indoors and put they right out so I hope they survive the new location.

On another note, the azalea’s have been putting out new growth for the past week and are looking quite healthy. I think the maple forest is starting to come around as I am seeing new buds, after I starting taking off the ratty looking leaves so this is a good sign. Everything got a good feeding last week and looks pretty happy so far.