The trees in general grew well through June, and I thought I would show a couple of quick before and afters.
I chopped this bougainvillea in May, and it started to bud out. The first picture is from the bonsai/baby/BBQ post and the second one is from today.
Next a couple of updates from digging pre-bonsai on Cape Cod. First a Japanese maple then a pitch pine I twisted.
Everything else is growing well too and I will update in due time.
This bougainvillea was a gift I gave to my grandfather while visiting him last October. It came back into my care early this spring. I went ahead and chopped it back to start training it as a shohin.
As received this spring.
After the chop and wire.
Repotted and cut back this summer.
And the most recent picture. I have started feeding this with bougain, so hopefully, I will have a picture in bloom someday! I hope to develop the branch structure and aiming for a shallow wide canopy. This is still many years from being a good bonsai but this one has a special meaning to me.
Well the temperatures dipped low enough that I decided to bring the tropicals in for the winter. I only have a few small tropicals, but man it looks like I’m almost out of room!
Tonight I got a little time to get a bit of work done on two of my tropical projects. Both are from Wigerts Bonsai that I got in October of last year. Both were also featured in a post back in May. I apologize for the poor quality photos; I was enjoying my time outside.
First up is a bougainvillea with a story that I chopped earlier this year and has grown really well. I’ve never worked with the species but it was getting pretty dense and I decided a haircut was in order. I thought this tree was going to flower but it hasn’t so far. I may try to sneak it into a nicer looking pot next week at my class.
Next up was a ficus retusa that has honestly been worked on quite a lot this year. It’s kind of a project tree that I like to experiment on and see how ficus respond to certain things. See that long branch zapping all the energy from the parts I actually want larger…
Well I decided to try my first approach graft for a back branch. The ones that are there are too straight and large for the tree so I felt like starting over with the branches. I’m curious to see how if it works even though its not the cleanest graft ever made. The apex was left intact to try and get it to thicken up while everything else was hit back. I am trying for a drop first branch, but it also needs to thicken up.
While I am here, I thought I’d update my Green Island Ficus that I have been working on to show this year. Time to let them all grow out again, thanks for reading!
Tom's Bonsai 