bonsaial1

Good, Now were talkin about bonsai. No better person to get the ball rolling with then talkin about Rip's passion, ROOTS. I feel that Glenn will tell me, and the forum, his point of view, and we can all learn from both sides of the fence.

So... Let me attack thi(poor choice of words) s from a different perspective. In earlier posts, Glenn had mentioned his frustration on not finding plants with good roots. He had bought many plants in the past and they did not hold up the rigors of his techniques. He felt, "There must be another way", and so decided to build plants that had the best possible foundation.

That is a very noble task. Who would not want to have the best roots possible on the stock they buy.
BUT.... let me go further.... at some time we can see that Glenn bought his stock from a nursery, a bonsai nursery, (at least to me he has mentioned Muranaka's), local plant specialty nurserys, mass merchandiser's, etc. Now at some point early in Glenn's life, Glenn had to make a dicision on how he would choose the plant he would take home to work on.

Would it be reasonable to summise that he would pick the best attributes of the plants on hand? If one has had many failures in the roots systems of the plants that he was getting from the nursery's, at some point you have to resolve yourself to the fact that you are going to buy a plant that will have to have its roots worked over for some period of time. So.. would it be safe to say that one might concentrate on getting the best possible above ground tree as possible?

In the reverse, Glenn is making trees with the best possible roots systems. These root systems are flat, shallow, compact, and healthy. But why stop there? Why not make the top of the tree the best possible too. Why not make the whole package?

I'll tell you why!

Because to grow good field stock you have to be more than just a good horticulturest. You have to be a bonsai artist. The grower has to have the fundamental knowledge of taper, perspective, ratio's, branch placement, 's' curves, negative space, visual speed, and proportion. The grower has to have the knowledge of how to make an artistic tree from less than perfect stock if they are to ever prune bonsai field stock for retail sell.

Of course, is this a must? Heck no! They can grow stock with club trunks, no taper, knobs, reverse taper, crappy branches, terrible pruning scars, no apex, and ugly chop's. Of course then they would be just like all the other growers out there with only one part of the package.
( this later part of the post is not a slam to Glenn in any way, he has invited me out lots of times and I have not recently seen the fields, and am speaking of growers in general.)

BTW, how many of you will be buying the best roots possible when you pick your twenty dollar plant for the " best bonsai under twenty bucks" contest?

Al

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